A Room with a View

We think we've discovered the secret to Japanese efficiency: a hard work ethic and social pressures mean that of the 10 days annual holiday that Japanese employees are entitled to, most take 0 days off. Word of mouth is that if they take holiday they would appear lazy and it would reflect badly on them amongst their colleagues.

We were linked to this video yesterday, for those of you in need of some procrastination, watch for an amusing/informative 5 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au0Ue7qCy6k

We landed in Nagasaki amongst the furore of the Kunchi Festival. Walking out the station there was music, dancing, cheering- at last, someone sent the welcome committee!!

Today's orientation task (navigating our way to Casa Noda hostel) was a success! We actually did it on our own. We're overlooking the faux pas where we definitely knocked on a residential house- luckily there was no answer as we would have been quite a shabby surprise. It would have been too difficult to explain our way out of that, language barrier and all.

We are over the moon with this hostel, not only does it have a cracking view and an ensuite. It is a private room with a cushy mattress too. Hoorah. Check it out:

We took it to the street market once we offloaded the backpacks. This is set up as part of the festival and has stalls with Japanese cuisine and carnival-esque games, where you can win small treats. It was hectic but we enjoyed it and even tried some sugared sweet potato from one of the stalls- you won't have seen wedges this size before! We intend to go back tomorrow to pick up more food delights.

oh, and they're chocolate coated bananas in case you were wondering....