My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

who come every day, from all over the world to gamble. Macao is
now a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of
China. It was administered by Portugal for 442 years, first as a
trading post, and subsequently as a Portuguese territory, until its
handover to China in 1999.
Japan
We flew to Kyoto, the former capitol of Japan before it was
changed to Tokyo. We stayed in Kyoto for 3 days. We took a
sightseeing tour and visited the Imperial Palace, the emperor’s
family residence until 1868; The Sento Palace with its beautiful
gardens; Kyoto Tower, one of the most important city’s landmarks;
and a huge Nishiki market with a large variety of oriental produce,
which was a spectacle. We took one day to walk and explore that
exotic city that we enjoyed tremendously. Kyoto is a fairly large
city with a population of 1.5 million people. We arranged for a taxi
from the hotel to Kyoto’s railway station, a state of the art
building, where we took the bullet train, with very comfortable
accommodations to Tokyo.
We arrived in Tokyo on a Sunday afternoon and stayed in a
beautiful hotel full of gardens, for which the Japanese are famous.
The hotel where we stayed was very popular for wedding
receptions, so it was wonderful to see so many brides and grooms
around the immaculate gardens. I volunteered to take the
newlyweds’ photographs with their cameras. To thank me, they
would smile, put their hands in a prayer-like position and bow.
By the end of the afternoon, I found myself doing the same
gestures, which they all thought was very funny. Deodete had lots
of laughs…What an enjoyable afternoon! The next morning, we
took the city sightseeing tour. We saw the highlights of the
Panoramic Tokyo, which included the most classical temples and
Shrines; the Imperial Palace East Garden; a stunning view from
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