Kyoto – day 1

The bus arrived an hour late, which is pretty rare in Japan, and I may have been the only one happy about it – an extra hour of sleep is always welcomed in my bible. I forgot what it feels like to wander around a large train station during rush hour. Thousands of people in business suits moving in waves, it’s almost magical, I rarely see that many people in US. Maybe a running even, a baseball or a football game, but they only mass long enough to get to their own car.

Woody came over to Japan for our wedding party and to hangout in Japan. After all of the festivities have finished, I wanted to show him around Japan and party for a little bit together. We started with Kyoto for a few days aefore moving to Tokyo.

Having ‘travel’ experience, I was very comfortable living out of a hand bag for the next couple of weeks. A few pairs of underwear, some t-shirts, socks, jeans, shower stuff and a couple of books. I am pretty sure a slightly bigger bag would be enough to travel for the next year, but I could easily manager with this if i had to.

I did decide to test my internal compass by trying to find the hostel I stayed at 6 years ago w/o directions. I actually did really good, though I first overshot it by a couple of blocks :) but got some neat pics along the way.

…. this is still around 9 am.

By noon I met some cool people at the hostel and still not having heard from Woody decided to partner up with an Ausie and hit some temples. At some point in the day Woody called me up and we were rejected from entering the imperial palace together. I completely forgot about having to make reservations ahead of time. This makes it three times I was rejected from that palace.

I am horrible with names, so I wont even attempt to remember the names of the temples. The one in pictures above was where shogun held meetings. Supposedly, it’s a good alternative to the imperial palace because all of the art and architecture are very similar.

Next we moved to a temple designated as world heritage site. There are only a few in Kyoto so it’s pretty easy to find.

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