Kyoto, day sort of one
Where to start, we took the new dream bus from shinjuku last night at 10 30 pm. The bus situation in tokyo is well...a lot different from the trains. They aren't on time or really well organized. In fact, the station for the bus was really hard to find. Barely any of the directions were in english but thanks to my crappy Japanese we figured it out. So we get on this bus about 20 minutes late. The bus is 3 persons wide, and each person has a seperate seat so lots of room I thought. We were all seated in the front of the bus so it felt like we were the welcome squad for the bus riders. Rachel sat in the very front middle seat and it looked like a roller coaster ride because she had a bar to hold onto. So after a short wait, we get on our way. In typical Japanese fashion, there is cute music and an introduction saying things like welcome on the bus have a good ride and some of the rules of the bus, about 10 minutes long. Then all they said in english was (in really slow english) "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the new dream bus from shinjuku station to Kyoto station. Please fasten your seatbelts". After about an hour the bus heats up quite a lot thanks to the heater below each of our seats. I mean boiling your feet hot. Then we stopped at a Japanese truck stop. It was so neat and tidy with a cute little convienience store there. After about an hour more of the train heating up, Erin asks me very desperately to ask the driver to turn off the heat. So after a while of trying to figure out how it would be appropriate to ask the driver (there was a sign saying that because of terrorists and bus jackers, please do not wait near the driver) but I finally did and we had a very Japanese conversation and they stopped baking us. We ended up getting there about 6:10 am this morning. And since no places were open, we sat around and attempted to plan out a day.
More funny things about the bus though, each of the seats had individual reading lights. But they were located at about your knee and were pretty much impossible to read by. I was traveling with all girls and often erupted in late night laughter that I think disturbed the other passengers. For about 2-3 hours after we left tokyo the bus would stop at random stops and open the door and then go. We thought it might be tolls, but when I looked outside the bus there was no toll station around. Pretty sketch. At the bottom of our seat we had a little stool like thing attached to the floor that was really unneccesary and made things kind of uncomfortable.
Onto the day. First we got some coffee at a local chain place here. I immediately noticed the size of the cafe. Pretty much the size of what I would expect a cafe to be. Not incredibly small and cramped. I could tell I was out of Tokyo. Along the day I noticed lots of things that were a lot bigger than tokyo sized. After the cafe we went to Toji temple. A nice little temple. Than we wandered around and decided we should probably try to check into our hostel since we weren't sure where it was. So we boarded the JR train to the station nearest our hostel. (JR, Japan Railways, is one of the big train companies here). Let's just say kyoto trains are a bit different from Tokyo trains. Even though they do have a few rails here, there aren't as many trains that run an hour as Tokyo. In Tokyo there is normally a train at least every 5 minutes, usually sooner. But here it is more like every 20 minutes. So after waiting and finally getting to our stop, we figure out how to get to the hostel. The hostel website had claimed they spoke english, lies. But I could understand quite fine anyway, but still.
After finding the hostel, Rachel and Hollie wanted to be made up like Maiko. Maiko is like an apprentince to Geisha. Geisha being the lady of the arts, not a prostitute like some think. It ended up taking them like 2 hours so I wandered around Gion for a bit. There is a big river next to Gion so I was walking down there and I saw like 15 Hawks all flying about. And there were two kids trying to feed them and the hawks were just diving down and scaring the kids. The only wild life in Tokyo is ravens so this was exciting.
After they got done with the Maiko stuff, we had to go back to the hostel to figure out where exactly we were staying. Because we had chekced in early.We were in this random building that you take the elevator to the fifth floor and here you are. There are just a lot of bunk beds in here and a big kitchen and showers and stuff. I'm typing this this morning and there aer only like 4-5 other guys here and about 30 Japanese girls. Quite the interesting place.
So then long story short, we met some people. Went to dinner. Then went to this English pub. This really creepy old Japanese buisnessman wouldn't leave me alone. He kept on offering to buy me drinks. Creepy. Came back to the hostel. And here I am.
More funny things about the bus though, each of the seats had individual reading lights. But they were located at about your knee and were pretty much impossible to read by. I was traveling with all girls and often erupted in late night laughter that I think disturbed the other passengers. For about 2-3 hours after we left tokyo the bus would stop at random stops and open the door and then go. We thought it might be tolls, but when I looked outside the bus there was no toll station around. Pretty sketch. At the bottom of our seat we had a little stool like thing attached to the floor that was really unneccesary and made things kind of uncomfortable.
Onto the day. First we got some coffee at a local chain place here. I immediately noticed the size of the cafe. Pretty much the size of what I would expect a cafe to be. Not incredibly small and cramped. I could tell I was out of Tokyo. Along the day I noticed lots of things that were a lot bigger than tokyo sized. After the cafe we went to Toji temple. A nice little temple. Than we wandered around and decided we should probably try to check into our hostel since we weren't sure where it was. So we boarded the JR train to the station nearest our hostel. (JR, Japan Railways, is one of the big train companies here). Let's just say kyoto trains are a bit different from Tokyo trains. Even though they do have a few rails here, there aren't as many trains that run an hour as Tokyo. In Tokyo there is normally a train at least every 5 minutes, usually sooner. But here it is more like every 20 minutes. So after waiting and finally getting to our stop, we figure out how to get to the hostel. The hostel website had claimed they spoke english, lies. But I could understand quite fine anyway, but still.
After finding the hostel, Rachel and Hollie wanted to be made up like Maiko. Maiko is like an apprentince to Geisha. Geisha being the lady of the arts, not a prostitute like some think. It ended up taking them like 2 hours so I wandered around Gion for a bit. There is a big river next to Gion so I was walking down there and I saw like 15 Hawks all flying about. And there were two kids trying to feed them and the hawks were just diving down and scaring the kids. The only wild life in Tokyo is ravens so this was exciting.
After they got done with the Maiko stuff, we had to go back to the hostel to figure out where exactly we were staying. Because we had chekced in early.We were in this random building that you take the elevator to the fifth floor and here you are. There are just a lot of bunk beds in here and a big kitchen and showers and stuff. I'm typing this this morning and there aer only like 4-5 other guys here and about 30 Japanese girls. Quite the interesting place.
So then long story short, we met some people. Went to dinner. Then went to this English pub. This really creepy old Japanese buisnessman wouldn't leave me alone. He kept on offering to buy me drinks. Creepy. Came back to the hostel. And here I am.
posted by Scot @ 08:43
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