Kyoto Excursion Part the First

So I just uploaded all the pictures from the trip. There are over four hundred new pictures. That is quite a bit of pictures, and I do not feel very much like going through all of them in order to post examples like I normally do. They are not difficult to navigate on a connection faster than mine, so if you read the blog posts first and then go through the pictures you should be able to realize what I'm talking about.

So here goes.

The trip began at about 5pm. The ferry does not leave until 6:50, but for some reason I got confused and panicky and ended up leaving an hour earlier than I intended to. This led to me walking around bored, drinking some ginger ale, and taking photos of the dock. Also looking at some tourist maps which show that there actually are things to do in Beppu, they are just on the outskirts of town and expensive to get to. Apparently we have a cave tour on one of the surrounding mountains, so that'd be kinda cool. Also had enough time to realize that I forgot my shampoo, my comb, and my Lord of Vermillion playing cards so... that sucked.

Anyways, the ferry was about the same as last time. Set myself up in my room, read a bit, ate dinner, you know, nothing special.

Oh, except for the fact that the most beautiful girl I've seen since coming to Japan was working on the ferry. I should have made progress towards making her my wife, but it apparently was just not fated. So I instead went back to my room and ate some ice cream, defeated before I could begin.

I took the first train down to Osaka and got some dirty looks from an old man who reminded me of a dragon. I'm guessing it was the first train out full of workers, and this guy didn't like getting crammed in somewhere with a dirty, unkempt foreigner. Actually, I was more observant about these things this trip, and people tend to stare at the foreigners in Osaka. Probably a bit in Kyoto too, but I was with Jason most of the time so I was a bit distracted by conversation. But I did see some other tourists walkig around when I was sitting in restaurants and such, and people just stared at them as they walked past. It is really awkward.

I set up my reservation for Sunday night in the hostel, and then played some arcade games and stopped in at La La to get me some Indian food that I love so much. On the way I walked around a bit, saw a backpack I wanted to buy before I left (that I forgot to pick up) and saw some cool restaurant statues and displays. Then I got lost.

My iPhone is truly not that reliable. Well, in a way it is. It gives you the most efficient, both costwise and timewise, way to get somewhere. So my iphone kept trying to lead me to an invisible bus stop that would carry me to the edge of Osaka to take another form of transportation from there to Osaka. Really all I wanted to do was go to JR station and take a train from there, but the iPhone wouldn't help me with that. I tried finding a JR station using it as well, and it led me to a car rental building. Sonuva....

I eventually found it and headed out a full two hours after I had intended to. I was cranky and tired from the excursion so I hopped on the express sonic train. The normal express is the same price, but this is the luxury express, and that costs an extra ￥６００ to ride. In Oita I can sort of gaijin smash my way into riding it for free, but the guy working the Osaka-Kyoto line spoke fluent English and wasn't having any of that. Dang. So the whole ride ended up costing me about ￥1500, which was a bit more than I intended spending...

It took about 40 minutes to get a hold of Jason when I did arrive at the station, and then another hour or so before he showed up. That sucked, but I did walk around the station a bit, and they had some Osamu Tezuka displays everywhere. Osamu Tezuka is the man who brought animation to Japan , inspired by Disney, way back when. His stuff is respectable in Japan along the same lines, and everyone knows who he is. Except Jason, who has been living in Kyoto for four or five months now. Way to go, guy.

We ate at Subway and went back to his modest apartment which he wouldn't let me take a picture of. He's quite private. As revenge, I proceeded to dump my crap all over the place. Or rather in a corner near the door, because I am a good guest.

We watched Family Guy and got McDonald's, which wasn't so bad. Then we slept. He bought a futon for me to sleep on. That is ridiculous. I told him I was fine with the floor, but apparently he's too nice for his own good. This was a Japanese futon of course, which is really just a bedroll, but still. Crazy.

The next day we went to his school, the other Ritsumeikan, and I hung out there while he was in class. Mostly just went to the cafeteria, the bathroom, and the school store, then walked around a bit litening to music and read some One Piece. I don't think I even took any pictures of the place, but it looks like a crowded college campus. It's also pretty irritating to navigate and it's easy to accidentally wander off the grounds.

Afterwards we went to some zen rock garden and shrine. It's apparently a world heritage site (Japan has a grand amount of those for some reason) and it was really peaceful and pretty, so that was really nice. I blessed myself at every damn fountain we came across, and Jason made fun of me for being superstitious. We'll see who's laughing when he gets pulled through the cracks in the walls of his apartment because he didn't take protective measures against the demons.

The next day we went to 金貨維持(Kinkaiji), which is the Golden Temple. Unfortunately the shots I got of it aren't that great because I used my iPhone for it, but holy wow it is beautiful. It's a shiny golden temple as the name says, with a bird ornamentation on top. It's been rebuilt a few times I think, but it's still really nice to look at, and as always with the shrines it's surrounded by beautiful scenery and a lake/pond/moat with a heron in it (There is ALWAYS a heron in the lake. Always. There is no avoiding it.)

Jason then had classes, so I stayed in his apartment for a couple of hours pretending to be a lawyer, by which I mean I played a bunch of Phoenix Wright on my DS because there was nothing else to do. When he got back we went to the movies.

Star Trek. is. AWESOME. Go see it now if you haven't. I don't care if you don't like the tv series, the movie is just great. Anyone who disagrees just hates fun. The movie theater also has the option of caramel corn, which I went with, and I wish all movie theaters in the states followed this example. The food is also pretty cheap on top of that, and the tickets were cheaper than normal for some unexplained reason. We weren't late enough for the late show discount, and the student discount only brings it to ￥１５００, but it only cost us ￥１０００, so that was a nice treat.

After that we got dinner, wasted like an hour in a book store while Jason tried fruitlessly to find good novels to read and just ended up buying comic books (I however wrote down the name of an interesting looking novel series, 図書館革命(Library Wars) to try to find at a used book store, so go me.

Then we watched more Family Guy, and I forced him to watch other things in addition to that. He's convinced Family Guy is the highest form of entertainment, and refuses to see the truth (because it's actually Futurama. Honestly).

Then sleep again.

to be continued...