Kyoto x2

David almost drank my beer. Dammit.


Yesterday afternoon we got a late start but we went to Kyoto anyway, since the Hikari Shinkansen takes all of 13 minutes to get there. I'm not sure if it gets up to its full speed of 177MPH, but it's a pretty short trip, and the train is going awful fast... We wandered around, not really knowing too much about Kyoto, since most of the research that went into the trip centered on the Osaka and Tokyo/Akihabara locales. Still, we saw some really charming neighborhoods! But not before passing by the Kyoto Tower and the Higashi Hongan-ji temple.


We ate someplace, visited a little bookstore but I didn't see anything I liked. Then we visited another one, and I did find something I liked, the Azumanga Recycle book, which is awful funny, even though it's in Not-English and I will have to translate a lot of it. (I had read some of it online, but I never had the whole book.) Then we got back on the Shinkansen and went back home, after just a few hours of wandering to and fro.


Then we ate pizza with corn and mayonnaise in it.


Then the next day, we got much less of a late start, and we came right on back to Kyoto as, like I said, it's basically 13 minutes away by train (okay, more including subways and junk). I found directions to the Harley-Davidson of Kyoto dealership, although it was not exactly in downtown Kyoto. We had to take a train, and wend our way through some suuuuuper quaint neighborhoods with super narrow streets and tons of little tiny houses and shops and tiny little cars that pass for vans and so forth around here. I wouldn't mind more parts of America with little narrow streets, and only tiny little cars to service them, and for long-distance trips, you just take bullet-trains... Anyway, I digress. I got myself a t-shirt that, essentially, says H-D Kyoto Japan on it. Fifty bucks, but that's what I came here for! But... we found something else too.


I'd heard these existed, and here is the real deal. A panties vending machine. This vending machine sells sexy underwear. (I'd heard there used to be a vending machine somewhere in Tokyo that sold used panties, but this one only had fresh, new product.)


I wasn't the only one with a quest; David also found his-self a Toys R Us out someplace completely unrelated in Kyoto, and as much as I liked the adventure through the neighborhoods near the Harley dealership, the sidewalks and pathways between (presumably?) rice-fields and farmland to get to the main street that had the Toiza-Ra-Su was also amazingly bitchin'. The full moon was up, friendly quiet people silently hovered past on their bicycles in the uncanny light, and once in a while the Shinkansen would jet past. David found his mecca after an appropriate hijra, is what I am trying to say... He bought all sorts of things. We were joking that he would need a cart, but then—he really did need a cart. He put some items in his backpack, and another portion in Ed's bag, and then he carried the rest in a big plastic bag, so it became a real caravan.


We made our way back to Kyoto station where we found some sweet vistas and some victuals in the form of a sweet ass ramen shop. We got noodles drinks and gyoza and just generally ate well. There are roughly one billion restaurants there.

My feet are pretty sore from miles upon miles of walking and sightseeing; I don't mean to complain, however. It's my own fault, first for coming to Japan and being a tourist, and second for wearing my super stylish Oakley driving shoes which are basically snug little slippers with no padding at all. We're about to leave the apartment and go check out Osaka castle in the nighttime, it's pretty lit up and the moon is out too, so it should look spectacular. It's two blocks away, so this is no expedition. Our Japan Rail Passes ran out of use today, so from now on we have to pay for the trains we ride on a more individual basis; the only trains we'll really need to take from here on out will be the subways, and the train to the airport. Tomorrow is, for all intents and purposes, our last full day here in Japan.

Now, to finish that beer of mine...