Kyoto Expedition - begin deconstruction

My flight was the following day after Everland and I hadn't really finished packing. In part because I was using some of the things I was going to pack and in part because I confirmed what I knew about travel-sickness medications.

The box says one every four hours. Four hour is not enough time for the stuff to flush out of your system and it acts as an efficient sleeping agent instead. :C So I spend the entire tripping dozing off and waking suddenly. Yays~

Anyway, Japan. First of all, it's true. Japan is horrendously expensive. If you're not prepared for the rates you'll get a horrible fright. I knew this and still had a 'how much?!!' moment within the first day. I'm very glad I was careful to save my money though. My biggest problem was that I've been working in KRW since May so I kept having to kick myself everytime I went to spend money.

Aside from this facet, which made the Cavanwoman in me crawl, I really enjoyed myself. Kyoto is a nice city and very interesting. Yes, like  a great many other places it is blatantly westernised but it is still foreign at its core. The approach, the design, the map itself feels like it has been layered over an ancient city.

Kyoto is famously the historic capital of Japan. (Although that did reside in Nara for a time) and was considered so important that it directly led to Edo being renamed 'East Kyoto' (To-kyo)
Of course, all history and culture I reference (and flail over) is being grossly simplified so feel free to skip it if you do.

I had the same tour guide for both days of being bussed around to significant sites and she pointed out the electrical wires. The landscape is simply swarming  with electrical wires between buildings knotting them up like a web. There are simply so many that it is somewhat jarring when you glance up and notice the sheer quantity within a restricted space. This is because it is nigh-on impossible to bury electrical wires in any part of the city. When they start digging they invariably run into something that has the archaeological teams called in post-haste. One of the hazards of being a truly ancient city I suppose.

Now I arrived Friday and didn't really do anything other than find my hostel. (By the way, bus from the airport - financially painful but I wasn't in the mood to wrestling with the rail system in a foreign country after getting off the airplane). So Saturday, I had an all day tour around Kyoto and Sunday was for Nara.

Monday was for meandering around the city, which I did while discovering how uncomfortable my shoes were.

I'll admit while I was there I spent as little time as possible in the hostel itself, leaving very early and returning only when it got dark, but I would recommend it to any who would head out that way. Personally, I was vastly amused by the fact that I had to remove by shoes when I entered, this very modern westernised hostel, and was glad I'd worn sandals.