Tuesday, August 22, A very hot day in Kyoto.

Hey, it looks like I'm gonna keep word. This is my second update is as many days. Ok, so I don't type them on the same day as it happened, but it still looks that way :).

So what did we do today? If you check the title you'll see we went to Kyoto. It's pretty difficult to explain where Kyoto is relative to Osaka and Kyoto. So I'll see if I can dig up a map of Honshu (the main island of Japan). To give some idea of the distances: Tokyo lies on the south-east part of Honshu, Osaka is about 360 kilometres west and slightly to the north and Kyoto is about 40 kilometres north-east of Osaka.

And now back to the program. We were supposed to be at Shin-Osaka station at 11 o'clock, but we overslept a little bit. And to make matters even worse, Nafis had to shave his head. He hadn't done that in about 3 days and if he didn't do it today he'd have a hell of a time doing it without a electric shaver. So Reggy went ahead of us to Shin-Osaka to meet Mika. Nafis and I left the guest house about a quarter past eleven. Luckily for us we were in no hurry to catch the train to Kyoto.

The whether was already terrible. My guess us that us was about 38 degrees Celsius and that damn yellow round thing in the sky had no intention to duck under some clouds. So I already sweated before I even got to Shin-Osaka station. Boy am I glad they have air-conditioning in all the trains here. With the sun on the windows and now way of opening those same windows it could be hell in a train. But with air-conditioning doable.

We were supposed to meet a friend of Mika's somewhere in Kyoto. Her name is Satoko and she is about the same age as Mika, 21 years old. We do have some pictures of the girls, so when we have the pictures of today up you can check out what she looks like. Not quite my taste, but not ugly either. So as we arrived at one of the early Kyoto stations we got off the train and waited for Stoke to arrive. She was also running a little late, so the little delay by Nafis went unnoticed. As we waited for Satoko, we (the guys) all bought a fan. Not one of those electrical things of course, we don't come equipped with power outlets :). No, Reggy bought a standard none foldable model, and Nafis and I bought one of those foldable models. When you have one of these things you quite understand why almost every Japanese woman has one. The don't make the air cooler, but the move quite the amount of air so that you kind of feel less hot. Which is very welcome for us people who are not used to this whether.

After about 15 minutes Satoko finally arrived at the designated spot. We shook hands and exchanged some kind smiles and then the ladies had to go get some cash. Guess they thought we were gonna spend extreme amounts of money or something like that :). We tried to get some cash to because the stash we had up to now was getting critically low at the moment. Sure we can probably finish the day on our current stash, but tomorrow cloud turn out to be a major problem (especially for Nafis). Unfortunately for us the banks in Kyoto don't accept European bankcards, only Japanese and Visa credit cards. We didn't want to use up our CC credit so we opted to try a Citibank ATM in Osaka. So now the girls are loaded and we're almost broke as jokes (is that a correct expression?).

Now I'm gonna give some very slim information about Kyoto. Kyoto is like what an Englishman is to an American. Kyoto is one of the more formal cities in Japan. The people tend to be more polite in their pronunciation, and the city still has a lot of the old building in quite a good state. The first place we went after the girls got the dough is a little old park with some old buildings. I also took some pictures of those buildings and their interior so you can have a look at old Japan. It's beautiful in it's own simplicity, well that is that I like this style, you night not like it at all.

When we left the park we walked about 5 kilometres to the Kyoto Studio Park. Now what the hell is that you ask yourself now. Well I did the same at that moment :). It turns out Kyoto Studio Park is kind of an amusement park where they show you live in the past big Japanese ages. Just like you have the middle ages and the industrial age in Europe you have the Edo age and some more ages (damn if I knew which ones though. My brain is fried by too much sun at the moment). So we saw a lot of different interior decoration and clothing styles. I think we have some pictures of that as well.

But the most beautiful part of Kyoto Studio Park is the ninja show. We entered the show while it had already started, but that didn't make it less entertaining. You really had to be there to believe it. The acting was very good indeed, the sound affect were amazing, the lighting stunning and the atmosphere very touching. Hmmm does this sound a bit dramatic? Hehe, that was the idea :). But to be honest, the show was quite entertaining. But you need a guy like Nafis to explain the finer details, so I hope he'll do a more thorough explanation about what we saw there.

In all it took us about 3 hours to check out Kyoto Studio Park, and it was worth all the pennies (or rather yen) we paid for it. After leaving the studio we took the bus so centre Kyoto. At this moment it was about the hottest part of the day and I dreaded the bus ride even more than having to judo with Alex (uhm don't ask). But as I should have know, the bus is air-conditioned (of course) and I even slept some in the bus. The ride took about three quarters of an hour to get to the centre of Kyoto. There we immediately went to the nearest Starbucks Coffee shop to grab one of those delicious "Frappacinno". And after that we checked out town, checked some stores, bought some Japanese learning books and also checked some J-pop CD's. I mean to buy one of those, so I asked the girls about the groups and artists. Kinda funny listening to Japanese music. It sounds so much European/American but you just don't understand anything about what they are singing :).

So now it was time to get back to Osaka. We took the train back to the first Kyoto station and underway Satoko checkout. Real nice girl, just a little big silent. When we arrived at our stop we quickly went to some shops to buy some electric fans for the bedroom (remember I told you it's very hot in there?), and some towels. The other guys didn't pack a towel so we really had to get one for them or else they cannot dry themselves after showering. After we had bought everything we needed, we took the JR train back to Osaka. Mika left us about 4 stops before Shin-Osaka station as it was here stop. So we waved and smiled again (we tend to do that a lot here in Japan, I kinda wonder why) and rode the train for the last few stops.

When we arrived at the guest house, everyone was already inside and we had a little chat with the other guys. But we left soon after that cause we still had to eat so we left pretty quickly to grab a bite. But that turned out to be a little more complicated than just going out for a quick bite…..

First we went to a weird kinda store Willi told us about. It's kind of a small department store. They sell all kinds of stuff. Food, DVD players, chopsticks, animal food, chairs, televisions, water cookers, batteries, you name it and they probably sell it. After we check this place out, we went in search of an ATM (pin machine) to replenish our stash o cash (hey, this sounds kinda flex) . But that didn't go as planned. We found nothing at all. So we decided to go to Osaka Station in search of our holy ATM.

Instead of an ATM we found a Kinko's shop. Which is almost worth the same of course. Because without Kinko's we couldn't keep this site up to date (okay, as up to date as possible). So read our mail and Nafis updated the site with a little text which you all probably already read a few days ago. While Nafis was updating the website I check the Japanese Citibank site for ATM's in the Osaka area, and luckily for us there are some located in Osaka. I quickly printed the information about the ATM's so that we could not get lost finding them.

In a moment of shear brilliance we decided to go to the nearest Citibank ATM to get some much needed cash (Nafis was down to his last 1000 Yen note). This was the worst decision we made up till now. It turned out there was no Citibank ATM at the location the website pointed us. And we found that out after a 30 minute walk, 30 minutes of searching and 10 minutes of cursing. We barely caught the last subway to Osaka station and after that the all but last train back to Shin-Osaka Station. And boy (girl) were we tired. But we still had nothing to eat at that moment, and it was already about 1 o'clock in the morning. We decided to go to Yoshinoya (a 24 hours Japanese fast food chain) to grab a that quick bite we promised our selves. And we finally made it home.

These are the days I really want to avoid the coming 2 weeks in Osaka.

By the way, I hope you can forgive my writing. I keep talking in both past tense and current tense while it should be past tense. Maybe when that damn sun stops shining and the temperature drop to Dutch standard my head will finally be all clear and my writing will be a bit better.

Signing off,

DaGun