Japan Entry 9

Kyoto Day 2

Warning: Things get real different all of a sudden.

The windows in the hostel don't have shades, so the morning was pretty bright. Even so, I managed to keep myself in and out of sleep until 8:30 or so when most of the room had cleared out and on their ways (I'm fairly certain everyone but 2 guys checked out today, so maybe I'll meet some new people!), I rose quietly and grabbed clothing to take a shower. I heard that the hostel charges you 100 yen (roughly $1) to rent a towel for a day, but this seemed silly. I just used the shirt I had slept in, which was already dirty, to dry off. Sure, it's a bit odd, but it saved me a 100 that I put towards Street Fighter later.

Once clean, it was breakfast time, and I hit up the AM PM for some grub. Their options were pretty lame compared to the AM PM near my last hostel, even so I purchased a Cafe Au Lait (made by Boss Coffee, such a good name) and a sushi-style roll of Natto, a stinky bean Maiko had told me I absolutely had to try. It did, indeed, smell pretty strongly and the taste as well was quite forceful, but it wasn't altogether bad. Probably not something I'd eat all the time, but I might have it once in a while. The only part that would deter me from purchasing this again would be the gummy-like stickiness to it, and taking bites leave long strands of the fermented bean stuff going from your mouth to the roll. Couple that with eating in public, and you get a formula for some fairly embarrassing stuff.

Finishing up my meal, I hopped on a train to go check out a couple temples and the Manga Museum. I got to one place where a temple was supposed to be, but of course in true GT fashion, I took a wrong turn and got lost. Luckily, the way I'd picked turned out to be a gradual and beautiful climb up to a graveyard. The worker there seemed shocked to see me, but I didn't let that bother me. Making the trek back, I found where i was supposed to go and checked out the temple. To one side were gardens that cost money to get in and since I'd heard mixed reviews, I decided against the 5 dollar charge. So, too, did I not pay to get into the temple but just admired it from the outside with some other travellers. An older Japanese dude and I had a quick conversation, and although I couldn't make out most of what he was saying, it was still nice to chat and practice my Japanese.

Next stop was the Manga Museum which had a special exhibit on the history of toys and figurines, which I enjoyed looking at. A lot of the collection was from private donors, and some of the retro stuff (and really old Edo clay figures) were really cool. The mainstay exhibit on Manga was fairly interesting, though I've never been much for the Manga craze. There was, however, a small gallery of a really talented artist who goes by RM there and the sketches showing his work were fantastic.

The night before an Indian bloke had handed me an ad for the Maharaja Indian restaurant, and curry sounded really good at the time so I made the trip back to the station near my hostel and sat down for lunch. I ordered the B-option lunch that came with soup, a small salad, and curry with Nan instead of rice. While waiting for my order, I watched some of the bigscreen tv they had which showcased a lot of Indian music videos as well as ads inbetween, but the ads were a bit disturbing since 90% of them were for creams that would make your skin lighter. The sad mood this put in me in quickly cleared away as I got down to eating, and was done in record time before heading back out in search of shops and the famous a-cho arcade which I had just found out was in Kyoto. I got a gift for Shohei's parents, and stepped into the aracde. At the time of my arrival, it was pretty dead, so I played some SF against who was there until they left and went upstairs for some Border Break and VF (both I did poorly in) and resigned myself to watching people play other games for a while. I noticed someone playing MvC2 (a game they don't play here in Japan) but he turned out to be pretty scrubby and didn't rechallenge after I beat him. After an hour or so, the place really picked up and there was tons of skilled competition to play against. It feels pretty good to beat Japanese players.

Afterwards, I visited Wonder Tower for a goodbye session of Border Break with the regulars there, and then back to the hostel. I stopped for dinner at a Spanish bar and ordered a draft beer and some Paella, which was a fairly small portion for 500 yen, but I didn't care. The bartender there greeted me and received my order in Spanish, so I asked him a couple things in Spanish as well, and he hastily told me he didn't actually know the language. We both had a laugh, and spoke a hybrid spanish/Japanese to each other since he seemed insistent on answering in Spanish when he could. He told me that there probably wouldn't be any place to get a Japanese baseball cap here so I suppose I'll just have to wait until Tokyo.

Back at the hostel, the new blood has arrived and I've met the new roomies. A guy from Germany who will be in Japan for 6 weeks, and a girl from Michigan who has just finished teaching in Korea for 2 years. How wonderful.

GT