Day the Second

My second day in Japan had upsides and downsides.

Upside was the first half or so. Got up early, but not way early, so I walked around the area around Juyoh Hotel, which is an awesome place by the way, took a bunch of pictures. The shaved ice and flea market folk were a great touch. The most amusing part was the old guy who said I should marry his daughter and take her back to the US with me.

I then went to Saitama with the intention of hitting up Melon Books. I got there really early, so I spent an hour or two just wandering about a little and people watched. That was fun. I never actually got to Melon Books because I ran into a used book store, and used book stores are the perfect place to spend way too much money. I could easily have dropped several hundred dollars within 15 minutes of walking into the place, but then I’d have to carry around an insane amount of book weight for the next two weeks everywhere I went.

After that I hit up a ramen stall while waiting for my Shinkansen (Bullet Train) ride out to Kyoto. Both of those were cool.

However, the day took a bad turn when I arrived in Kyoto.

I couldn’t find the hotel I booked. The instructions I got looked quite simple, so I didn’t bother going to Google Maps. However, upon following the instructions I ended up not finding the hotel. I spent 3 hours carrying around my not-so-light luggage trying to find the place. Eventually I gave up because I was too tired, too exhuasted, and my shoulders were killing me. What really irked me was that the booking had said, quite clearly, that if you failed to show you would still be charged for the first night. I hadn’t worried since I knew I was going to be there. Botheration.

I returned to downtown Kyoto and grabbed a room at a hotel there. 6500 yen. More than I wanted, but still easily coverable. Nice ‘ritzy’ place, so it was comfortable for my aches and pains.

A few other things I didn’t note in my post yesterday involving odd differences between Japan and the US. Cellphones. Now, given that everyone and their dog has a cellphone in Japan, you’d think their cellphone design would be way ahead of the US. Nope. Ther phones are huge, clunky, and ugly. They are all very square and their flip tops circle around a lump that sits on top the button block. It’s just ugly.

Cigarette vending machines are everywhere. While supposedly you have to be 20 to buy cigarettes and booze in Japan, the cigarettes are as hard to get as a can of soda or some bottled water. And they are like 300 yen a pack. Out of a vending machine. That’s about 2.50 in US dollars. I also saw one vending machine serving out beer.

Something that’ll definitely take some time to get used to is the money trays. When you purchase something you put your money, or whatever you are using for purchasing stuff, in a tray and then the cashier picksup the tray, finished the transaction, puts the remaining money back on the tray, and hands you the tray. Even if you are two feet apart. You don’t hand the money directly to the cashier, you use the tray. The only place I’ve been where they didn’t have the tray was Juyoh. But Juyoh’s a hotel that specifically caters to backpackers.

Here’s the cigarette vending machine. I haven’t seen one of these outside a bar for a very, very long time. Didn’t get a picture of the beer one, but I was really tired by then.

This is a huge road. One of the biggest I saw in Tokyo outside of the major downtown area. It’s about as wide as Kenosha in Walworth. And it’s 4 lanes plus some extra space on the side. Much busier than Kenosha Street as well.

This is also a rather large road. It’s easy to see how big it is in this one, though.

Here’s a good example of skinny buildings.

Minivan. Sadly I don’t have anything to compare it to, since it is also rather small and skinny.

Evangelion Doritos, anyone?

This wall was painted from around 18:00-20:00 my first day in Japan. Ugly, but the guy was pretty skilled to get it done so fast and so neatly.

Shops love having great, huge signs outside their building. Since there’s no room outside, they just stick ‘em on the roof. Also, this is not a two story McDs, but a four story McDs.

This was just weird, so while chilling my heels for a while, I snapped a picture.

It’s Pikachu! This and all following pictures are out the Shinkansen window.

And this is how tightly packed it is in small town Japan where they have just tons of space.