Japan, days 1 to 2

Exhausting.

That’s the only thing I can say about being in Japan. We left most of the planning to Neon to do, so she’s been taking us on a whirlwind tour of all the different shrines and temples in Kyoto.

BUTTTT I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start on the day we flew. There were four of us on this trip: Me, Wind, Neon and Priest. I like AirAsia’s timing. They’re notorious for leaving late, but they arrive much earlier than expected. We left about 20 minutes later than mentioned but we arrived in Japan around 20 minutes earlier.

At the end of the day it didn’t really mattered because when we left the plane was about the same time we had expected to land in Japan anyway. :P There were also quite a few flights coming into Japan that night through Haneda, so we ended up leaving only at 10.30pm, which means we rushed to grab the last train.

Which led us to discover Deru, luggage bags and airports don’t really mix. She grabbed my bag and left hers in the airport. Lucky grabbing it was a rather quick process. :P

We made our way to Anne Hostel in Asakusabashi, where Deru revealed that the combini (convenience stores) goodness was true; we bought our dinners there and headed off to find Anne Hostel.

Summary of Anne Hostel cause I am going to be posting a longer review on TripAdvisor later: It’s cheap, but strict. Facilities are awesome though.

That night, deru bunked over. It was also the same night we discovered the Sock Monster. Three of us lost our socks at one point or other during the night. We found the missing parts… eventually.

The next day, after playing around with the vending machines (Wind found a machine which sold corn soup with potato in a can. It was delicious!) we headed off for Kyoto. The Shinkansen was awesome, and eerily accurate. They were also very efficient.

Once we checked into Hostel Mundo (cheap, warm and friendly, though facilities are a bit limited), we set off to exploring Kyoto. Neon suggested we visit a temple first and we ended up at Yasaka Shrine and Maruyama Park. They were closing and the winds were chilly but I managed to pay my respects to Inari. :D

We managed to hit Gion and found Gion Corner. However, the cultural show we wanted to see had performances only at 6pm and 7pm, so we decided to come by the next day. Instead, we headed back to the place where we had taken the first bus to have some ramen.

I feel compelled to mention that the ramen served was FLAMING RAMEN. And I ate my veggies. More on that tomorrow. I am exhausted and I want to sleep. Nite nite all!

Original entry as appearing at Ink to Screen.