kickin' it in kyoto

So, I've spent the past couple of days in Kyoto - Japan's cultural capital. It is awesome. It's the Japan of my dreams - with small back alleys, geisha, and more than enough temples and shrines (something like 2000).

I arrived late Saturday night after work - about 11:15pm. I exited the ginormous train station on the wrong side so I just decided to hail a taxi to my guest house (Budget Inn). Once in the taxi, we (the taxi driver and I) figured out he didn't know where my place was so he promptly dropped me off at the police station. So, after struggling with all sorts of city maps (in Japanese) with two very sweet Japanese-only policemen, one of them thought he knew where it was so he walked me there. Very cute. Since I arrived so late, my guest house left the key for me in the mailbox. So, I let myself into the pitch black co-ed room - where 3 or 4 sleeping travelers were and found my bunk.

Anyway, on Sunday, I woke up pretty early to make it in time to my full-day Kyoto bus tour. We visited 8 major Kyoto sites and had a buffet lunch in the middle. It was definitely a nice introduction to the city. Our English-speaking tour guides were so cute.

Our first stop was Nijo-jo (a castle), where I ran into Stephanie - it was a really odd coincidence. I knew she was going to be in Kyoto, but we weren't going to meet up until that evening for dinner since I had already reserved my bus tour. Anyway, I just walked around the corner and there she was. So, I will post our reenactment picture later.

I'm running out of minutes on my guest house computer, so I will have to finish this post later. In any case, Kyoto is great - I love it and have seen some amazing things - which I will post pics of later.