Busy Buses and Incoherent Japanese

Saturday June 30th

We said goodbye to Tokyo, took care of checking out, shinkansen tickets and made our way to Kyoto. The time passed quickly and it was about mid-noon by the time we made it to Kyoto City. Kyoto was a whole new ballpark for me. Walking out of the station, I had no bearings on my directions, no clue where anything was, I knew nothing except for the few things I had read in books and on the internet to this point. The first thing we did was make our way to the hostel. It was an okay hostel, overly strict on the rules they put in place, but it was cheap so what can you expect? We unpacked our stuff and realized that for the next few nights we would be sleeping on a thin futon on top of a thin slab of wood...not what one would call comfortable...

On one of the top floors of Kyoto Station was a tourist information center that gave us a lot of helpful information. A map with all the temples and shrines and the buses to get there by, walking tours, and most importantly for that time was a map on where there are restaurants. Up in Miyagi where I live and also in Tokyo, the cities employ the train system to be the main form of transportation. However, Kyoto does it a bit different, the way to get around Kyoto wasn't trains but buses. I don't understand buses. When I lived in Australia, I had to get around via bus as well and it took me quite a while to get the hang of it, even when it was in English. Now, I had to figure it out in a new city in Japanese in a few days. Downtown Kyoto is the hotspot to be for restaurants, cafe's, shopping and bars. We hopped on the right bus and made our way there problem- free. There was a cute, covered street that consisted of little shops and restaurants. We chose a soba shop to eat dinner at and spent about 45 minutes planning out what we wanted to do the next day in Kyoto. Following dinner, we walked around with beers from the convenient store while Julie went souvenir shopping. We decided we should start heading back to get a start on our day when I realized I really don't understand the bus system at all. I figured well, we got off on this side of the street so we should probably be on the other side of the street. I really didn't know what I was doing at all, but going with what seemed logical. Then I came to the other problem in Kyoto that haunted me for the rest of the trip there. The Japanese. It's a completely different dialect from that I am used to. I am learning and speaking Japanese from the "sticks", from the backwards type of speaking, it'd be like going to America and learning to speak Southern English. I could barely understand people when I was asking them for help.

So, we ended up buying more beers and walking home. Those few more beers we ate pretty much did us in. There was a bus bench on the side of the road so we ended up stopping there and talking for quite a long time. A bus that would have taken us back to Kyoto station actually started to slow down for us but by the time I realized that bus number goes to Kyoto station it had pulled off. That was our one chance at getting to Kyoto station quicker. We continued on our trek back , stopping for an emergency "we've had too much to drink" toilet stop before continuing back on to our hostel. It was a fun night and set me up for the challenges I would face the next few days between understanding bus schedules and crazy Japanese I wasn't used to...