I had a fun morning in which I bought scissors at the 100 Yen store across the street and chopped off my hair. I had had a bad haircut after I broke my arm and I did a double down on it just before I left. It wasn’t working out so well, hence the scissors. After that, I spent a bit of time at a cafe called B Sugar, which I’m going back to today. When you buy a dish or pastry there, you get 90 minutes of free drinks while you relax in their swanky upstairs lounge. See the images below. I felt like I’d been invited to someone’s fancy brunch. I ordered what I thought was going to be the Insta-famous fluffy Japanese pancakes. Not so. This was lovely, but it was more like a round of cake between two crispy cookies, served with whipped cream and strawberries.
Then I went to the gleaming mall under the Kyoto Station. There’s a gleaming mall under every big station. I bought a Columbia daypack. I tried my best to pack light and well for this trip but I made a mistake in this situation. I didn’t bring one of the numerous daypacks I have at home because I brought a bigger, hiking backpack for my carry-on. I needed it for my computer, 6 weeks of meds, and other essentials that I can’t risk being checked. My other bag is only a carry-on so I couldn’t bring just a small backpack. Anyyyyyyhooooowwwww, I just spent $60 on something I already have at home. But with 4 weeks left of my trip, I needed something other than the sling bag, which I love for cash, my train ticket, my phone, reading glasses, and my little to-do lists. BTW, I’m down to one pair of reading glasses. Three other pairs have already bitten the dust. Crushed, stepped on, and the last one had the little screw fall out and that’s that.
So, I went to Nara. It was a land speed record. It was a 30-minute trip by train from Kyoto, I spent 30 minutes eating delicious udon noodle soup with my first tempura anything, this time a crispy shrimp. Then I hustled up to see the main temple and conveniently, the tame deer were there too and I didn’t have to go to the park to see them. I wasn’t alone in wanting to leave on the 13:37 Express and by the time I fast-walked ever closer to the station, there was a small platoon of tourists high-tailing it to the train. The doors closed behind me and my new backpack and I was on my way back to Kyoto because, for the third time in three days, I needed to go back to Saga Arishiyama. It is a nice place but three times is too many and there are definitely too many tourists there.
I had booked a ticket at the Fukuda Art Museum (shoutout to Loree for tipping me off to that in one of the articles she sent about Kyoto). The museum was absolutely wonderful. Beautiful lines, stunning art, and a pleasant cafe overlooking the river and popular bridge. I had a glass of iced Earl Grey tea and practiced taking pictures in portrait mode of it with the river as a backdrop. My new bob haircut gave me a little more confidence hanging with the very well-dressed and coifed Japanese ladies all about me.
Then I made my way across the little town, dodging matcha ice-cream-eating families and influencers taking pictures in kimonos to the top of the Romantic Train Ride along the winding river. I got a distinct whiff of a train ride I took in Alaska once, Wooden seats, rushing river, and cloudy weather. It was uncanny. I chatted with two delightful young Taiwanese ladies who JUST FINISHED THEIR MASTERS AT USC IN MAY! Sound familiar? Honestly, how small is this world? They described their first experiences of being free of their tiger moms there in LA. They screamed with delight to be able to party and barely study and get their degrees. Then they picked up an English teaching credential at UCSD. I had once been enrolled in that program too. They do marketing in Taipei.
So, then the rain was starting to fall and I got back to Kyoto, managing the subway like a pro, and dropped into Que Pasa and had a very decent burrito, because a girl can only eat so many bowls of ramen.
I fell asleep at 8:30 pm and have now been up since 5 am, editing photos for this blog and booking my scuba diving in Okinawa with a company run by former US Marines stationed in Okinawa. I have this on my list today: laundry because I leave for a short trip to Hiroshima tomorrow and it was pretty easy to do here, return a tee shirt at Uniqlo, see if the Apple store can fix my phone (I tried to open my SIM slot with an earring), and walk the Philosopher’s Walk along the canal. That’s all before my 4 pm massage. And I think I’ll stand in line at the ramen shop for dinner near my hotel. Overall, prices are very reasonable here. The burrito was $700 yen which is $5.30. More places take credit cards here than in Mt. Fuji, which is convenient.
The grocery store next to my hotel, Fresa, has a great checkout system. You set your groceries down and they get rung up by a friendly clerk. You bag them up and he or she bows and sends you to one of three points of sale terminals. It takes cash or a card and you’re on your way. The clerk never handles the money and the checkout process is speedy for those in the know, and less speedy for folks like me, still staring at the screen and wondering what to do. There are checkout kiosks for just about everything, even checking out of your hotel. And the kiosks can be changed with a push of a button to speak English, so it’s actually a godsend.
Explaining the photos below… There’s a nicely dressed young lady in chunky boots and very cool-looking shorts with shears over them. But life on the platform is illustrated there too. No seats so flexible people are in an Asian squat to rest. BTW, I have used two Japanese-style toilets. The line was too long to wait for a Western-style toilet. I can get down there, but getting back up with my sore knees is almost impossible. And one time, my hotel key card in my pocket was caught just the wrong way so that was particularly painful.
Okay, back to the pictures. All of them look dull, despite me messing around with them on my phone and in Photoshop. It was just a cloudy day and nothing seems to fix that. It was the first day without my puffy vest and I wasn’t cold once. The power pole near my hotel looks like Peru or Mexico, not because anyone is stealing the electricity here, just that there are a lot of people here. The romantic, scenic train ride went by so quickly and I know the photos are blurry but I’m calling it artful. In the final picture, the weatherman uses a charming little pointer to show us that it’s going to be a miserable day on Friday and it is. Inexplicably, while there are two people reading the news, there are three people seated to the side at small round tables, taking notes and commenting back to the newscasters about various things. All in Japanese, of course, so I have no idea what they are saying. I’ll try to get a picture of that setup tonight.
Nara, annoyed little deer, more temples, lots of trains
