I have a Dream List comprised of things to do before ….
Visiting Kyoto can now be crossed off the list. Why Kyoto? It was the ancient capital of Japan and has retained much of its history unlike Tokyo.

We landed in Osaka. We stepped off the plane and once outside, you get blasted. After typhoon season is over, you get hot temperatures and high humidity for all of July and August. 30-40c.

You can tell that you are in a real foreign country when you are desparately searching for any English signage. Being in Hong Kong wasn’t nearly as bad because it was a British Colony so that there was lots of English. But here in Osaka airport, we had to figure out the train routes to get us to Kyoto. We bought a Kansai Rail pass which gives us 3 days unlimited travel between Osaka, Kobe, Nara on trains, subways and buses. Its a great deal.

So we got the train from Osaka to Kyoto. It should have been 2 hours but due to our inexperience much longer since we should have transferred from train to train not train to subway to subway. IF you think Toronto’s subway map is confusing, its peanuts compared to any Japanese city.

So we get into Kyoto and try to get to our hotel. What David thought was a 15 min walk from the subway station was once again longer walk since the map he had wasnt to scale.

We got off the subway station and got a bit of a local parade. It is the Matusi festival – giving thanks to the local deity for a good harvest’, lots of people walking in white costumes and drumming. Another aspects of Kyoto life – constant whining of cicadas. They are really noisy. Plums trees.

It a drive on the left hand side country and people also ride the bikes on the sidewalk. You have to remember watch traffic coming from the other direction.

We finally get to Kyoto Comfort Inn at 8:40pm after a 5 trip to Vancovuer, a 4 hour layover in Vancouver and a 10.5 hour flight to Osaka, 3 hours to Kyoto. The hotel clerk said we looked tired and yes we were.

Filed under: Travel