| June 11, 2001
Monday (sunny in Kyoto)
Today we leave Tokyo
again to go to Kyoto. We were all excited to ride the bullet
train. I bought a bento too. Is
it me, or 90% of this journal is about food and games.
We all sat down and was ready to go when a man said we were in his
seat. So we showed our tickets to him and he pointed out that our
ticket was for yesterday's train!!! So we had to go exchange for the
right tickets (good thing public transportations in Japan usually come
very frequently) The bullet train wasn't all that impressive though,
it didn't feel especially fast at all. (yeah, yeah, I know you can
only feel acceleration and not velocity) As
Pattey would say, DORK!!! There
were a group of female students sitting behind us (very chatty) My
bro and Andy found it quite annoying. I was ok w/ it (I like
listening to Japanese language, it's a very cute language) I'm
sure the fact that they were female students helped, eh?
We bought many bento (boxed lunch). I like the sushi one the best
(bento sushi are made in molds, shaped kinda rectangular).
 |
Our bullet train pass |
It seems that I
have stopped writing at this point =( even thought there's still
like 3 more days to go!!! Dammit, I'm so frigging lazy. Thus,
I will attempt to reconstruct the rest of my trip from memory. I'm
sure you'll understand if there's not much details about anything since
it's been 7 months!!!
We went to Osaka
after we checked into our hotel at Kyoto. Osaka is famous for its
yummy food. Tacoyaki (octopus filled baked good), okonomiyaki (kinda
like a pancake w/ lots of stuff in it), etc. We didn't end up eating
much of anything at Osaka though =( Mainly cuz we didn't know where
to go. When we first got there, we ate at this lil restaurant inside
the shopping streets, wasn't that great. We then went to take a ride
on that famous giant Ferris wheel. (it's more for like couples and
stuff) We did get a very nice view on top of city
though.
We then went to
Joypolis, a gigantic chain store for video games. (Closet thing I
can think of is Metreon) It's filled w/ all kinds of video games as
well as rides. Some interesting games included the firefighting game
(you hold this huge hose that sprays water to put out water, not real
water though obviously) There were also a truck driving game.
Also, there's a fishing game where you pull on this fishing rod. We
didn't go on any of the rides though as they cost more. I think the
rides included Jurassic Park among other things.
We got lost
horribly agn trying to find restaurants. Andy even used his palm
pilots for people to draw directions for us. But in any case, Andy
and my bro weren't very much interested in Osaka, so we left rather
quickly.
We went to Kobe trying
to find a good steak house since Kobe is famous for it. However, it
seems that we've been misinformed again =( According to Andy's
friend who was born in Kobe, Kobe, doesn't even produce any beef at
all!!! So my guess is it's the suburban areas around Kobe that has
all the ranches. In generally, Kobe seemed to be a not very exciting
city at all. There were not a lot of people or lights at
night. They said the city never quite recovered from the major
earthquake.
We wandered around and
found this Okonomiyaki place (that pancake like thing). It was
pretty good. We finally ate it, even though it's not at
Osaka!!!
I think we made a short
stop at some other city on our way back to Kyoto, but there's just not
much to do at night in those areas.
The most interesting
part of the night would have to be meeting Judi (Jodi? I
forget) She was finished shopping at a store and about to leave and
heard Andy and I talking to the clerk in English inquiring about phone
cards. She got curious and stopped to chat w/ my bro for a
while. She is an architect major? who studied at
Columbia? (some east coast school, I think) She was working in
Japan over the summer. We happened to be riding the train in the
same direction so we kept chatting. She talked about her experience
working in Japan and how everyone's super nice to her cuz she's a
foreigner. It's so rare to see a Caucasian person in Japan and
listen to fluent English. Communication seemed easy again!! In
any case, we bid her farewell as she got off at her station.
I really liked the
design of the Kyoto train station. The ceiling are really high and
there are lights at the top that turns on at night. Since the rest
of the area are relatively dark, they looked like stars in the sky.
I think I wandered a bit to find convenience stores etc. Nothing
much happened.
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