京都市

Got to Kyoto yesterday all right. Got only a couple of hours sleep the night before, dragged myself out of bed at 5:20am and headed to Taipei CKS International Airport. Found out they opened the new D wing of Terminal 2 when I got the boarding pass. I’ve started flying EVA instead of United Airlines since on UA you have to connect through Tokyo Narita to go anywhere. I’m not even silver in EVA’s membership yet, but my Diners Club card gets me into their lounge free, so not a big deal. Anyways, the flight was uneventful, though the immigration line at Kansai Airport was about 40 minutes. When going through customs the inspector was surprised I came from Taiwan not the US. Public transportation is great here, so it was only a few minutes between exiting customs and departing by train to Kyoto. Then in Kyoto transferred to the subway and was at the hotel shortly after.

The area around the hotel is very scenic and nice, though there’s not much out here besides the convention center, hotel, and a bunch of parks. So there’s not much to speak of in the way of dining or shopping options here. But the subway gets you to most of the city pretty easily. Weather here is pretty chilly at just above 0 celsius, so adequate clothing is necessary.

Last night hserus had plans to meet up with his friend shradha who has lived in Japan for several years. He invited me and his friend thaths to come along. Turns out that thaths used to work with my friend jam1esp1ark back at Netscape. Small world. After many adventures we finally ended up along Shijo Street in downtown Kyoto and shradha took us to a nice Japanese restaurant with a wide variety of different foods. We had stuff like edamame, agedashi tofu, radish salad, takoyaki, marinated beef, sashimi, etc. To wash things down we had a wheat sake and later moved on to Suntory Beer. Anyways, it was a fun time.