The Hasaam of Strangers

Day #98
Funds [ergh. It gets confusing cos it's all in Shannon's bank account for the moment (she gets better rates than me). So from now on, I'm counting down in Yen ==" This is the amount I have left to SPEND, there's actually $1700ish left in my own account that I'm not touching ... Anyway]: Y95000
Location: Well, I'm starting to fall behind severely on these owing to the fact that I don't wanna hog Shannon's laptop and because of the sheer volume of stuff going on. At the time of typing I am sitting in a very nice Osaka Hostel called Lemon House, but you might not get to hear about it until a later entry!!!
Michael is alert, but not alarmed. Japanese people ... so nice!!!

Okay, I thought about this and I've decided that I'm going to have to just bullet point a few of my experiences. I've been keeping a list to make sure people don't miss out on all the fun stuff that's happened but upon typing those last two things in my usual In Brief section, it occured to me that if I just keep letting it all pile up it might lose the whole 'personal touch' thing ... I'll try to fly through it all to get us to today at least.

Kyoto
So we needed to be in Nara late Saturday morning to see Aoi, this meant being in Kyoto the night before, but I hadn't counted on the overnight bus being totally booked out. Because I was keen to see my busy busy Japanese friend with two jobs, I forked over the extra cash for a bullet train on Friday. We got from Hiroshima to Kyoto within the space of 2 hours easily, and it was very comfortable. I'd already gotten over the whole "ohmygod we're going so fast!" thing on the Maglev in Shanghai (from the city centre to the airport), but in all fairness these things cover the whole country while the Maglev runs for less than 10mins per ride.
The following two things must be said: First of all, Kyoto Station is THE most difficult place to navigate through I've encountered. Others have agreed with me (others being Shannon and Lily, who will be mentioned at least once more in this entry). In Japan, there isn't one group running all the public transport, which means there are different platforms for different groups. Some trains are just for the subway and others between cities, and the place itself is also kind of combined with a shopping mall of sorts and a whole bunch of restaurants, spanning 7+ floors, and not all the trains are on one floor. Maps here, like all others in Japan, make no sense, even with my advantage of being able to read more of the names of things than Joe Average tourist (have I mentioned yet that scale is not internally consistent on these things, North is a different 2D direction on every one you look at, not all streets have names, those that do don't always have signs, and numbers aren't always consecutive?!). We managed to basically guess the right exit and press on by foot since the map we read appeared to indicate our hostel of choice was fairly nearby. After 30 minutes on the road I was 100% confident would get us there, I started to get nervous. We stopped to look at a map for a few seconds and this woman pretty much materialised beside us to ask if we were lost. The conversation pretty much went like this:

Lady: "What are you doing here? Are you lost? Don't know where you are? Where are you trying to get to? Where do you wanna go?"
Me: "We were looking for Maruta Street, actually ... our hostel is there ... "
Lady: "Maruta Street? Maruta?! From here? You can't walk there you're out of your mind! You're crazy, it'd take you forever and then a little while! You can't walk to Maruta Street from here it's just too far! Too far, nowhere near this spot, take the bus!!!"
Me [having followed, well, MOST of that]: " ... uhh ... so, we can't walk? More than uh, 10 minutes to walk?"
Lady: "10 minutes? Way more than that! You really have to catch the bus to get there, then it'll be easy! Here, my friend's going to walk past the bus you need, walk to the bus stop with her!"
2nd Lady [having just materialised on cue]: "Yes! I live quite close to that bus! I know it well, come with me, new foreign friend, and I will get you home safely!"
Me: "Ahhhhah. Thankyou very much!"
Lady: "Oh my goodness your Japanese is amazingly good!"

Okay ... well I didn't change the script that much. Shannon will back me up. This is the inevitable effect of standing still and looking confused and white pretty much anywhere in Japan. I would like to play a game with other foreigners to see who can get approached by a friendly old Japanese person wanting to help them the fastest. They ARE keen with their 133+ hospitality skills.

We got to the self-proclaimed "Cheapest Hostel in Kyoto" very easily after that. The place certainly lived up to its name, in pretty much every way you would imagine. 1000 yen a night (best I've found anywhere else was twice that much) provided you bring your own sleeping bag and sleep on a rock directly beneath a heater on overdrive in front of the exit sign which never switches off and above a chronically obnoxious snorer. The guy at the counter was friendly enough, though, but my goodness was that place cheap. We found a really good place to eat though, where they pretty much BBQ'd stuff on a stick for us. It's kind of hard to describe, except the sauces they marinated with were really cool and something about the service/ambiance made it all really cool. It's weird if you go into a place around these parts without people yelling "Irasshaimase~!" ("Welcome!!!") at you.


Ok, ok, so I just detailed a couple more days. Stuff it, I'm still going at a decent pace. A couple more sessions like this and I'll have practically caught up!

=="

XD