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A day trip to Kyoto. After a night of very light and broken sleep, I got up and hopped the train to Kyoto. This was by far the earliest I had been awake the whole trip.
Ugh, the train car smelled like port-o-potty and my sense of smell never completely exhausted. Regardless, I like the train a lot more than flying. Planes scare me, not as much as they used to while I was at West Point. Maybe it was because I was afraid that if I died my last experience would be that hell. I still get pretty anxious -- yuck sweaty palms. On the train though, I find it ammusing when another train speeding past causes the car to shake. I'm so tried I can't really do anything during the ride there except sit in a semi-catatonic state. I was aware enough to not accidentally end up waking up at Shin-Osaka, the last stop.
I shuffled out the train and watched where the crowds went. This put me at a large map with a bunch of Japanese tourists and 2 American women. I prefer to try find single people and they were considerably older than me and women and American, but I was pretty anxious so I asked if I could join them. I'm 90% sure they were a couple. No they didn't hit on me, or try having a threesome or anything wierd, it was just a hunch I had.
They were wanders like me. They didn't have plans and they prefered to walk places and spend as little money as possible (even more so than me). One of the women seemed to be pretty good with maps and had an okay sense of direction -- unlike me. And they went to the market and bought food whereas I just tried to not think about eating. They had also taken a year to travel around the world, whereas I've been like two places.
We walked a lot. The temperature varied, in the mountains it was cooler but more humid. In the city areas it was hot, hotter than Tokyo. I swear as we walked I stripped. First went the lower half of my pants. Then I rolled them up. My backpack made my back sweaty so I kinda rolled my shirt up back there for awhile. Thank goodness I had bought that Fruits Basket towel thingy, though it was starting to get gross.
I think the first major thing that we had seen was Kiyomizu temple. It was way up hill and we had gotten there by way of cemetery, which makes me feel terrible to stomp through. One of the women had bad allergies to smoke and incense, sucks to be her here.
We took a food break on some stairs that went through a residental area. Well they ate and offered me food, but I was ok. One it was their food, and two I was hot and gross and if I thought about food I'd actually want to eat. I finished off my bottle of tea (which was now almost hot tea) and orange juice. After that we once again took up walking. They had a thing for free samples, it was almost comical.
We ended up in a museum to ask for directions and a drinking fountain. So, they didn't know any Japanese period. I had idly noticed that when we passed someone they'd sometimes say 'good day' or something to that effect insead of konnichiwa or nothing at all. I had also noticed that their pronounciation of names was absurd. But for some reason I was surprised when I followed them to the information counter and they started off with 'hello do you speak English?" I dunno maybe its just because I feel like I'm an inconvenience to everyone that even in English when talking to elders or people working I say something like 'excuse me' or 'I'm sorry' and tack on a 'please' for good measure. Here, even if the conversation breaks down into hand gestures and nods I'll at least begin with sumimasen. I found it to be, embarrassing. So after they had no clue where to go and gestured to their water bottles trying to ask for water, I followed them to the drinking fountain and kindly informed them that the word for water is mizu since they seem to be asking for it so often. After I filled up my bottle I scurried back to the girl and got proper directions to Ginkakuji and we were on our way.
We took the Philosopher's walk to get there. It was nice, a lot better than the hot concrete streets we had been walking. There was a stream and every once and a while you'd see some really big fish in it. By the time we reached Ginkakuji they had to leave to catch their train. That was fine by me, I had gotten comfortable enough to hang on my own.
Trying to keep up with my tradition of walking, I tried to walk to the Kinkajuji area. That ended up being a lot futher than I estimated, I was never known for my map skills. I was walking through city areas so it was hot. After awhile my shoulder muscles started cramping under the weight of my near empty backpack. This set off an alarm -- damn, getting too dehydrated. I stumbled to a bus stop and managed to navigate my way to Kinkakuji. By then I just wanted to go back to Tokyo, I had enough tourism, everything was starting to look the same.
The bus to the station took forever and we were all complaining about it, Japanese and foreigner. I ended up talking with a guy from Yorkshire, England. He talked really fast, almost spazztic, but he was ammusing. He had gone to NFL Tokyo which was like the one thing my youngest brother would have wanted souvenirs from (where did I fail as a sister?). We talked about a lot of random things, mostly political and cultural stereotype oriented. I'm not the best person to talk politics with, but I can at least ammuse a person with my complaints about the US and its military. He told be about an increasing problem in England which was something about tacky tracksuit dressed, stupid sounding, drunk gangs that loaf around and mug people. I wish I could remember what he called them so I can look it up.
I had another meal, I'm on a roll now, three days in a row. I think I'm getting better at this solo travel thing and its actually pretty fun. You get to talk to all sorts of random people. It makes me want to travel more, maybe try the youth hostel thing.
I wish I had brought a pedometer. I wonder how many miles (or kilometers, damn metric system) I've walked. I'm in a lot better shape than I thought I was, I haven't gotten sore from walking all day at all. Maybe Buckner had a use after all. I know how much I can exert myself with a little bit of food and a moderate amount of liquid. And I know how I get when I start to reach my limits.
I've actually managed to stay around 1000 yen (10 dollars) of food a day. Its been helped greatly by the fact that almost all of my real meals have been paid for. People can be really nice, I wonder why its like that while traveling. Or maybe its because I'm a chick. In which I can say thats the equivalent exchange for all the shitty things that comes with being a girl.
Considering how much sun I'm getting, I haven't really burnt. Today is the frist day my soulders turned a little pink. I guess the sun isn't that harsh or something. Or maybe its my Pacific Islander genes kicking in. I'll have a pretty good tan by the time I get home. Though I just got out of the shower and realized my legs are swollen, gross. They've definitely seen better days, they're all bug bite ridden and I have that problem with random bruising (or maybe just running into things). Yawn need to sleep.