Kyoto, wet and (almost) bar free

Playing a little catch up, Kyoto was.... interesting. Rained pretty much the whole 2 days. Took a morning tour for which 5300yen got us 3 locations (the golden pavilion, imperial palace, and the first Tokugawa shogun's palace), bus rides, and the fastest speed tour terrible english tour guide that money can buy. The incredibly mediocre stomach tightness inducing buffet was extra. The guide kept making joke stories in broken english that we couldn't understand and wouldn't stop laughing about them. "My son want to be ninja, he went and all gone day, come back he said come back when finish high school, now he salesman like ninja listen customers.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!~!! tee hee hee heee haha.
Then there was the guy on the tour who wanted to know how one can become the Shogun. I think he really wanted to live the pimp life of the Shogun since he was utterly dejected when the guide said you became Shogun by being the son of the Shogun. "but what about skill? what if you have skills?" I guess he thought he had skills... .like bo staff skills, numchuck skills.....

Alan and I went to 4 or 5 bars that were closed before finding one that was open and empty the first night, but the second night was better. Gion was a really cool street, reminescent of an older period in the city's past. That's where you go for geisha and maiko sightings. They speed by to get to their appointments and us gai-jin snap away with flashes in their faces. I felt a bit hesitant to be the jackass foreigner but I really wanted to take a picture so I compromised.... picture discreetly, but no flash.... so the photos are a bit blurry (but if anyone else asks, I did it on purpose because it's artsy) this picture has a cool old vs new feel. The geisha walking away as the standard city taxi and business suit dressed Japanese come right for us. We found a really cool bar hidden in a basement before catching the train back to Tokyo late evening.

I guess this isn't really too exciting of a post, but hey, it's early in the trip and I'm new to this, I'll get better at it.