We're in Kyoto!

First observation about Kyoto: It is much easier to find coin-operated laundromats here. I am not sure why this is, but there are lots of them. Next observation: There are these large, amazing shrines all over the place. After putting on our laundry, we found a big complex less than a block away. Then walked past another one holding some kind of carnival on the way back. All told, I think we walked past half a dozen or so shrines today.

So, it is possible to take a bullet train from Osaka to Kyoto. Indeed, we actually passed through Kyoto on our way to Nagoya about a week ago. It's worth observing, however, that on a bullet train, the distance between Osaka and Kyoto is maybe ten minutes. Which is to say, it's not very far. So, figuring we'd save some money to spend on food or books or something, we bought regular tickets, and loaded up all our luggage onto a regular old train. The train was packed, which meant we had to stand for forty-five minutes, but we arrived in Kyoto a little footsore and about fifty bucks richer--the tickets for the both of us cost (roughly) twelve dollars on the regular express train.

We bought breakfast in the train station. Rachel had a big old sushi/onigiri tray, and she bought me a bag of bread sticks while I watched the luggage. Add in a carton of milk each, and voila: breakfast. It left us a little full for lunch, so we just grabbed snacks from a Circle-K across from the laundromat. Combie [convenience-store] food is a little predictable and processed, but since we're tourists, it's still new and interesting. I ended up with some kind of cream cheese/caramel concoction and a Calpis water (a lightly sweetened milky-white soda), while Rachel had some kind of tapioca-strawberry milk and some manner of bread.

I forgot to dig my camera out the luggage before we went exploring Kyoto, so all the photos on this post are actually from yesterday, when we went to Nara. The first one is Rachel pretending that she's holding something to catch the deer's attention--they sell special crackers formulated for feeding deer. They seem to like them, but these are some of the fattest deer you've met--they get a bit overloaded sometimes. The second one is a picture of Todaiji from the outside. I was told by our friend who met us in Nara that it is the largest wooden structure in the world. This seems possible; those little white specks just below the door are the people standing around, waiting to enter. The building contains a really large statue of Buddha (not the world's biggest, but it's up there), and various other very large statues as well.

After visiting the statue, we were joined by some of our friend's family members, which is where we have this third photo from (I'm leaving out stuff for privacy reasons; if you ask me in person, I have more photos and videos). This is a little boy who was taking a picture of his aunt. I thought he was kind of cute, handling the gigantic camera, so I took a picture of him. His aunt, struck by the general humor of the situation, in turn took a picture of me taking a picture of him. It was one of those recursive moments.

As three-year-olds are wont to do, he got a bit tired and cranky after a while, so our guides headed home. Rachel got some more photos of manhole covers--there are lots of neat ones, many of them colored--and we shopped around for souvenirs. Eventually, we headed back to Osaka, and since we went past Dotonbori, I decided to stop and try get a night-time shot of the big central area.

Dotonbori is something like Osaka's Times Square, and fittingly for the city, it is all about shopping and restaurants. There is a mind-blowing number of shops here--they just go on for block after block, thousands of stores of all different types. The nicest of the shopping arcades have rain shields over the top, creating a weird, hybrid indoor/outdoor feel to the place, something you can only pull off with year-round pleasant weather. This advertisement of the running guy is one of the classic symbols of Osaka. It's an ad for a candy company, who appear to have gotten really lucky with the popularity of this ad. The advertising in this area is entertaining and over the top -- huge animatronic crabs, dragons, drum-playing clowns, giant octopuses wielding cleavers, that kind of thing.

We spent ... quite a lot of money here.