A week ago today, I boarded an airplane and flew further from home than I had ever been (Tokyo beats Athens, Greece by about 200 nautical miles). The first week of the journey has been incredible. The culture shock I\u00a0experienced\u00a0during the first few days was one on a positive note and the entire way that Tokyo\u00a0operates\u00a0has grown on me greatly.<\/p>\n
Today, however, was no longer about Tokyo. The comfort I had grown to known in navigating Tokyo by train and the\u00a0familiarity I had formed with the local\u00a0convenience\u00a0stores in Shinjuku was over. Today we were moving on to Kyoto: the capital city! While Kyoto is no longer the capital of Japan, it is still a major city in Japan boasting a\u00a0population\u00a0of 1.5 million and countless temples, shrines, and points of interests that are all filled with rich eastern\u00a0history. We boarded the 12:13 Shinkansen Nozomi\u00a0for\u00a0Hakata (which is the end of the line) and away we went. A short 2.5 hours and 3 stops later, we had arrived in Kyoto. I wrote\u00a0separately\u00a0about my experience on the Shinkansen. That can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kyoto greeted us with much cooler temperatures and the same friendly atmosphere that Tokyo had, just at a little slower pace now. Outside the Kyoto Terminal, busses lined the streets. This was immediately very different from Tokyo as really the only viable mode of efficient\u00a0public\u00a0transportation in Tokyo is by train. Also very different from our\u00a0experience\u00a0in Tokyo was the proximity of our hotel to the nearest train station. Here in Kyoto, our hotel was directly across from the station. No more 15 minute walk; just a simple wait for the crosswalk and there we were!<\/p>\n Kyoto Station is built under and on top of a shopping mall. The way they weave these trains in and out, it’s hard to tell what’s really above or below. We had a nice Japanese dinner on the 10th floor of this mall. What’s cool about the area we ate, was the way the restaurants were laid out. The entire 10th floor was called “The Cubes” and this name lends to the design (or the design lends to the name)\u00a0because\u00a0there are multiple\u00a0restaurants\u00a0all laid out in cube like form, one after the next, each perfectly square. We browsed past a few until\u00a0finding\u00a0one that had an\u00a0appealing\u00a0looking menu. The food was good but I will sure be glad when I don’t have to pay \u00a5300 ($3.46) for a Coke and a total of about $18 just for a small sushi meal.<\/p>\n After dinner we came back to the room and planned what we’d like to get done tomorrow. There’s a lot on the agenda so it may run into the next day as well. That’s ok. I have decided that (since it is way more money that I had originally thought) I do not want to take the trip down to Hiroshima any more. I’m kinda sad\u00a0because\u00a0that is one of the main things I wanted to do, but it will always be there and the next trip I’ll save more\u00a0money\u00a0for train faires\u00a0specifically.<\/p>\n One week down and all is good! Congrats to all my stateside readers on making it to 2013. I’m glad I’m not living in a different year than you any more … that’s just too tricky to think about!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A week ago today, I boarded an airplane and flew further from home than I had ever been (Tokyo beats Athens, Greece by about 200 nautical miles). The first week of the journey has been incredible. The culture shock I\u00a0experienced\u00a0during the first few days was one on a positive note and the entire way that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}