My genius plan had our hotel situated mere minutes from the Shin-Osaka train station, allowing maximum sleep-in time after the previous night’s revelry. The bullet train from there to Kyoto was only 15 minutes give or take. Upon arrival I decided that a taxi would be the most convenient way to get to our ryokan, because like hell my mind or body was in any condition to be navigating to a small Japanese inn in a city complete alien to me.

Just as well, the Kanto Region was experiencing something of a mini heat wave when we arrived. The taxi found our ryokan no problem, but didn’t have change to break 5000 yen note, which was totally weird. Usually Japanese people in a position of money reception never have problems making change, unlike in China where you get exasperated grunts for anything but exact change to the penny.

Our 75 year old ryokan was in a quiet, laid back area of northern Kyoto, had courtyard garden and was well kept. The place was totally geared towards western guests though, so the entire house was plastered with obsessively passive aggressive warnings on what light switch not to touch, where not to hang things and which laundry detergent not to eat. There were so many it was to the point of making me feel like a complete idiot on behalf of whatever western morons stayed there before and did such stupid shit that it warranted sticky notes everywhere. Plus it was killing the vibe.

In the evening we took to the town to explore and chart out some new izakaya joints. If Kyoto has good food, we sure didn’t find it. I tried in vain to locate an old school izakaya joint like the first one from the night before, but all we came up with was a worn out mostly empty place with beers that were too warm and food that was too greasy. We wandered around in circles for a few hours like a couple of confused ducks and marveled at all the restaurants that are hidden away in the alleys. However considering it was Friday night, they were mostly empty and food in this country being an fist in the face of exorbitance, I didn’t feel up for the time honored tradition of pointing randomly at things I couldn’t read on a menu only to be served fruit cake and pigeon pie.

Convenience store food it was, yet again. But not really, because after walking a two mile radius of our ryokan we determined that convenience stores there do not exist. So vending machines it was. Oh well.

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