Parades + traffic = problems doing stuff

Our second day in Kyoto started with an overview of what Krysia actually likes to eat in Japan. And it seems like many Japanese fast foods (read junk foods, out of 7-Eleven, "meat on a stick", "thing in a bag") are a fair game for her. So today the day started with "thing in a bun", read a steamed Japanese version of hom bow, a pork filled bun. Moving about so much is not fun when you have to pack, repack and leave your luggage behind. I'm a fair packer, but this trip I'm hauling my scuba diving equipment (read 6 kg of stuff plus an extra heavy bag = extra kilos to haul). Same isn't true with K. Her usual hotel ritual is to sprawl all the contents of her bags on the floor, chairs, bathroom, windows (walls if she could) and then try to repack it all the day we leave. Grr.

Gyon parade of floats

We left the hotel to check out the Gyon parade. Today the floats were out on the streets. Quite a bit different from the ones I knew from Seattle or the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. These ones were huge moving platforms, some with life size dolls, some with real people playing flutes, knocking wooden sticks together or ringing bells. All pulled by a team of Japanese pulling men all dressed in fancy costumes. Crowds: horrendous. Weather: sweltering, hot and humid. Traffic: well... you get the point. We wanted to see two temples today, the Golden Temple and some temple with a Zen garden Kris saw somewhere. Unfortunately some problems came up along the way. And small problems have a tendency to accumulate and to become medium-sized problems which then blow up in your face as big mo-fo problems. Where to start? Perhaps at the beginning...

Our money was running a little bit low, but we had circa enough to get through the day. We'd exchange again in Hiroshima tomorrow. Money exchange places in Japan are not common, banks can close early and not have an exchange window and post offices which were supposed to be the best places to change money never materialized. But after parade we decided to go on to the temples. On the way was a Manga Museum, which we expressed interest in. This turned out to be a total bust. For 800 yen per person, three floors of manga, with perhaps one room worth seeing with couple timelines and pictures on the wall. WTF??? Did we just waste half our remaining money on this shit? Then it turned out that a castle which was supposed to be closed that day, was actually open. Great! We got to see it but ching ching. Wallet got thinner. It was also bloody hot so we didn't pay much attention to all these drinks we were buying at the vending machines. Suddenly while waiting for the bus we realized we didn't have enough to either go see the temples nor to come back home. And hell on earth began trying to find an exchange place (to no avail), post office (sorry, no exchange), bank (sorry, no exchange), hotel (sorry, exchange only for people who stay), etc. After splitting up to cover more ground and losing a good couple of hours it was almost time to head back, when we finally found a cooperative bank. So what's the moral of this story? ALWAYS HAVE MONEY ON YOU.

The Golden Pavillion

I'm turning Japanese

And so is the missus

The evening ended with our first ride together in a Japanese taxi and a lovely shinkansen ride to Hiroshima. Checking into our hotel left us some time and a huge appetite (for me at least) so it was on to find Hiroshima style okonomiyaki (noodles, cabbage, omelette, plus some stuff I wouldn't want Krysia to find out). Yum. Definitely planning to make it at home. Tomorrow a very full day with waking up really early to go to Miyajima.

Good night and sorry for the boring writing. The heat's boiled my brain.