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Published: November 17th 2015
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Hello world,
So today we travelled from our accommodation near Universal Studio Osaka to Kyoto.
We woke early today and then we both fell back asleep, this holiday is meant to be an enjoyable experience and both Brad and Myself we feel that rushing from one destination to another causes unnecessary stress, so while we want to see and do as much as we can, we are still trying to find a balance that allows us to enjoy each location as much as we can afford to.
This mornings train ticket purchase was probable one of the easiest we have had on our trip so far. With our entire lives resting on our shoulders (literally, backpacking had always been a romantic notion to me, until actually doing it. The pack on the back, the big one, is not bad, the one on the front that i carry all the weight in... i hate. Friends, if you decide to backpack make sure you take one pack only... the front pack is a killer! the pulling and rubbing on the arms and shoulders sucks!) we walked from our accommodation back to our closest train station, making a quick stop at
7/11 to get cash out for the journey.
Having bought our tickets we started our train trip to Kyoto. some may wonder why we decided to do our trip this way, Osaka then Kyoto (and then back to Osaka for a flight to Okinawa)... the fact is, the price and kind of accommodation i could get. If we could have stayed at a responsibly priced accommodation first in Kyoto then gone to Osaka we would have. But due to availability and again price, we had to go with what we could get balanced against what we could afford at the time. Osaka... while it would have been an extremely interesting place to visit, if you read yesterdays entry we only really had one day there, so we spent it in Universal studio. Kyoto is not far from Osaka (maybe an hour and 30 minutes) on the trains, which you are constantly switching on, so it doesn't feel long at all. Kyoto was the original capital of Japan, and therefore has a lot more temples and shrines. We didn't know this until arriving but we are actually staying right next to one. I am hoping now that we have all the high commercial theme parks and crazy, frantic city stuff out of our systems, that we can start experiencing some more of that Kami (divine spirit) kind of thing. Australia as a country is so young and so multicultural, which is amazing in itself, and i understand why we have so many tourists come to visit, it's an awesome country. While we have now been in Japan for over a week, i feel that we haven't really connected to anything culturally or spiritually.... and i understand that you can't expect these things on a three week trip or ever schedule a spiritual experience, but i would like to make sure that i least put myself in the situations where it could possibly happen. Religion in general is interesting from sociological perspective and i have completed a subject on the matter at university. I think sometimes the word religion is used to describe feelings that we may not be able to rationally comprehend that a group of people agree on. i know its simple, but thats my thought (in a brief way).
So we found the apartment, but were to early for check in, it was pouring rain so we walked up to the closest McDonalds hoping for free wifi to contact the host to let them know. That McDonalds had no wifi and our devices were freaking out with amount of different wifi networks so it would not allow us to connect to any. We knew that we could not check in until after 3pm, so we waited the 1 and 1/2 hours at McDonalds and then walked back down in the rain to what we thought was the we are staying in. We waited out the front of the downstairs bakery, looking like lost puppies (again), brad decided to go inside inside the bakery for help. Someone was meant to meet us outside the apartment to show us in and it now being 3:30pm we began to get concerned that we weren't in the right location. The lovely baker rang every phone number we had been given, with no success, he then walked out of his bakery and gave us both an umbrella and we walked a massive city block, he (leading the way) stopped twice to ask ladies on the street, one who was getting out of her car to her house and the other was sweeping the street, both for directions. I think he gave up and tried the number we had again, he seemed to have got through and was speaking to our host, he smiled again and started leading us back to exactly where we hard started, outside his shop. Brad and I, both really wet but extremely grateful for the help followed his smile and nod to kept following him. This is one of the funniest and really not-funny things that has happened on our trip but would you believe it, we were back to exactly where we started. outside his bakery. The baker had handed his phone to Brad but he could not understand or hear the lady on the phone the baker had given it to him obviously trying to let our host explain what had happened with the check in mix up to us, Brad could not hear a single word and she eventually hung up. In the mean time, i had managed to hook up to a poor free wifi connection before we started on the massive block walk, asking when someone would meet us as planned? and once we had reached the bakery again, and got back into the poor service range and found that our meeting up guy was stuck in traffic, and that we were meant to wait in a garage (with the bins out of the rain) it was all good. We had been in Kyoto since 1:00pm we had been in the area of our apartment since 1:30pm, and we finally got into our apartment at 4:30pm. What i will say this about airbnb... maybe if you speak the same language and also have constant access to the internet, it would not be so difficult. Today for us, was certainly a challenge. Our host were sorry for the inconveniences of course, so now happy and dry, it's okay (it helps that you can buy wine at the 7/11)
Kyoto day one: Apartment check in, not easy. The bakery guy was lovely (regardless of the goose chase) the apartment feels very new, shrine next door, WIN and will check out tomorrow, wine and dinner being prepared by my love... I think Kyoto will be cool. summary: Backpacking is no longer romantic, it's hard. someone should be honest about that shit. I guess its going to be me.
Sayonara for now loved ones, hope your still enjoying my really bad writing xoxo
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Lauren
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Totes Agreeance
Love reading your bad writing! And yes backpacking sucks balls. xxxxx