Monday, June 22, with Perry

Again, just a reminder that I am typing this on my phone. I'm marathon texting, really.  Errors will be corrected in a week or so.

We left Ueno today. I'm happy; I wasn't especially fond of Ueno or Tokyo. We accidentally took a bullet train to Kyoto. We wanted to take a regular one, but signed up for the fast (and more expensive) one. From my memory of the weather in Kyoto, it was like a July Minnesota day: hot, humid and sunny. And that is exactly what we got.

We arrived in Kyoto much earlier than we anticipated. Check in time at the New Miyako Hotel was at 2:00 PM and we were there before 1:00. We left our bag at the hotel and went in search for lunch. After dance practice on Friday, we'd been craving hamburger steak like nothing else. Unfortunately we found no hamburger steak. We ended up having a typical Japanese lunch: beef, salad and rice.

After wandering around the station, we headed back to check in. We relaxed a little bit, but decided to make the most of our time and visit the temples in walking distance.

I'm happy we did it. The two temples were not really tourist temples. It was so quiet and we were alone for a bit at one of them.

I think for Perry this was the turning point. All at once, he got to experience the history, atmosphere and tradition of Japan. He was excited to see the architecture and read about the history of each one. The temples we visited today had very few translated signs. He did a lot of speculating and asked a lot of questions I couldn't answer.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped for dinner at a place where we grilled our own small pieces of meat. Basically, we purchased a plate of meat and vegetables. There is a small grill, like a charcoal grill, sitting on the table at which we were eating. The grill heated up quickly. The plate of raw food was served. Then we grilled  the meat and vegetables. It was so delicious! All the meat was marinated in a bright red sauce. We weren't sure what it was because all of pictures on the menu showed plain meat.

We went for it anyway. We almost ordered another plate of meat. I wanted the recipe for that marinade.

In order to get back to the hotel, we had to go through Kyoto Station. This was easy enough when we left, but nearly impossible coming back. We couldn't remember where to go. We knew there were two escalators involved. Every hallway led to an exit to a mall or hotel that was not ours. I thought we would have to sleep in the station tonight.

Finally back at the entrance of the station, Perry looks around and sees a sign, in large English words, lit up with an arrow, pointing the way back to our hotel. I can't make this stuff up. It turns out there were many signs directing us that WE DID NOT SEE.

We got out of the station 45 minutes later. We. Were. So. Stupid. Before crossing the street to the hotel, we looked at each other, "Let us never speak of this again."