The Doom That Came to Cowtown

I moved to a new hotel. First was on the south side of Kyoto station, second was on the north side. North side was better geographically, but the first hotel was run by JR West, and the second was run by APA hotels. The rooms were otherwise the same. Tiny, with a plastic-formed bathroom that they've probably exuded a million of. Everything was small, but still big enough. These are the salaryman hotel rooms for people who want one step above a capsule hotel.

While I was considering a capsule hotel just to say I'd done it, I opted not to because I like having my own bathroom.

The reason APA is troublesome (and I didn't learn this until after I'd stayed at three of them) is that they're the right-wing hotel. Each room had a bunch of Japan-First books, in the same sense that if I saw a Canada First book in a hotel here, it would raise red flags.

When I come back, I'll try to book better hotels.

The other shitty thing for the trip is that the cougher on the plane gave me what I suspect was Covid. And day four was when the symptoms started to hit. At first it was just general dragginess, but in the middle of the night it hit might throat and lungs. I would spend the rest of the trip with a hacking cough. Also, I started masking up in public. I wasn't going to seclude myself, but I also wasn't going to infect others. But it did mean I'd start off taking things easy. On the bright side, I had two days of cold/flu medication, so I could at least drug myself into movement.

But I was still going to take it easy.

I decided to spend a day doing a hop on/hop off bus tour. Unfortunately, it was super rainy, so all the buses got cancelled. Since I didn't really want to hike, I spent the day exploring Kyoto station and it's immediate surroundings. First, the station is ten stories tall, has a roof top sushi, two floors of restaurants at the top, and a department store like The Bay in its heyday. Also, I spent a lot of time in my hotel room.


[Assorted scenes]


[scenes from a walk]

The next day I was feeling marginally better, or at least well drugged up, so I tried the bus tour again. Successfully this time. For those of you who haven't done these, it's a tour bus, often with no roof, that rides a circuit around the city. You can get on or off at any stop, provided you have a ticket for the day, enabling you to visit lots of touristy spots easily. Many cities have these. I've done it in London, Quebec City, San Francisco, and now, Kyoto. They either have a tour guide, or headphones you can use to listen to a bottled description of the sights.

Kyoto's version of this has two routes, and I went once around both, just to get the lay of the land. I had a list of things I wanted to see, and first stop after doing the two routes. was the Nishiki Market. A multi-block street of mostly street food. This transitioned into a high street of mainstream shopping. I started with some cheap sake, graduated to assorted fried treats, including a wagyu skewer. Which is how I would up drunk and happy around lunchtime.


[This went on for several blocks and was mostly food and booze. And people. Lots and lots of people]

Remember kids, let your stomach plan your vacation.

(I originally wrote that as “spend your vacation on your stomach” and I realized that could be interpreted differently. It would still be an enjoyable vacation though.)

That shopping street also had an Easter egg. A secret I found out about because, when I was planning the earlier version of this trip, a woman I know in the SCA wanted me to get her hand-made sewing needles from a shop.

That shop, was down a narrow, non-obvious passageway off the street. The passageway led to a little courtyard garden with a small building in the middle. They sold needles. I'm not convinced that shop/courtyard existed in this universe. I might have wandered into some Ghibli-esque pocket dimension.

I bought a few needles (they were very expensive) and plan on giving them out someday. One to the person who recommended the place to me, one to SCA largess, and one to someone I know who crafts. That last one is a long list, so I'm not really sure who it'll be.


[Three of this needle in particular. It seemed like a good one]

Next up was Kinkaju-ji – The Golden Pavilion. There, surrounded by two blocks of tourist gift shops, is a gorgeous park whose centrepiece is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen.


[If I do this again, I'll try to get this photo at the golden hour. I bet it would look even better]

Finally, I had time to speed run one last place between the second to last, and last bus - Kyoto Gyoen National Garden, which sits around the Kyoto Imperial Palace. I got there after the palace was closed for the day, so I circumnavigated the park instead. I was the only person on the bus. Given I also was on the first bus of the day, I'd say I got my money's worth.


[Big door on a big building in a big park]

After resting up for bit in my room, I decided it was time for food, and more importantly, beer.

First stop was a random sports bar (T's Garden Bar) about a klick east of my hotel. Basic supper special and a beer cost me about ¥1500. Nothing special, but not terrible. I had to search on google maps to find the joint so I could write the name for this post.

Next up Was Kyoto Beer Lab, a genuinely good craft brewery/tap room far enough off the main road to be quiet, close enough to a tree-lined canal to be adorable. They didn't have flights, so I ended up have four sleeves while I was there. The beers ranged from acceptable to delicious. My favourite was the Alpine Helles Bock. They cycle their beers quickly though, so if you're ever there, know that the beers you see on the pictures in Google maps probably won't be the beers you see on the menu there. Which is part of the fun.


[a 10% bock]

I had a pleasant evening's walk back to my hotel and crashed. Still sick, but also exhausted from a day's galavanting around, and several beers.

The next morning I had time to kill before meeting G, who had left the farmers for a few days to join me in Kyoto (and Osaka). I opted to do the Gekkeikan Okura Sake brewery tour. That wasn't exactly what I got though – at no time did I see sake brewing facilities. No, this was a sake museum tour. It was pretty cheap (tickets were about ¥600).

Getting to the museum was a quick train ride to Fushimi, a neighbourhood in southern Kyoto. This was the first real journey I'd taken to someplace that wasn't touristy – just people who lived there going about their business on the local high street. Going deeper into the neighbourhood, I was in genuinely residential areas with actual detached houses with yards. As I approached the museum that shifted to industrial plants that all smelled yeasty – Kyoto's brewery district. No craft breweries here, these factories made sake in the amounts you need for a country with more than 100 million people.


[Big damn silos]

The museum itself was a ten minute video (with English subtitles) describing the history of Gekkeikan and the Fushimi district, and a quick overview of brewing. This was followed by a large room with preserved antique brewing equipment, more history, and then a tasting.


[How they did it 100 years ago]

We had three tokens with which to sample the wares, along with a souvenir sake cup. Between drinks, you could go outside to a small courtyard garden, where a fountain was placed to sample the local water, and rinse out your cup.

Finally, the gift shop. I bought a bottle of my favourite of the samples. Apparently, I have cheap taste in sake.

Time successfully wasted, I took a train back to my hotel and awaited G.

The thing about Calgary is, it's Westjet's hub. So couple #1 (S & G) had to travel from Vancouver to Calgary to catch the flight to Japan, and couple #2 (Y & T) had to travel from Edmonton. We were all on the same flight. Though that almost didn't happen because S didn't book the flight they thought they had (it was for the next day – they were tipped off by the over 24 hour layover in Calgary). An hour on the phone with Westjet managed to fix it.
We were all in the Premium Economy section. Couple #2 and I both just booked those seats. Couple #1 managed to upgrade at the last minute.

Boarding was easy, but there was a tiny amount of drama when a family of four (parents, two young kids) came on and had not chosen their seats, so they were spread throughout the cabin. I was asked to move to... a seat beside couple #1.

“I'm not sure I want to be seated next to these obvious ruffians.”
“Pbbt”

My seat has otherwise the same topography so I was fine with it. The flight was uneventful and comfortable. But good deeds do not go unpunished – Across the aisle from me was a guy who spent the whole flight unmasked and coughing his lungs out. I hoped he was just a chronic smoker. Nope – three days later I was coughing my lungs out. I suspect he gave me Covid, but lacking a positive test it could have been some other lung crud. Out of our party, T also caught it. I even spent the majority of the flight masked.

We landed in Japan and immediately went through the bureaucracy. The whole arrivals area was lines and brutalist architecture. We spent a fair amount of time waiting for luggage, and also took the opportunity to get transit cards, though I suspect if we'd gone for regular Suica cards, instead of Welcome Suica cards it would have taken a lot less time. But we did get them, so everyone's transit was taken care of. We also dealt with our phone's SIM cards. The Apple phones all just worked, but the Androids did not (reading the instructions helped with that the next day. I just needed to tell the Android phones to look for Japanese access points and after that everything worked for the rest of the trip).

Finally we transferred to a local hotel. We were all pretty bagged and our internal clocks were wrecked.

Now the plan was for us to spend the night in Narita, then catch a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, where we'd then take a bus into the middle of nowhere for the farm that Y had booked. I'd spend two nights there and then come back to Kyoto.

“Hey Y, thanks for letting our host know about having a fifth wheel person. What do I owe you for my share?” “What?”

Yeah, turns out that never happened, and I wasn't sure where I was going to be spending the next two nights. I ended up, in my delerious, sleep-deprived state, booking a room for two nights in Kyoto. This was a different hotel from the next four nights in Kyoto.

The next day, I wasn't sure if I'd dreamt all that. Thankfully the confirmation email was in my inbox.

The Narita hotel room was western style (i.e. huge, two queen beds, full bath) and only differed in that Japan has no concept of water conservation. Every flush of the toilet used about half a swimming pool's worth of water. This would contrast sharply with the other rooms I'd have for the trip.

That morning, we enjoyed the hotel's buffet. It was a mix of western and asian dishes. I tried natto, just to say I did. It wasn't as revolting as I'd been led to believe, but did have a bitter taste I wasn't fond of.


[Plush lobsters at the front of our restaurant]

After supper I threw myself onto the concierge's merci to have my luggage shipped to the hotel I'd be staying in Kyoto in two days. This service is available all through Japan's hotels, and I ended up using it twice. It meant navigating busy train stations with only a moderately sized backpack with my electronics and a change of clothing. Highly recommended, but you do need a clear idea of where to send it, and a native Japanese speaker to fill out the forms for you.


[Yamato Transport's awesome logo]

We made our way back to the airport and took the Narita Express into central Tokyo. There we boarded our Shinkansen and had a pleasant ride into Kyoto. I was in a different car from the others, so I mostly just grooved on the passing scenery. Note, when reserving tickets, you can request to be on the side of the train facing Mount Fuji.


[Mount Fuji, from the Shinkansen]

Side note: We used an online service to book our train tickets. If you're travelling outside of rush hour, this is probably unnecessary, the ticket kiosks are pretty easy to use. Also, reserve seats only cost a few bucks more so it's often worth it. If you're worried about missing your train, your tickets will still be good for the next train (they just stop being reserve tickets and you have to use an unreserved seat). Apparently they're good the whole day, in case you have major delays.

We arrived in Kyoto station and I hung out with the farmers while they waited for their 90 minute bus trip out to Keihoku. Then I wandered off to find my hotel on the south side of Kyoto station.

I was now in Kyoto for the next six days.