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Friday, November 21, 2008.

So it’s time to go to the bus station. We have five (heavy) bags of luggage to carry around. I’m sick, and this heavy labor isn’t exactly helping my immune system. What normally would have been a thirty minute walk turned into almost an hour. I had to stop multiple times because I was close to either blowing chunks or passing out. Frankly, I wanted to do both at this point, but if I did we would miss the bus. We make it in time and we are seated in the back, I’m sweating like a mop and on the verge of exhaustion. I feel a fever is coming on. I pray that the rest of my trip isn’t ruined as a result of this. It’s not, though the night is far from over. Shortly after the bus leaves it makes a pit stop. I take this moment to buy lots of grape and orange juice. It’s a good thing I did because I would find myself waking up multiple times in the night feeling sick.

The juice helped a lot though because Japan sells the most pure juice I’ve ever had. It’s literally the fruits crushed in a juice, and I can’t taste any preservations or anything (though the orange juice does have the most pulp I’ve ever had). The bus arrives at 7:30am and we start walking…again. Now we’re in Kyoko, and while I would love to say that there’s a lot to talk about, seeing as how it was the former capital of Japan, there really isn’t. Kyoto was built on the Chinese city models. That means that everything was planned out, it has mostly straight streets, and there’s a ryame and reason to the way everything is set up. Tokyo, on the other hand, was a fishing town that sort of boomed during the economic period, which made it the crooked mess it is today. That said, crooked messes tend to be more interesting in many ways, and Kyoko just came off as a foreign New York in comparison.

Anyway, we get to our guest house and are in for a rude awakening: The place doesn’t check in till 3:00pm, and if we want to check in early it will cost us $1000 per person. Well that’s well over five hours away so we pay him and get some sleep. We stayed in another cramped room, but at least the futons were very comfortable. Though a nice room, I can’t help but feel like this place nickeled and dimed me the whole time. Laundrey? $400. Early check in time? $1000. Use of towels. $200. It was crazy, but at least the guy was nice enough to give us a car ride to the bus station on the way home a couple days later…but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
After we sleep for another couple of hours it’s time to go see a play entitled[insert name]. For obvious reasons I couldn’t take photos of the play, but I did sneak this one…

…as well as took a couple of pictures of the theater…

It was overall a very fun experience. Truth be told, it was like Japanese Broadway…only with an all female cast (something to do with tradition I was told). After the play I was feeling better, but I still wanted to get some rest. So we got dinner, went back to the guest house, and went to sleep. I know, it’s not a very exciting day overall, but just wait, the next day something even bigger happened.




Living Life Differently These Days
5:19 AM