Kyoto was Japan's capital for about a thousand years until the 17'th century when the Shogun Tokugawa moved the military government to Edo (modern day Tokyo). The Imperial family remained in Kyoto during this period but moved to Tokyo in the mid-19'th century as the country began reforming and opening to international influences. Because of its historical importance and many cultural heritage sites it was spared from the US bombardments during WWII that destroyed many other cities. Unfortunately, in an effort to be more "modern" like the Western nations that won the war, the Japanese went on to destroy much of the traditional architecture in the city on their own. What was once one of the most beautiful, skylines in the country is now a mesh of ugly buildings that resemble nothing Western or Japanese. Still, a few decent spots remain.





I show all these photographs of temples, but the true story of Kyoto lies in the Philosopher's Path entry that I wrote shortly after the trip. Basically, I spent a weekend getting lost. Be it the 1 hour hunt for an Irish pub for fish and chips that should've taken only 15 minutes (only to arrive and find that England was playing in the rugby world cup that evening leaving no room for dining), or the elusive Philosopher's Path, we spent a lot of time just wandering aimlessly. The worst came after fish and chips. The Artist (he is an actual artist) pictured above, his wife and I, sad to be unable to eat fish and chips (after an hour of hunting one does tend to develop a craving) were lucky enough to happen upon a cafe near the pub that served fish and chips. We enjoyed our dinner, and then the two other girls with us came all the way across town to join us for the evening. Unfortunately, the evening was already getting late, and, apparently, all public transportation shuts down by midnight. This is something we discovered the hard way. As the girl nicknamed Mana quipped, "Kyoto is a city that never sleeps because everyone misses the train". Thus, we ventured 2 hours on foot to return to our hostel stopping by conbinis (convenience stores) along the way for fuel.
Some people go pub crawling. In Kyoto, we went conbini crawling.
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