Japan Day Two: Travel to Kyoto & Observations

On Sunday, we took a 3-hour train ride to Kyoto, Japan.  We had only just arrived in Tokyo but since our Japan rail passes started on Sunday we wanted to start using them.  We will have more time for Tokyo at the end of this week.
Once we arrived in Kyoto, the rain seemed to be coming down even harder than it was in Tokyo.  Luckily our hotel is right by a subway stop. After checking in, we headed out for our first sushi meal in Japan.  Kate ordered her usual favorite sushi but Chris went a little more adventurous.  He tried: white bait, sea urchins, herring roe, surf clam along with his favorite sushi. After lunch, we wandered around a huge market full of shops and food. The food was really fresh, too fresh for Kate as she saw some fish still gasping for their last breaths of air. This market was a bit more overwhelming then the one in Tokyo.  It was larger, with more people, more stores, and even a cat fight (with actual cats). But it kept us out of the rain and entertained us so we strolled through it for an hour or so. Tonight we will probably get to bed early as we have a tour set up in the morning to take us around Kyoto.

We don't have any pictures for this post but here's a random list of observations during our first two days in Japan.

• It's a very clean city yet there's not many trash cans around on the streets. Coming from another big city, NYC, Kate finds this quite perplexing.
• Most people are dressed business formal or at least business causal, even on the weekends.  Even our cab drivers were in suits with white gloves.
• It seems to be fashionable for the girls to wear short shirts or shorts with over-the-knee socks or tights.  This is very late 90's / era of Clueless for us in the U.S.
• The subway cars play an upbeat Jamaican/child-like music to warn that the doors are closing.
• Everyone is really nice and tries to help or answer your questions.  Even if they don't speak English.
• The streets, at least in Tokyo, are non-smoking but you can still smoke in restaurants.  
We've tried twice now to order Sapporo beer and received confused looks and an unidentified light draft beer - which actually has been quite tasty.
• As you may expect, there is lots of bowing.  Chris is really enjoying participating in this custom.
• For breakfast, they have ketchup out for the eggs.  They also serve sushi and rice.  
• There's a huge love for cartoons and arcade games here in Japan.  There's a surprising amount of arcade games where the player directs a large claw to pick up stuffed animals and drop in the chute for the player to receive.  We literally saw dozens of these in one store today at the market an,d unlike the U.S., adults and kids were actually playing this game.
• There's a surprising amount of Italian restaurants here.  There's other cuisines as well, of course, but Italian food seems to be pretty popular.
• Instead of street food and drink carts, there's vending machines everywhere.
• The toilet seats are very high-tech and have more features then expected.

Thanks for checking in with us.  Now that we have free Internet in our Japan hotels, we'll continue to tray and keep this blog up-to-date.