Periodically.org

 We traverse through the streets of Kyoto. It's quieter than Tokyo, but feels more steeped in history. A lot of wooden buildings and charming gardens and streams appear out of nowhere. What I remember though, was the heat and humidity. If you'll recall, these are one of my many weaknesses. I'm pretty soon in a muck sweat as middle age nerds are wont to do.  We make it to the hotel but for some reason, there is nobody at the counter. There is even a sign to that effect, as if this is a normal occurrence and maybe we can phone them? The hotel is tiny. More like a short hallway of rooms stacked on top of each other. Upstairs we can hear the cleaning staff cleaning, but they aren't paid to deal with us. They pass by us on the way to get more supplies from their van and clearly are used to guests being utterly lost, staring at a sign on an abandoned counter. We phone the number but whatever magickery that is an e-sim apparently won't let us complete the call. My wife man...

 It's finally time to leave Kyoto via shinkansen (aka, bullet train, minus the stylish assassin's and Brad Pitt, obviously). I am pretty excited about this. Nothing illustrates the utter Japanese dominance of public transport on the world stage than a train that goes faster than anyone who isn't sponsored by Pirelli tires would consider going.  We, as seems the pattern, just buy food from the corner store for our meal. So as to keep the patina of 'hey, we're travelling' alive we make sure to buy things we couldn't buy in Canada. Protein milk! Pancakes prepackaged with jam and butter! Onigiri (rice balls with protein mixed in there)! It's a cultural experience. The best? No. Instagrammable? No. Cultural enough for our family? Apparently! So we check out of our hotel, the lobby being on the second floor and packed with vending machines reinforcing the Japan-ness of it all, and hurry along our trip.  This lobby, as I said, is on the second floor, and it has...

Oh my GOD what  does this all MEAN. When I say that English translation is sketchy at best, what I really mean is there are too many signs that make me super curious but they are only in Japanese. All the really important signs, tsunami safe areas, transit instructions, prices for mechanical keyboards have English translations. But the frustration of seeing a really seemingly important sign and having to get my phone to help me out just leaves that impression. I'm basically in a world of unreadable plaques. As I've mentioned my chronic addiction to plaques and reading them, you can imagine the frustration. We do some laundry in the hotel laundry room. The whole yen conversion thing keeps my eyes from watering and realizing how much we are paying just to make sure we don't offend anyone on the local transit.  Well, come to think of it, I think my upper limit for that convenience is pretty high. A Canadian not wanting to offend in the very polite Tokyo is like an ouroboros of...