I started my trip in Kyoto. I stayed in an Air B&B that was across the street from Nijo Castle and about 4 blocks from Nijo station. It is run by a super nice guy from Ireland. This turned out to be a fantastic home base location. If you ever travel to Kyoto I highly recommend checking to see if this place or something else in the area is available. I found myself eating breakfast at Daisy's Cafe every morning, and had several meals at Tenkaippin, a ramen shop nearby. There are also plenty of other food options in the area.
Nijo Castle is quite impressive. It's not strictly a "castle" in the European since of the word, but it is a fortified palace with a double moat system. You aren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, mainly to keep the flash from degrading the remaining 400 year old original paintings that are still in place. The most striking thing for me was that the original wooden floors make a chirping noise when you walk on them. The hallway is called the "Nightingale Corridor. They weren't originally designed to do this, but once they figured out why it chirped they started doing it on purpose because it makes it pretty impossible to sneak around inside the palace.
After visiting Nijo I had to go downtown to resolve my data sim issues. I would say that wireless data access is a must in Japan. Getting around without Google Maps proved to be quite a challenge. Not impossible, but certainly less efficient. They don't always post street names, some of the streets look more like alleys, and they almost never post building addresses on the buildings. I can't imagine how packages ever got to the right place before GPS maps. In fact I spent about 45 minutes lost the night before while trying to find the Air B&B.
Having gotten my phone all hooked up with wireless data access I found that it was too late to make it to my original second destination. So instead I went to the nearby Kyoto Aquarium. As Aquariums go it's not that grand or impressive. But the fact that other than me there were only 3 other small groups of people there made it a rather unique visit for me. A rainy Tuesday around 4 turns out to NOT be the busiest time for an aquarium. Go figure. LOL So it was nice to be able to take as long as I wanted standing at each display taking photos. And no one bumped into me while I took long exposures.
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