Japan Log : Day 9

I was bound to set off for Kyoto on tat day, but since i was staying in Kyoto for a relatively long time (3 nights), I took things easy in the morning and took my time to visit Takayama's daily morning market. Walked along the canal, bought the traditional Saru-something, or the Faceless Baby Monkey, which the obligatory souvenir from Takayama, fed the carps and eventually left for Kyoto. As I checked out, I complimented the owner for his beautiful ryokan; he was rather embarrassed by th compliment and even gave me a nice pair of chopsticks as a souvenir. He was a kind man.

The route to Kyoto went smoothly, a bit long, but I oculd bear wit hit and once I arrived at Kyoto at around 16h, the first thing I wanted to do was to get a map of the city at the tourist information centre, which I didn't need to do since a man giving away maps was already in the station handing them out to tourists, he even told me where my hostel was located. Meanwhile, I was also very impressed by the overwhelming JR Kyoto Station with its 12 floors, I wanted to return after dropping my bags. The hostel itself was at 12min of walk from the JR station and as I checked in, I was rather depressed by the massive amount of hipsters present there, but well, it was a cheap place after all, works like a magnet for them. Anyway, after getting over it, I returned to the station where I could enjoy its architecture. While climbing the floors, I passe a giant Christmas tree that was on one floor and a small crowd sitting int he stairs in front of it enjoying the music and the impressive tree; it made me remember that Christmas was getting closer, something that I totally forgot since I'm used to colder temperatures when it's near December.

Didn't do much else on that day and passed the rest of the evening on the computer getting together what places I'd be visiting while in Kyoto and took a shower.

Perhaps the only positive point of that hostel was the bar/cafe that was just next to it; the staff was friendly and the few Japaneses that were present (the vast majority of the customers were foreigners from the hostel) were most talkative that usual. There was this old guy that started talking me about his trips to the USA and Vancouver; I could understand what he was saying, but my replies were rather simple. After few beers and some nachos, went to bed in a 4 beds dorm, which luckily for me had only an aged couple of French, no hipsters.