Kyoto, Japan

I have a gripe with Huffington Post. How many slideshows of random shit do we really need?? They're horrible, a time vortex towards a black hole. I looked up 'characteristics of the eldest child' and found this, five minutes later I was looking at this (some are pretty funny by the way). You may be wondering* what birth order has anything to do with Kyoto. Well, compared to Tokyo, Kyoto is very much like the eldest child. A conscientious overachiever displaying a high regard for its elders (i.e. past). Considering it was once the imperial capital of Japan for a thousand years, it makes sense. As does my seemingly unrelated introduction :)

Whereas Tokyo's mix of modernity and antiquity may appear disjointed at times, Kyoto's, true to its birth order, is ever just so. A path from a temple leads you straight to Gion, the famous Geisha district. From there you can walk along the canal to another temple. From that temple you may find yourself on tessellated concrete amongst wooden homes a lumberjack would be envious of. This is how after two full days in Kyoto, you may find yourself wailing like a banshee when a car honks at you a major intersection because you're about to kill yourself -- whoops.

Maybe it's the feng-shui like layout of the city, or maybe it's the upheld traditions (e.g. Geishas, tea ceremonies, the cuisine). Whatever the reason, the city follows a current perceptibly different than that of Tokyo, and maybe the world. Remarkably, it was spared our trigger happy ways during World War II. 

* You may also be wondering how I come across these slideshows in the first place... I have an AOL email account -- definitely showing my age now.


Length of Stay

Two days

Docking Index

       

Eight anchors, could you guess by the number of pictures? I went kind of overboard, sorry. I'm sure I would encounter the same dating woes as Tokyo, but it's pretty darn near perfect here. Typical first-born perfectionism!