Oh my god… So many things to tell… Such a few time…

I arrived at Kansai International Airport after three flights the last of which lasted for 11 I think. It is quite confusing after the time-zone changes. So yesterday was the longest day of my life, I woke up at 4:30 am (on the 20th) and I got to sleep at 23:30 on the 21st local time, which would be like 16:30 in Bilbao. So… my day was really long, and not only for the actual “apparent length” but also for all the new things I have seen.

I had to take a bus from Kansai Airport to Kyoto Station. I was really lucky to find an English-speaking Japanese girl in the bus office box. She helped me buy the ticket and explained me everything. You should purchase the bus ticket (as well as almost everything you can purchase) at an automatic machine. It isn´t so easy as it seem since everything is written in Japanese.  When I finally got my ticket and was waiting for the bus some English couple came and try to get a bus ticket. At first I was curious if they would manage to get what they wanted but then my altruistic hero-time sensation appeared. I headed towards them and by that time the woman was already asking me. In the end they didn´t need any of my help for the husband (I presume) had already taken one ticket. But this was the perfect excuse to start talking after a 11 hour flight. And if you add the fact that they had this charming London accent you will see that it was almost heaven-sent.

It is a well known fact that the usual most popular way to start speaking to someone is complaining about something. And the plain was the perfect target. For me the air conditioner was too strong and I was covered by the blanket during all the flight, on the other hand they found the temperature too high (I suppose this was for the different position in the plain). Then we reached the place where we complained about the Japanese people: “No one speaks English!”. And finally we started talking about our trips.

When the bus came I noticed this expression of boredom in the man’s face which told me that he had enough “stranger talking” for today. I felt it fair enough and although I got a seat next to them in the bus, I hardly spoke.

The trip was going to last for almost two hours. In the beginning I was thinking about getting a nap so that I would get some energy and forget about my hunger; but I couldn´t stop looking out of the side window. That´s when I realized “Man, I´m in Japan!”. And half an hour later my sleeping feeling defeated me and I closed my eyes in some uncomfortable half-bent way.

The English woman woke me up in Kyoto Station. In the end I had got really asleep. Ok… system restarting…. Bios running… oh no, I have to defrag my hard disk. For people who don´t know me this means that whenever I wake up from a deep dream my intelligence is “reduced” until an IQ of 60 or so. Here there was the apparently easiest thing for today: finding the hotel next to the station.

I said goodbye to the lovely English couple with a stupid sleepy grim in my face and started walking. Not to any direction in particular, just walking (my disk defragmentation was already by its 20%). Suddenly two of my neurons made a connection and I realized that I was going wrong… Change of plans… And I hadn´t walked more than 2 minutes when I met… Surprise surprise… The English couple who were also a bit lost (so I am not so clumsy). Another stupid embarrassment giggle was enough for me to tell them goodbye forever (or who knows…).

“Ok focus! My hotel is called Kyoto Tower because it has a big tower on top of it”. I took a glance at the sky in the hope of some gigantic holy sign but there wasn´t any. After checking the next 2 or 3 streets I decided to try and ask some policeman inside the train station.

The train station was a really crowded place and later I realized that it was a huge place too. I found some information office where they explained me where the hotel was. I headed towards it exhausted and dragging my entire luggage, but I kept looking at everything as though I felt drown to it. There were more peculiar things about this first day in Japan but I will leave them for other posts… I don´t want to spoil all the fun.

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