Safe Landing

Despite how disorganised we were this time around, we made it to Japan safely. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, and as both of us stayed up pretty late the night before, we slept through most of it.

Once we arrived at Narita airport, we went down to collect our JR passes (which allows you to ride certain trains for free for however long your pass lasts, including some of the shinkansen (bullet trains)). The woman at the counter asked us where we were staying, and when we told her we were staying in Kyoto, she suddenly got panicked and told us that the last train to Kyoto would be leaving soon!

So it was a mad dash to catch the train to Shinagawa, where we'd have to switch over to a shinkansen to Kyoto. We made it just as the train pulled up to the station, and began the 3 hour train ride to Kyoto. It was about 11pm when we finally arrived, so by the time we made it to the AirBnB apartment we were staying at, both of us were completed exhausted and I fell asleep almost instantly.

Thanks to Memrise, I have learned the following phrases to use in Japan:

(O)namae wa nan desu ka?
What is your name? (Adding the O at the front makes it more polite.)

(O)denwa bango wa nan desu ka?
What is your phone number?

MrFodder's friend pointed out that I am now completely prepared to pick up in Japan. MrFodder seems excited by the prospect of me picking up a nice Japanese girl. I think maybe I should have kept practicing French.

Speaking of, one of the first French words I learned while in Paris was boulangerie (bakery), and it is easily my favourite French word. One of the first places we visited was a boulangerie in Kyoto.

So many different types of bread! I was in heaven. Maybe rather than trying to learn French and study in Paris, I should move to Japan and open a bakery instead. It seems that they love artisan breads as much as the French do.

The first time we went to Japan, we were planning to eat traditional Japanese food, however, once we were actually there, we walked into a restaurant, and I balked at the idea. I couldn't read the menu, and everything just seemed so confusing. Instead, we ended up going to a convenience store and buying bread to eat for breakfast. As I refused to eat anything else, we ended up doing that for the rest of the trip.

I'm a lot less afraid of trying new foods this time around (and I have promised MrFodder and Special K that I'm not going to eat KFC in Japan), but we thought we should continue our tradition of eating convenience store bread for breakfast. But, we are no longer poor university students this time, so I figured we could afford to splurge a bit and have proper bakery bread.