Day 7 (Tuesday 12th Oct, 2010)

After a busy day of running about in Nara yesterday, I decided to take it a bit easy today.

I went to Downtown Kyoto to go shopping, and somehow got lost on my way there even though I've been there before. Getting lost *always* results in interesting discoveries though, and I found about the greatness of Oike-dori. These is a fairly large main street running east-west, and it's great for cycling. The footpath is unusually wide, and is paved with some sort of marble-like stone.
There are also lots of bike parks every block or so, so it's a good place to park if you can't find a legal parking area nearer to where you're going.
The openness of the footpath though just makes it great to fly along.

Eventually I found my way back to the northern end of Teramachi-dori, which is a large shopping arcade very popular with local youth and tourists alike. I parked my bike somewhere that *looked* legal; there were no "No Parking" signs, and a few other bikes, so I thought it would be okay. Then I went into Teramachi-dori.

Unfortunately, most of the clothing shops here are fairly expensive. I did however find a few that were reasonably priced, but I didn't buy anything yet. I'll save my shopping for the end of the trip when I know how much money I have left over.
I also found a large second-hand clothing store, which is very rare in Japan because people here see buying second-hand stuff as bad luck. There was actually a lot of nice stuff in there, and for good prices (not Australian op-shop prices though!)

After a bit of window shopping I went back to check on my bike, because I wasn't sure of the legality of the parking area; and it turns out I wasn't allowed to park there.
I didn't get a fine, and I didn't get the bike taken away though, which was lucky!
All there was was a note saying that you can't park here, with a map showing all the bicycle parks in the area. Very helpful! I didn't want to pay for parking, but there were no other options.
Now was another test: learn how to use a Japanese automatic bike parking machine.
I figured it out by watching someone else; and it couldn't be easier.
There are these little metal tracks just wide enough for a bike wheel, which you ride your front wheel into. At the end, the track locks the wheel in place.
Each track is numbered, and when you're finished you just type the number into the pay machine, it tells you how much you owe, you pay it, and your bike unlocks. Too easy.

I went to my favourite place (a-cho, the arcade), hoping that it would be quiet before the afternoon and I could get some Guilty Gear practice in. My suspicions were correct; there were very few people there, and no one playing GG.
I haven't played in about a year, so I had to remember how to play, and all my combos that I used to use. First game, I lost to the first CPU opponent. Depressing.
The next couple of games I got fairly far through the opponent roster, and everything started coming back to me.
I got my basic ground strings back, and my Jam Loops (the character I play is called Jam, and she has a very strong "loop" in the corner; which basically means a series of attacks that can be repeated in one combo for lots of hurt), and started to practice some more tricky stuff that I used to be able to do, with varying levels of success.

After I'd had enough, I grabbed some lunch from (lol) KFC, where I saw a group of three REALLY FAT Aussie weeaboo girls and had to giggle; then I went back to being a tourist and went to Nijo Castle (Nijo-jo).
The castle itself is very different to most other Japanese castles (like Osaka-jo or Himeji-jo) in that its only one floor, and has lots of different buildings within a large piece of land. It's a bit more like a temple in that sense.
Inside the main building of the castle, I was VERY excited about walking on a real nightingale floor, after learning about them from the historical/fantasy novel "Across the Nightingale Floor" by Lian Hearn.
A nightingale floor is basically a wooden floor that is designed to creak when walked on, to make it hard/impossible for would-be assassins to sneak in without making a noise. I was surprised at how much the "squeaking" sounded like bird calls, rather than a regular creaky floor. Hence the name "nightingale floor". Of course, I tried to sneak across it, but was not successful.

The rest of the castle was fun; there was a high wall with steps to climb up to the top, obviously used at one point in time as a lookout point. Of course, because of this, the view over the city (and over the castle itself) was great.


After the castle I came back to the hostel for an early dinner, then went out to a shopping building called "Avanti", which as seems to be the Japanese norm is about 8 stories high, with a selection of different shops on each floor.
I was mainly going to see the bookshop on the 6th floor, but got distracted on the 5th by a discounted shoe store.
OH MY GOD. So many awesome sneakers; some regular Nike/Converse/Adidas etc, and some really cool stuff from brands I haven't heard of (local Japanese brands?). And so CHEAP! Nothing was over ￥5000, and most were in the region of ￥2000-3000. Some of the really cool local brands stuff were 2 pairs for ￥5000; and there were some VERY NICE moccasins for ￥5000.
But you know what? In Japan, I have clown feet. Size 30 feet in Japan are almost unheard of, so its almost impossible to find shoes that fit me. ARGH.

I went up to the bookshop, and looking mostly at the kids books and manga (because those are all I can read in Japanese!) I saw some cool stuff.
A Jap version of The Giving Tree! (without the scary picture of the author on the back). I might have to buy it. Couldn't find Where the Wild Things Are though.
I ended up buying the first volume of the Jap version of one of my favourite manga series, Eyeshield 21. It's about a high school American football team; and is very fun. Hopefully, reading it with the aid of a dictionary will help me learn more Japanese, and importantly, learn to read kanji.

Tonight, I came home and *didn't* get drunk! Wow!