I flew into Tokyo, but we left the next morning for Kyoto on the Shinkansen, so this is where I have been for the last two days. Kyoto is very beautiful and charming, and we had a wonderful day yesterday bicycling around the streets lined with traditional Japanese houses and temples. I also went to the geisha district, where I saw several geisha at work, including one geisha party: this seems to involve lots of drinking and the geisha saying how super you are over and over as you play party games or chat.
We have seen several Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples also. Japan is very easy to travel in compared to China and everything is extremely clean and tidy. It is a very darling, tidy place.
We are staying in B's colleague's mother's house, which is an extra apartment they have in Kyoto (but do not live in). (Most people with socially prestigious jobs here are rather unsurprisingly descended from samurai and thus tend to have money.) It is
right in the middle of everything and has a tatami room with sliding screen doors, where we are sleeping on futons. But there is no internet there, and I had trouble finding an internet cafe (they don't really have them here, at least not to the extent in China), which is why the email is delayed. Tomorrow we go on to Nara, which may or may not have internet, as it is a much smaller place than Kyoto.
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