Into Tokyo (Gary)

May 18th Saturday. Today is my grandson Nathan's birthday here but not until tomorrow in the US this is a strange world.

We didn't want to checkout from KS House until 11:00 so that we would arrive in Tokyo around check in time at KS. So we had breakfast at the Zen cafe and then walked to the Shosei-en Garden about a block from KS House.  It is a huge garden surrounded by a high wall. It was a nice garden in which to spend our last day in Kyoto. There were large ponds with many lotus plants and flowers.  We saw a couple of large koi in shallow water searching through the mud for food. The mud was very fine so it was like smoke swirling up as they pushed through. Back to KS and checkout. Bob paid his respects to the barkeep at the Zen cafe before we left. We rolled our luggage and carried our bags to the train station. There was a market in the station where we got box lunches for the 2 1/2 hour ride to Tokyo. Bob had soba noodles and I had about 6 different pickled veggies on top of rice. Both were good choices.  At the Tokyo train station we got a little confused as to which JR train to transfer to to get to KS House. We had a map from Kyoto KS that indicated the JR Sobu line stops close to KS House. We struggled up stairs, no escalator or elevator with our luggage to the correct line but there was no maps that would tell us which direction to take. So we hauled everything back down stairs and found a large wall map with all of the lines leaving Tokyo station. There are a lot! A friendly English speaking Japanese lady saw our confusion and offered to help. She pointed out two lines that were completely different from the JR Sobu line. After she left we looked at all of the rail lines and took a taxi to KS House Tokyo. We arrived and the taxi drove away. I asked for Robert Smith's reservation. We were at the wrong KS House! Bob had reservations at the Oasis KS House. They said it was only a 20 minute walk and provided us with a map and pencil line to follow. But we couldn't follow the map and had to ask directions from strangers. One of the problems was that very few of the street signs had a translated English name. Finally made it to the Oasis and found that we had our own bathroom. Bob had reserved a room w/o but hey it is nice to have your own bathroom. It turns out there is a weekend festival going on this weekend. When we started out to find a restaurant the desk help said there was Taiko drumming going on right now up the street. We decided to check it out and it was tremendous. There must have been 8-10 drummers. Most of the drums were of medium size but there was one large horizontal drum that vibrated my whole body. It was a wonderful experience. We left to find the staff's favorite curry spot. We had the KS map and got lost as usual. An Indian walked up to us trying to get us to come to his place but we thought he was leading us on to who knows what. Asked at a small bar about the curry place on the map and they read the map better than we because they directed us around the corner. And there was the Indian urging us to come into his curry place. So in we went and had a fine curry dinner. I think Bob and I need to take a junior map reading course. So ended the night.