Desert Pundit

From Kyoto!

I just arrived in Kyoto, checked into my hotel, and was pleasantly surprised to find a free 100Mbps ADSL in the room, what a relief!

As you can see I managed to post some pictures of my first 3 days in Japan, covering parts of Tokyo I posted about earlier.

Last Sunday, Jan. 22nd was my birthday, I went on nice walks in Tokyo, then treated myself to dinner with a friend from the top of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills, I think it is the world 6th tallest building, and the 52nd floor is an observatory called Tokyo City View, offering a 360 degree view of Greater Tokyo, it was amazing, the only problem is my usually trusty Nikon was not up to the task of photographing from behind glass, so the pics came out, lets say, artistic!

Yesterday I went on another kind of pilgrimage, I traveled to Urasa, Niigata Prefecture, to visit my Alma Mater, I gave a talk (attended by 15) to current students about how to develop their career and how to equip themselves for outside world.
As my luck will have it, I arrived and left in a middle of snow blizzard of epic proportions, there is more than 4 meters of snow in the ground, street needed to be dug out every 30 minutes!
That did not stop me going out to dinner with one of my mentors, and we had long discussion and that alone was worth the trip.

I woke up early this morning, took the shinkansen (bullet train) 350 KM back to Tokyo, and then took another shinkansen for a further 550 KM south to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, the combined trip took 3 hours and a half, I love fast trains, but again, mishaps happen, I fell asleep for only 10 minutes after we left, and I missed seeing mount Fuji!! the train is so fast that landscape really rush by you.

I will take it slow today, and post new pictures hopefully tomorrow.

posted by Desert Pundit @ 11:34 PM