Well hello..

Seems like a good title for what has happened so far.
It all started when I realised with a shock that the plane's leaving time was no 10.00 am, but 8.45 am. Fortunately we are enjoyer's of the Auckland Airport leaving experience, so we were within time at the end and got on ok.
Once on board the time passed quite quickly watching movies and eating breakfast and dinner. Not sure what happened to lunch, there was none. The Air NZ cabin crew were great.
I managed to see two and a half movies, Cloud Atlas starring Tom Hanks which I found confusing as it jumped all over the place in time, but came right in the end. The other was I Anna, a detective story set in London,  which took a while to get going , but proved a good watch.  The last one was Upside Down, which was a rather strange SF story, which I liked.( me strange? No!)
Customs at Kansai was no fun. The queue took an hour of standing in what seemed 30 degree heat.

Catching the train proved easy enough, once we were pointed in the direction of the ticket office.
There were a load of confusing offers, and I selected one that gave us a freedom to us all of the JR network in the area.  Very nice, but I found out that it did not include the Kyoto subways, a glaring mistake as it turned out. At the taxi stand the fun began as driver after driver did not know where the Best Western Hotel Kyoto was located. My problems were solved when one driver at the end of a large and growing queue leapt out of his cab and ordered one of the don't knows to take us any way.
Turns out he could not speak English. Good grief, what is wrong with these people?
Somewhere he used the word walk, which I took to mean we may as well walk, as he could not take us, but what he meant was he could take us, but we would have to walk a bit at the end.
In the end he used the novel idea of consulting his map to locate the hotel.

Here it is, not easy to see, just to the right of the van. This is not a road, but an alley.

Before I came here, I had this idea that Kyoto was a small town, say about the size of Tauranga.
Not so as it turned out. Think of Auckland CBD.  Now multiply that by about at least 20.
We are up a little alley off one of the main streets.  You would think an alley would be a dusty grimy place with rubbish everywhere.  NO.  This part of Japan is amazingly clean and tidy. There is no litter.
The inhabitants are all well dressed and none are overweight.  Must be the food.

This is a typical street corner: