I don’t know if there’s any wi-fi here so I’m on a public computer. At a charming hostel in Kyoto. The last two nights I’ve been staying in a capsule hotel seeing as I foolishly didn’t reserve any accommodation.

Took a 300 Series Shinkansen from Tokyo station. The shinkansen is pretty cool indeed. Very quite and smooth (at least until it hits full speed) and I did indeed see Mt Fuji going past. Only three stops on the entire journey.

My first day was hellish, and I grew to dislike Kyoto with a passion, after walking around with my oh-so-heavy bags for four hours trying to find a place to stay. Eventually I decided to go for the capsule hotel and luckily they had rooms free. It’s quite nice actually. Contrary to what I expected, I got my own room with a desk and bathroom, and two capsules stacked on top of each other. I spent my evenings reading William Gibson’s Idoru, perhaps the perfect author for a capsule hotel.

Yesterday I went to some temples in Kyoto and quickly realised I was tired of them, having seen a million in Nikko, so I caught the train to Osaka and went to the aquarium instead. Yay, penguins! Seriously, the aquarium was great. Dolphins, whale sharks, seals, sealions, Japanese otters, penguins, spider crabs. Osaka ain’t too bad, though extremely drab. Went to a bridge somewhere where I saw the famed Osaka running guy, a giant illuminated advertisement for Glico which is truly awe-inspiring. Well, kind of.

 So, uh, photos when I have wi-fi, hopefully. I imagine I’ll stick around here until Saturday, when I might head off to Hiroshima or something.

Today I’m going to go cycling. Ah, just me and the open road and hopefully no traffic accidents.