I hope you enjoy the family trip; the area around Kyôto and Ôsaka is apparently really safe, which is why the nervous western embassies and companies have been shifting their branch offices there. And you get much more really interesting old stuff to see there than in Tôkyô, as the big Kantô earthquake and WW II: flattened a lot there.
You'll probably be going to Kyôto, too, and to Nara (which is one of my favourite places ever)? If you go to Kyôto, you'll have to tell me afterwards whether the buses (that one needs to use to get around as a tourist) still make you pay to let you *off*, not when you get on, which you can do quite unchallenged? They did when I was there. Rather unique principle, but worked very well. Which can be said about much of Kyôto.-
I've actually already been to Kyoto twice, once while I've been here this past year. And they do still make you pay to get off. :3 I noticed they did that in Hiroshima too. Can't say anything about the buses here, though, because I drive everywhere. XD
I'm really excited to go to Nara! That is definitely on our itinerary. ^_^
Making people pay to get off is such a clever principle in public transport, I wonder it's not more widespread.
I don't remember the buses in Hiroshima, actually. Perhaps I had got used to them by that time of my travel in Japan. Or I was so utterly overwhelmed by the sheer Hiroshima-ness of Hiroshima that I didn't pay any attention. I remember the youth hostel, and the blaringly annoying way they woke you up in the morning by playing the Blue Danube waltz very loudly through loudspeakers at everybody still asleep at half past eight, and I remember the memorials and the museum and tourists weeping in the dark at the sheer horror of it, and an odd metal relief of oddly transported children at the train station...
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I hope you enjoy the family trip; the area around Kyôto and Ôsaka is apparently really safe, which is why the nervous western embassies and companies have been shifting their branch offices there. And you get much more really interesting old stuff to see there than in Tôkyô, as the big Kantô earthquake and WW II: flattened a lot there.
You'll probably be going to Kyôto, too, and to Nara (which is one of my favourite places ever)? If you go to Kyôto, you'll have to tell me afterwards whether the buses (that one needs to use to get around as a tourist) still make you pay to let you *off*, not when you get on, which you can do quite unchallenged? They did when I was there. Rather unique principle, but worked very well. Which can be said about much of Kyôto.-
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I'm really excited to go to Nara! That is definitely on our itinerary. ^_^
Reply
I don't remember the buses in Hiroshima, actually. Perhaps I had got used to them by that time of my travel in Japan. Or I was so utterly overwhelmed by the sheer Hiroshima-ness of Hiroshima that I didn't pay any attention. I remember the youth hostel, and the blaringly annoying way they woke you up in the morning by playing the Blue Danube waltz very loudly through loudspeakers at everybody still asleep at half past eight, and I remember the memorials and the museum and tourists weeping in the dark at the sheer horror of it, and an odd metal relief of oddly transported children at the train station...
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