First night

Last night was the first of 13 that I expect to spend in Kyoto.

The flights and to/froms all went very smoothly. This is great, as I believe there were enough moving parts to the whole trip that any snafus would have caused some major problems along the way. The first leg of the journey was nothing but long, Dulles Airport -- Narita, but after that is was Customs -- Connecting domestic flight -- Baggage -- Shuttle bus to Kyoto -- Taxi to Guesthouse. I arrived at the guesthouse about 15 minutes before check-in ended, so all was well.

(A note to the wise, or at least to those who want to be prepared. If your Japanese location offers you a map on their website, print out the map and bring it along. It wasn't a problem for the taxi driver to call the guesthouse to ask for directions, but they offer those maps for a reason.)

I am staying at a guesthouse called Itoya, which, much to my enthusiasm, looks just like the pictures on the website. The real strength of the place is that it is about a 15-minute walk from the Tea Center where I will be studying this week and next. I am staying in a room called "the girls' dormitory," which is two bunks of beds in a very small space. This sounded like a reasonable setup to me because the English language version of the site is "Under Construction." As a matter of stereotypical expectation, I figured that sharing a room with a number of Japanese strangers would be much less invasive and loud than sharing a room with a bunch of Americans or other foreigners on holiday.

Also, the shared room arrangement brings cost down to just over $25 a night for a very nice little place to stay. With free WiFi.

Thanks to the free  WiFi, I arrived last night and found this message waiting for me from my contact at the Tea school:


Subject: short notice


Mina,

We will be going to visit the Toinseki teahouse tomorrow, so could you come to the Urasenke Center at 8:45? We will be going in western clothes. Yes, you are right, yukata is not appropriate in this situation.

If you are not in Japan yet, have a good trip. If you are already here, welcome.

See you tomorrow.

Hooray for the internet. (I was otherwise planning on arriving early for the day, but at about 9:00AM.)

Curious to learn a little about this Toinseki teahouse, I found this from a quick Google search. It seems to be the blog of someone who is attending the year-long version of the program that I'm visiting for a fortnight.

And now, with a business-card map and address for the guesthouse in my pocket, I am off!