With the big rooms and ammenities that my mom and brother have had, our lodgings here in Kyoto was quite a "surprise" for them. It's (ahem...) rather small. You also have to rent towels and there's no nice tea & coffee in the rooms or fancy toilets. Still, it's better than I thought it would be. The Kyoto Tour Club hostel is a backpackers lodging with the bare essentials. However, the sheets are clean and Naoya who tells everyone to call him "Nick" is very helpful and kind.
No fancy breakfasts either so we bought some rolls last night to have for breakfast in our room this morning.
We had a great time last night having a take out dinner in the Common Room where we met three young people from Germany. It was very interesting talking to them. Klaus is going to be a lawyer so we could talk to him about my uncle who studied German law and stayed in Germany for a time since Japan's legal system is patterned after Germany's. Michael is going to be an elementary teacher. Yae! Marthe is a physicist who was reading a Japanese book. She said she could read most of it. Sheesh!
I love hostels because you get to meet so many interesting people from other countries to exhange ideas. Klaus enjoyed learning about Hawaii's legal system from Dennis who works for the Honolulu Police Department.
We're off for a day of seeing the sights here in Kyoto. Art bought two day bus passes for all of us. Hopefully, my mom won't be over tired since there will be a lot of walking. The weather is cloudy overhead but we'll keep our fingers crossed that it won't rain on us.
