Disgusting.

The first thing I do when we arrive at our hotel, Le Gimmond, is change shoes; the second is get a pint of beer.

I walk to the local 'Lawson' (likened to a 7 Eleven) to get some mags and candies, and then it hits me: I'm back in Japan.

Our friends from Melbourne were already at the hotel, and together we walk to the Manga Museum.
Despite my expectations we were thoroughly disappointed. It was actually more like a library, and a bad one at that.
I would have looked back on it as a complete waste of time until something that has changed my life completely happened: as we (Adriana and I) sat outside the museum, I apathetically fiddling with my
cameras, I for some bizarre reason put my Holga fisheye lens on my digital camera. This is pretty much (not at all) comparable to the transition from daguerreotype to the Eastman Kodak Brownie; it was a revolution, for me at least.





It's around noon and I am starving, sore and tired, but with the day ahead of us we go for a notably long walk all around the residential Kyoto streets.

We even see the Imperial Palace.

In Flight

My flight was not an early one, five PM.
Singapore Airlines made it a comfortable one. But I hate flying, it frightens me. The only thing that holds up an aeroplane is the air underneath it; the wings deflect the air downward.
It just doesn't seem that safe to me, and the only way to make me feel better is to distract me completely.
SA gave me video games to play (pokemon Yellow and Wario World 3) and they had a wide selection of movies and TV shows, and a music program where you can make your own little playlist out of the available tunes.
Mine went as follows: 7 Things, See You Again - Miley Cyrus
Burning Up, Love Bug - Jonas Brothers
All of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust - Sigor Ros
All of Pocket Symphony - Air

On that flight I had four Singapore Slings, a cocktail made of pineapple juice and gin and other things. It was invented in 1915.
I had to stop off in Singapore for three hours to change flights. It was nine thirty PM Singapore time, but twelve thirty AM Australia time. I was dehydrated and drunk and tired and cranky. I hate flying.

You haven't mumbled to the Jonas Brothers in your sleep unless you've mumbled to the Jonas Brothers fifteen thousand meters above Asia in a drunken, sleepy stupor.
I started watching Bolshoi at the Bolshoi Nutcracker ballet. I hate flying.

We landed in Kansai airport at nine AM, Japan time, eleven AM Australia time, eight AM Singapore time.

We have to catch a bus from Kansai airport to Kyoto, and at this point I'm hungover and haven't slept in oh so many hours.

The route of the bus was through a more industrial Japan.

After a two hour bus ride, and difficulty at Kyoto station, I make it to my hotel.

This time tomorrow I will be on the plane flying over an ocean or a farm or a meadow. Or crashing.

I packed lots of film. It my not look like much, but I'm only going for twelve days, and that's more than a roll a day. I console myself from nervousness with the idea that I can always buy more.

Six rolls of 35 mm film (ISO 100, 200 &400), two black and white & four colour, plus the black and white in my SLR and the colour in my crazy three photo camera.
Two packets of cartridge film (ISO 200), plus the one freshly loaded into my spy camera.
Five rolls of black and white 120 film (ISO 100) and three colour (ISO 200 & 400).

This is me and my favourite SLR. We met at Savers and luck had it that I had a model up of this that didn't work, so I had all the lenses and stuff.

It works wonderfully and I lurrrrve it. It's the heaviest of all my cameras, which doesn't really mean much as all my cameras are plastic or Bakelite.