Last Trip to Kyoto - Part 1

My last trip to Kyoto was planned for July 13-14th, 2013. I originally planned to take the shinkansen down to Kyoto, but my old coworker J (also a Canadian) was driving down as far as Kobe with his friend and offered me a lift. I gladly accepted, since this would save me at least 5,000 yen. Thus began a real adventure!

All of us were working Saturday, so we met up just after 7:30 pm at the train station and took off for the Kansai area! ...or so we thought. Turns out J's GPS had us going north instead of south, and we had to turn around and drive back through most of Tokyo. I can't remember what time it was when we finally left Tokyo, but I do remember us going through Kikugawa-shi in the dark. That's a city in Shizuoka.

I'd been super jazzed about this road trip, and had prepared a bunch of travel tunes organized by decade. J and I used to sing old songs and watch video clips at work all the time. A lot of my best memories of him involve singing along to something. In the car we had the 80s tunes blasting, and J belted out his special rendition of A-ha's Take on Me. Nobody can hit the high note like he can! We also gossiped like old ladies about work. No one understands the plight of an English teacher quite like another one!

The rest is after the break.