Oh That Crazy Exchange Rate!

June 3, 2008

Woke up early again and sent off an e-mail to Ryan to see what was going on with meeting in Nara. Didn't get a response and we ended up getting to Nara a little later than when they had planned to leave for Koya-san (mountain by Nara) with a guide. We missed the so I found an internet cafe and fired off another e-mail to Ryan.

I ended up eating some of the Calorie Mate I had bought earlier out of curiosity. It's basically cracker or Triscuit formula pressed into a thick block of a snack. Wandered around for a bit and went for breakfast at another branch of Narau. There's the same vending machine thing in the restaurant as the one in Kyoto that we went to earlier. After breakfast, we head east to check out some of the sights and end up finding out that about half of Nara is just a huge park with shrines and temples. Nara is also know for their deer and we look around for some so we can terrorize them but the camera battery dies just as we find one. Winston manages just to squeeze of one photo of the deer we find. I grab a couple of protection charms for my cousins and then train it back to Kyoto. I see a mini truck on the way back. Damnit those things are awesome. I totally want one.

Getting back to Kyoto, we go and check the exchange rates at the post office. Ownage. Well, for Winston at least. The payout for CAD and USD dropped by a yen each. Worse for Winston since all he has is Canadian cash and no traveler's cheques. So much for cash being king. I've never heard of that expression before this though. We head over to the Bank of Kyoto to see if we can manage to get a better exchange rate there. A transaction there would take about an hour so an employee there suggests we go to a world currency exchange office in Kyoto Station. Same rate as the post office. Triple slapped. I still have Japanese currency on me so I'll just wait until the rate goes up to at least 105 again. As we were heading back to the hostel from the station we saw a stair climbing machine for moving packages. It was just made of all sorts of win.

Back at the hostel, I go and check on news for the Nijo-jinya trip. It ends up being good news and we have a translator to come with us. Winston and I split up to go shopping and I head off to Teramachi. Wandered around but I spent most of my time in a bookstore and a huge 2 level manga store. I find a pretty cool fighting poses reference book and a Gurren Lagann figurine. You can't imagine how happy that made me.

I head back to the hostel again to bask in the glory of my purchases and realize that I need something to shear off the talons I've been starting to grow. Should have remembered to bring my nail clipper but I left it at home along with my multi-tool so I have to head down to the pharmacy by the hostel and ask for a nail clipper in my horrible broken Japanese. It feels really nice to finally cut my nails, although I'm still contemplating whether or not I can see how much facial hair I can grow while I'm here. Went for ramen dinner again. I'm going to miss that ramen so much when I leave this city. Osaka is known for its good food so I'm hoping to find some good ramen there.

I still need to buy souvenirs for people. We're heading back to Nara tomorrow and it looks like it'll be nice out as well.