Hotel Heian no Mori

We stayed a pretty basic hotel on the East side of Kyoto called Heian No Mori Hotel. A 70's affair and friendly staff, it was more than adequate. The only problem was it was 10 minutes away from the nearest Subway station. Therefore, we had to rely on either taxi or minibus to get us around.

My room was simple but neat. Fairly big after hearing stories from my colleagues who had been to Japan before, mainly about how small the hotel rooms were. I had a couple of beds, with ample room to move around. The bathroom was also more than big enough with a strong, hot shower. But no English TV channels though. Definitely no football. It didn't appear that football was big in this place despite hosting the World Cup only 10 years ago.

The main lobbyThe room came with breakfast each morning, served at the diner by the lobby. Although the items were al Japanese, I do not mind as they were seafood and vegetables selection aplenty. In fact, the miso soup was among the most delicious I had ever tasted.

For a place to stay short term while attending a conference, I certainly have no complaints. Although honestly, I would've preferred a central, more connected place. But with the company I was with, I was pretty happy. One of my colleague said that there were plenty to see and photographs if I was willing to walk around the hotels. There were a couple of shrines and if we walked a couple of blocks down, you would reach the the famed "Philosopher's Route". 15 minutes on the other direction would have taken us to the edge of Gion district, where the Geishas stayed. But I didn't have much time to explore the area unfortunately.

More on the Kyoto trip here.

Wide Awake

I had a touch of the insomnia last night. Not sure why. I wasn't planning to watch the Manchester derby - which United lost I might add. I just couldn't go to sleep. And the thing that stuck to my mind was one of my senior colleague who had a heart ailment which came out of the blue.

The gentleman would be having some procedures on Tuesday morning, and I'm praying that things would work out OK. I was yet to receive any update at the moment.

Good to be Home

Am back now after a longer than expected flight home due to strong headwinds. Considering that, the flight was pretty smooth. I touched down t KLIA just after 5pm. Got my bags pretty quickly after and decided against taking a can back.

I'm now waiting for the KLIA Express at the newly refurbished terminal downstairs. Not all the system were online yet, including the problem of buying the train tickets. I ended up having to purchase ten on arrival at KL Sentral. Bizzare!

It had been a good trip. My first experience of Japan. It had been a positive one and hopefully I could return with the family for a holiday trip. At the moment, I was looking forward to share the titbits with Puan Anita and the boys when I reach home. I will some time to reflect on the trip later and of course blog about it more. For the money, it was time to chill ...... and back to work tomorrow ....

More on my Kyoto trip here.

Setting Off

It was a good thing that we set off early from Kyoto to the Kansai Airport in Osaka this morning as the journey took close to a couple if hours and there was a long queue at immigrations and check-in. Starving, right after we cleared the security we rushed for breakfast. A ramen affair this morning. And it was not long before we started doing some duty free and rushing to the terminal to board, a short train ride away.

One of my colleague wasn't very well, with a slight virus and was feeling under the weather the whole journey to the airport. As for me, I was sleeping away all the way. Setting off at 6.45 and a bit of packing meant that I had to wake up at 5.30.

And it was raining all the two hours in the bus ..... more entries from the trip here.

Lets the Conference Begin

Lush green scenery. That was what greeted me when I was driven from Kansai Airport to Kyoto, about an hour away. It was a crisp spring morning, temperature of 10 degrees outside. In the comfort of the car, the journey took me through the hills upon leaving Osaka. Nice and tranquil.

The journey in was also painless. A nice comfortable flight, and I managed to sleep for about 4 hours. The flight was only 6 hours long with a little helping hand from the tailwind. Not much turbulence, but the flight was full, with screaming children for good measure.

The immigrations and customs were fairly straight forward, possibly due to the time of the day - it was just before 7 when we rolled in.

Need to refresh when I check-in. Next would be the taxi ride to the Conference Centre. Hmm! I only have USD with me. Need to get hold of some Yen.

More on my Kyoto trip here.