From "A" to "B" (and "See"ing)

So the rain dried. The sun came to give us a real welcome and the smell of moist backpacks slowly left us. Clear skies assisted us in learning how to get across the great country of Japan. Before long, we made our way to Kyoto station and I marveled at the sheer scale of the monstrous transit center. More so than the fine restaurants and hugely populated walkways, the architecture of the station moved me. Taking a series of very long escalators to the top, I experienced a sort of vertigo while looking up at the rafter work and nearly ornamental steel. Perhaps it was the whole scale of it all, or maybe it was the extreme experience of depth perception that kept my attention. Like the last time I posted, I couldn't help but keep looking up (though this time with thoughts of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I set my camera on the handrail of the escalator for the long ride to the top. Here's a clip of what it saw.




Yesterday, we took the Shinkansen for the first time. Also called a “Bullet Train”, the Shinkansen brought us from Kyoto to Nagoya in less than an hour. This ride was the first time I felt truly comfortable sitting down on mass transit in Japan due to my hypersensitive respect (I'm generally the last person to take a seat). With a small can of cold black coffee, my eyes were glued to the countryside; a high speed overview of some rural and urban sights. I took the opportunity to capture the following footage, and I realized; sometimes it's not what's at point A or B that matters, but what you see along the way.



Feel free to check up on my thread on starcityscene.com to read more about my adventures in Japan.