Welcome to Kyoto

What city hosts the headquarters of Nintendo and has the second largest train station in Japan? Why, that’d be Kyoto! I guess the more popular things for which people know Kyoto are the myriad of historically significant locations, including the 17 locations in and around Kyoto that have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, called the “Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto”).

However, my personal favorite thing about Kyoto is that the Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum [official site] [information] is located not terribly far from Kyoto, and a year-long festival of his Tezuka’s well-known anamated character, Astro Boy, has been going on in Kyoto. (You can find Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion here and there around the train station.)

Some practical arrival information

The official host hotel for the FIRST conference is the Hotel Granvia Kyoto, which is situated right inside Kyoto’s (immense) main train station. When you arrive at the station, your first task is to find the right exit — there are lots of them!

Fortunately, the exit signage at the station is both easy to locate (it’s all colored yellow) and easy to read (see inset photo, right). You should head straight for the Central Gate. [Not the underground central exit, though you'd have to go out of your way to get there.] To exit the gate, you’ll need to insert the travel coupon in the gate, which will read it and determine if you’ve paid the correct distance-based fare.

Tickets tickets tickets. Now’s a good time to make a side note about tickets on Japanese train systems.  The ticket gates take paper tickets in the slot on the right and, as you walk through the gate to enter the station, you collect your ticket as it spits it back up at you on the far side. As you exit the station, after you’ve reached your destination, the exit gates will eat the ticket you feed it, assuming the fare is correct.

The good news is that it keeps the station clean from litter.  The bad news is that if you were expecting to use that ticket as part of your expense report once you return, you’ll simply be out of luck.

If you need a receipt for travel, don’t use the exit turnstiles. Instead, present your ticket to the ticket inspector overseeing the exit gates. They’ll manually cancel it and hand it back to you.

Once you’ve exited the ticket barriers, just look up and to your right and you’ll see the hotel.  There are escalators across the train station lobby (straight ahead and slightly to the right after you exit gate). Go up one floor and follow the signs to the hotel lobby. You’re there!

Location, location, location

“Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” -Derrick Scholl

The Kyoto main train station is situated right in the heart of the city, so it’s not only convenient to a lot of services, it is also easy to get to the many and various Kyoto attractions from there. You can even go quite easily to nearby cities like Nara, which was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 and is home to some spectacular sites of its own.

Of practical importance to any computer science related conference is, well, coffee. Japan has no shortage of coffee outlets, both of the chain variety and of the ‘one-off’ coffee shop, known as “kissaten” [kisːateɴ]. In the vicinity of the conference hotel are two Starbucks. One is located in the Porta mall, a large underground mall situated in the floors beneath the Kyoto train station. (If it rains, you can get your Starbucks fix without needing an umbrella.) The other one is located directly across the main street in front of the train station, toward the west.

Coffee & WiFi. My only problem with the Starbucks is that I couldn’t find any WiFi at either location. Bleh. However, there are a couple of nearby spots with WiFi for those who can’t do without a WiFi fix. (I do find it interesting how seemingly hard it is to find WiFi hotspots in Japan.)

There’s a Seattle’s Best Coffee inside the nearby APA Villa Hotel [map], sporting a completely free WiFi spot. I’ve had some connectivity issues from time to time there, but it’s pretty reliable, though not particularly large. In addition, there’s a McDonald’s just two doors down from the Starbucks just West of the station. It has mobilepoint WiFi that most users of AT&T WiFi can use. There’s lots of seating, with separated smoking and non-smoking sections, and the coffee’s pretty good, too.

[Mobilepoint usage note: You can use a variety of WiFi providers to access mobilepoint WiFi hotspots in Japan. You'll need to enter the WEP key of 696177616b and then follow the login instructions. There are several providers listed explicitly, such as Boingo and iPass. To use AT&T WiFi, use <att-wifi-username>@attwifi.com@weroam.com as your username. Yes, there are two @ symbols in the username.]

Money matters

I think that the conference FAQ covers money (foreign exchange) pretty well, but it’s worth mentioning a couple of details about ATMs and credit cards. Japan is a really cash-based society. Really. Many, many people do not possess a single credit card, and you should assume that every store and restaurant you enter does not accept plastic unless you can determine otherwise. Doing so will avoid an embarrassing “no money” moment.

I don’t know what the official crime stats are for Japan, but my experience is that the personal crime rate is exceptionally low. So much so that people routinely carry large sums of cash on them without worry. Of course, shops that are geared toward the tourist trade have made adjustments, but I merely suggest that you should not automatically assume that every shop will accept the form of payment you have. Get cash.

As the FAQ points out, there is a post office next to the train station. Time was that post office ATMs were the only ones that accepted foreign ATM cards, but now you can use 7-Eleven Bank’s and Citibank’s, and perhaps others.  The Kyoto Post Office’s ATM hours are almost 24 hours a day. Almost. It is closed on Sundays from 8PM until 0:05 the following morning. All ATMs are closed from 23:55 to 0:05 daily.

Coming in the next installment…a more sober look at Kyoto’s past and how understanding it helped me come up with the winning theme for this year’s FIRST conference.