Faster than a speeding bullet

(The landscapes whizzing by me.)

Tokyo to Kyoto can be a two and a half hour trip if you took the bullet train. So we did. Or else the trip would have taken about six hours by car to cover the 300 or so miles. No thanks. The bullet trains are fast but you can't really tell when you're riding one, much like sitting in an airplane. The landscape passes by as it would at any speed and I just more or less watched it do so. But try walking to the restroom and peeing at such a speed. They had handrails in the bathroom stalls to hold onto.

On the way to Kyoto, my friends and I were either asleep or listening to our iPods for the entire trip. As we approached our destination, we tried to figure out how to get to our hotel when the three girls in front of us overheard our voices and proceeded to make small talk. They were from Atlanta, visiting, and thought we weren't Americans or English speakers for whatever reason. David said we were from California and one girl replied, "Oh, gracias."

I think I stared bug-eyed after hearing that and really wanted to reply, "California's still apart of the US, not Mexico." But I didn't want to be a bitch in a foreign country so I'm saving my snarkiness for my American friends.