I ❤️ 京都

Kyoto people (at least Kyoto women) are always top-styled, no way I can keep up with Japanese fashion and beauty standards, but it’s slightly infections.

Hello world 🙂 It’s now almost the end of my first week in Kyoto. Funny enough, I feel like I’ve been her for much longer. In fact, my little apartment already feels a little bit like ‚home‘ (don’t tell my grandmothers, or they will worry that I never come back).

Today is Saturday, so no lab work for me (not so sure that that’s true for the rest of the group, too 😅) . I took the chance to finally get some exercise by running along Katsura river in the morning. Oh boy, am I out of shape 🙈. Can only improve again from here ;-).

The afternoon I spent in the historic and beautiful Gion quarter of Kyoto. Usually overrun with tourists, it is rather quiet right now (coronavirus…). Perfect opportunity to finally familiarize myself with my new camera. I think I’m starting to get the hang of it (for the results see main gallery). And yes, for pictures of myself I have to resort to selfies (ughh), or badger poor bystanders with my broken Japanese into taking pictures of me.

Is this the first glimpse of the famous cherry blossoms in the last picture, you may ask. Yes, but also no. The real Sakura are not blooming in Kyoto yet, but today’s discoveries included an amazing 100 yen (~ 1 EUR) shop that sells plastic Sakura 😀 And was I ever a person to say no to a beautiful flower, even when it’s fake?! Fun fact, carrying a fake Sakura branch with me all day is annoying as hell, but makes for some phantastic fake Sakura photo opportunities. Even fooled some locals with it, hehe… The fake Sakura apart, the 100 yen shop was pretty cool in general, I think this cool type of store deserves its post in the future.