24/7 Claire

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Originally uploaded by blenkers

After the heat today and all this walking we decided to get a late lunch in the building around Kyoto Station. This building is one of the most enormous places I have been in, hotels, restaurants, a department store, a theatre is in it, plus loads more... oh and trains. And we might have had pizza for lunch (sorry).

Back to the station building for dinner as we stumbled across a floor of "Ramen restaurants" and Ian loves his noodles. There were the usual food photos and plastic models but we were confused by the vending machines at the doors of the restaurant. When you are a foreign speaking tourist you forget your inbred british-ness of not staring when it comes to fumbling around so we just got close and watched people use them. There were pictures of food on the machine and people furiously popping money in, pressing the buttons and I was half expecting a take out box to pop out of the bottom but it was a ticket. You basically order your food and drink, take your tickets and take a seat. Pre-ordering at it`s easiest. Actually, no, scrap that. We arsed it up tremendously and needed help from one of the waitresses who had to pop inside to make sure the chefs realised she was dealing with a couple of dimwit tourists so she would have to tell them in a short while which order they actually should prepare. Or I guess that`s what she said to them...