No Hot Coffee

Today is the 6th and last day of the Japan part of this tour. The first three days were three consecutive small cities in north Japan. Then one sea day. Then…

…the big two-day stay in Kobe. An overnight stay, which is pretty rare. But there’s much to see in Kobe, and much more to see in the two neighboring big cities, Osaka and Kyoto.

Today I have IPM (in port manning -- basically, it’s my turn to stay on the ship while it’s in port - maritime regulation - everybody has to do it occasionally).

So yesterday was my chance to get out and see something. I went into downtown Kobe, and bought a 1050yen train ticket to Kyoto, which is famous for having a lot of those Buddhist temples with the curvy roofs. So cultured I am.

At one of these places I walked in on some kind of serious ceremony, about 80 young guys in robes bunched together on the floor, receiving some kind of sermon from some older Holy Guy. “Ah grasshoppers…” he said. Just kidding, it was Japanese, who knows what he was saying.

Across the street from this ancient Temple, back in the real world, was this diner of sorts, no tables, just sit at the counter, where the menu had tiny English subtitles, which I sorely needed. Japanese food is really weird-looking, and I’m pretty food-squeamish to start with. Basically I had some chicken tenders, with some inedible alfalfa sprouts (?) coated in some disgusting dressing. One nice touch was the big jug of ice water, which everyone one got, so you help yourself to more glasses of ice water as you went along. I seriously needed water after my first and only taste of the alfalfa (?) sprouts.

I then asked for coffee. They didn’t have any. What, no coffee in a diner? What’s wrong with you people? All they had was green tea and that jug of water.

I continued the stroll, gradually getting better with cars coming from the wrong direction - the Japanese do it like the British. Lo and behold -- a Seven-Eleven ! My favorite coffee place for the past 30 years.

I went in said “Hot Coffee?” -- the guy led me to the refrigerator, pointed to a few cans of various brands of cold coffee. I shook my head No Thanks, and walked around the 7-11 three times, refusing to believe it had no hot coffee. So solly, no hot coffee. This also happened at a Circle K a little while later.

I kept strolling, visited another Temple, did some aimless left and right turns, stopping here, stopping there, soaking in the town, and dropped in on another half-dozen convenience stores of various names. Solly, no hot coffee. Just weird-looking snack food, in Japanese-only packaging. I would’ve paid ten bucks for a Twinkie.


Getting late in the day, I made my way back to the Kyoto train station in he middle of downtown Kyoto, and lo and behold There Was A Starbucks.

Back home I don’t like Starbucks. But here in Kyoto I said to myself If This Friggin Starbucks doesn’t have hot coffee I’ll eat my sneakers (which probably would have tasted better than those alfalfa sprouts).

Starbucks to the rescue. Yes We Have Hot Coffee, There Really Are Japanese Who Like Hot Coffee, especially in the downtown area.

One additional perk in The Kyoto Starbucks, truly unusual to my experience. A Heated Toilet Seat. There was one bathroom for both male and female, and I sat down on a heated toilet seat. Never heard of such a thing, and couldn’t imagine the constructive purpose of it. Hot Coffee AND Hot Tushee at Starbucks.

I Googled up “heated toilet seat” when I got back to the ship, couldn’t conclude whether it was a Japan thing or a Starbucks thing. Maybe this idea is catching on back in the USA and I didn’t know about it. Anybody who can shed light on this ? Your comments on Heated Toilet Seats are welcome.