Back and, um, mildly depressed?

Before I get to regular life again, a few other points to remind myself in future:

*  when buying a data SIM in another country, for me, 3 GB per week seems to be plenty.  And that's with quite a  bit of use for Google Maps.

*  don't forget to take the pin like tool for opening the phone's sim card tray.

*  Japan doesn't give you a mobile number with its traveller's SIMs.  Singapore does.  In fact, Singapore is the most ridiculously generous place for tourist SIM deals, it seems - $12 for 15 days with 100GB of data.  

* curry ramen (a particularly Kyoto thing) is pretty "meh".

* Kobe seems particularly into Indian and Tibetan curry.  Not that I ate any, but it definitely has a lot of restaurants of that kind.

* wearing loafers on a day you are visiting a lot of temples makes the whole "shoes off/shoes on" thing a lot easier than wearing sneakers.

* peak Kyoto autumn is the second half of November, but the first half is very nice too.

*  despite an increasingly tough line being taken in Japan about where smokers can do their smoking, you can still find yourself beside someone doing it in an eating place in Japan - especially a cheaper izakaya.

*  basic "business hotels" are cheap but not exactly tourist orientated.  But a hotel that caters for both the business and tourist market can feature neat things, such as microwaves being available in a central room with which you can reheat food bought from one of the incredible department store basement food halls.