I go to Kyoto once a year. I get lost in Kyoto once a year. Kyoto makes no sense to me. I'm more of a Tokyo girl. Give me a handful of subway lines and trains to navigate and I'm fine. Give me just two and I'm lost.

Is it Karasuma or Tozai? Kintetsu or Keihan? Karasuma eki or Karasuma oike? Hmmm. And let's just say that signage is not a strong point of Kyoto's stations. To know Kyoto is to know it intuitively. A good relationship with the Buddha and an ability to navigate mandalas probably helps.

I should feel bad about my ineptness trying getting around Kyoto, and I want to feel bad about it, but actually, you'd be surprised how many people miss my island — an approximately 6 sq. km area of land mass in the Seto Inland Sea. We have just one boat that stops at five islands, but tourists still manage to get off on the wrong island! It happens often enough that they have an English announcement on the boat to tell people when to get off.