Simon James French talking walking

You've mentioned that Tokyo is sort of New York on speed, but what, what's, uh, what, what, what's life like in Kyoto?

The really interesting thing for most people who visit Japan and, you know, most, most foreigners who come here will visit probably, uh, Tokyo and probably come to Osa- Osaka as well, and then Kyoto.

The one thing that most foreigners say about Tokyo, for example, is that it's surprising how quiet it is.

And, uh, it's, you know, it's one of the largest cities in the world.

Um, and of course you have, have the, the, the crazy busy areas like Shibuya.

You know, the Shibuya Scramble, that big crossing that you see all over social media and on videos and stuff.

That, you know, that is obviously crazy noisy and, you know, there's sirens blaring and kind of, um, and, and people shouting and all of that.

But if you take a walk and sort of like get even, and I'm not exaggerating here, but even like five minutes from that Shibuya Scramble, you can find yourself in utter peace, utter peace and quiet, like a tiny back street with some old ramen store that's been there for blooming, you know, donkey's years.

It's so quiet.

I really grew accustomed to that.

I was living in East Tokyo, and it was really, really, really quiet.

Uh, and I really enjoyed that.

I liked that a lot.

It was kind of weird.

You feel like, wow, I'm so close to this big city, and like I mentioned, it's y- you feel this kind of pull of the rat race.

It's, it, it's there, but it's blooming quiet.

You know? The, the city itself is quiet.

And so moving from Tokyo to London, now everyone knows that London is flipping crazy.

It's so noisy.

It's such a noisy city.

And we were living in Islington, which is, yeah, just, just the, the center of everything.

We would have police helicopters over N- you know, overhead every night.

We would have sirens blaring all day long and people shouting.

You go to the pubs and you can't hear anybody talking.

You're sort of like screaming at each other.