I first went to Kyoto in 1976--a time when foreigners were scarce enough that my local mail carrier would simply dump any letter from abroad in my mailbox and assume that I'd know the addressee and could pass it on. The system worked.
I spent my years in Kyoto devoted largely to the time-consuming task of  learning to read in Japanese. It has enhanced my life greatly. I am currently working on a memoir tracing my journey towards becoming literate in Japanese with the help of the counterculture that existed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. You can read an early excerpt from the first of my mysteries set in Kyoto here.