Jumping to Conclusion

My recent Japan trip reminds me that I tend to jump to conclusion. Last month my best friend in office already gave a feedback that I often jumped into conclusion with a limited data. His recommendation was to suspend judgment and to collect enough data before making a conclusion.

My Kyoto trip showed how wrong I could be in jumping to conclusion. I went to Kyoto for the first time in June 2014. As it was a packed trip, I only allocated a day trip to Kyoto from Osaka. I reached there in the morning. I bought a bus pass and then took bus. I made a mistake by alighting at the wrong place. It caused me and my wife to walk so many steps to the nearest tourist spot under the hot sun. I concluded that Kyoto is an old city with nothing to see except nice sceneries or beautiful temples. I went back at around 3 pm to Osaka on that day.

This holiday we decided to give a second chance by staying in Kyoto for three nights. That is where I realized that I was completely wrong. Kyoto has two of its own subway lines and there are other inter-cities lines that reaches other places inside Kyoto. In short the train network is quite solid. Also, apparently there are many malls and modern buildings. We also went to Kyoto tower where albeit its lower height, the experience was one of the nicest as it provides free and many binoculars around the circular platform that we could even see the face of people walking in the road.

It also has many nice food - something that is against my conclusion in 2014 where I said nice food can only be found in Osaka. In fact, Kyoto has Pontocho, an area of narrow alleys of fine dining. We did not try due to its expensive prices - again against my previous conclusion of Kyoto as only a traditional place.

In other trips, I also tend to be more aware of jumping into conclusion when observing something. So hopefully I can keep practicing to hold my judgment and collect more data first before making a conclusion. At least, just update my hypothesis first and then collect more data to assess the hypothesis.