Kyoto Day 1

We had plans on Tuesday to take advantage of our rail pass and do something somewhere but it was raining, the forecast was for more rain, and all of the things we wanted to do were outside activities.  Instead we did some laundry and hung around Nagoya all day.  We ended up going to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner with Chris’s co-workers (there are now 2) and one of the girls from Chris’s office in Japan.  We had gone there a few times when we were in Japan six years ago and we were glad to see that the place was still there.  Like every other restaurant we have been to the place was tiny inside.  We enjoyed this for several reasons: for a set price they had unlimited food for two hours which included a buffet and a guy coming around with food that he carved off onto your plate; they had unlimited drinks (the adult kind) for 90 minutes; they spoke Portuguese which is close enough to Spanish that we were able to communicate better than any place we had been to so far in Japan; and they had good music in the form of a DJ playing Brazilian music.  The highlight for Chris was when they brought out pork shoulder.  Chris told the waiter that he loves the skin and the waiter returned a few minutes later with a bowl of chicharrones that he had made just for us.  After dinner we went for Karaoke again.  Of course we got a private room and we stayed for a few hours.

Yum!

Inside the karaoke rooms.  This is a small room, probably for 3-4 people

Big Echo seems to be a chain of karaoke bars

On Wednesday we went to Kyoto, a city that we had been to several times before.  Kyoto is classic Japan.  There are over 2000 temples and shrines in the city as well as well-preserved architecture and lots of history.  The city was mostly spared during World War II resulting in it having lots of pre-war buildings.  There is so much to do in Kyoto, you could probably spend a month there and still have a list of things to see or do.  Our plan for Wednesday was pretty specific; we wanted to go to the Golden Pavilion, a bamboo forest, and possibly another shrine famous for its thousands of Tori gates just south of the city.  On previous trips we had seen many of the other larger shrines and temples so this time we would see other parts of the city which we had not seen before.

We bought tickets for the train the night before.  We would be taking the 9:10AM bullet train to Kyoto, a trip that only took 34 minutes for the 145 KM trip (88 miles).  We woke up with more than enough time to shower, get dressed and eat but we ended up dilly-dallying again.  By the time we left the lounge where we had eaten breakfast it was 8:55 and we still needed to go to our room before heading to the train.  Of course the elevators that normally take seconds to arrive took up to a minute.  When we changed elevators on the 15^th floor it took almost another minute, or so it seemed, for the elevator to arrive.  We got into the station area and hurried across to the bullet train tracks.  We arrived trackside with about 3 minutes to spare, which is plenty of time.  We boarded and were in Kyoto before we knew it.

Our train pulling in

When we arrived we went immediately to the information center and bought a combined bus and subway day pass for 1200 yen each.  We also got a bus map and a city map before getting on another train for a 10 minute ride to where we would get off for the bamboo forest.  The forest was about a 15 minute walk from the train station down narrow residential streets.  The forest itself took about 15 minutes to walk through in each direction and was really kind of cool.  There was a narrow, paved road cutting through the forest and we were startled to see cars and small trucks driving down it.  It didn’t seem to go anywhere and it was so narrow we thought it was just a pedestrian path through the forest.  While in the forest we also saw some workers cutting down some of the bamboo trees and replacing the fence that runs alongside the road with some of the newly cut branches.  We do not know exactly what they said while we were taking their picture but we know they were talking about us (we have picked up some words here and there) and they were laughing at us.  We think they found it comical that we were taking pictures of them doing a seemingly normal task.

Harvesting the bamboo

The fence that is being replaced

These are the guys who laughed at us.  Also in this shot you can see the finished product.

This is what the fence looks like before they replace it.

After the bamboo forest we got back on the train for a short 5 minute ride to the bus stop where we boarded a bus for the Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku as it is known in Japanese.  The pavilion is actually a Buddhist hall containing relics of Buddha.  The pavilion is part of a temple which contains gardens and other buildings besides the golden pavilion.  The temple dates to the year 1397 but the Golden Pavilion is a replica which replaced the original that was burned down in 1950.  The building is covered in a gold leaf coating, thus the name Golden Pavilion.  We thought this was one of the more impressive places we have seen on our trip, it was absolutely beautiful.  We decided that if we ever return to Japan in any other season or on a clearer day we would definitely return there.   The place was also pretty crowded.  Guidebooks warned us that no matter what day of the week or time of the year you visited, there would likely always be people there.  They were right.  There seemed to be more school children than anything else but this made sense since it was the middle of the week.  One such group of kids approached us with a camera and asked for a picture.  We thought they wanted us to take their picture but they wanted someone else to take a picture of their group with us in it!  We could only assume they had been given an assignment to speak English with tourists and this would be their proof that they completed their assignment.  We spent some time strolling around the grounds a little bit, walking through the garden and seeing several different views of the pavilion.  We also paid a machine 100 yen to receive our fortune.  The machine said that if your fortune was negative then you had to tie it to the appropriate place to get rid of the bad luck.  This seems to be popular at almost every shrine we have been to in Japan; there are usually places set aside with pieces of paper tied to them, apparently they are people’s wishes or bad fortunes or something.  Lucky for us our fortune said “excellent” which is always a good thing.  According to our fortune, “our wish may seem hard to be realized, but soon it will be realized with ease.  An expected visitor who we have not heard from in a long time will come soon.  And that missing thing?  It can’t be found.  It is too late”. 

This guy sits on top of the pavilion

Fortune tellers

Bad fortunes tied to a bush

After not tying our fortune to the fortune tying place for all to see, we headed back to the bus stop where we got on a bus bound for another shrine.  When we got off the bus we got sidetracked by a Mexican restaurant which is quite unusual.  The margaritas were calling our names so we went in.  They were still serving lunch and there were only a few other diners there at about 2:30 when we arrived.  We ordered some traditional Mexican fare served by none other than Japanese people (we thought there might be Mexicans there) and the food was actually very good.  The biggest differences between this place and back home are first the margaritas are a fraction of the size for the same price.  As a result we only ordered one each.  Second, there are no chips and salsa brought out.  There was a chip (yes, one chip) and guacamole served with our lunch.  We wondered how the chips don’t go stale serving them at that slow rate.  Lastly we had tea with our meal.

Margarita.  Notice the lemon inside..that is a normal sized lemon so you can see how small this drink was

See the chip with guacamole?

 

After a very satisfying lunch we became sidetracked and headed for the Kyoto Handicraft Center which sells Japanese made crafts and goods from different parts of the country.  We had been here before and found it to be a good place to buy nice authentic Japanese souvenirs.  When we finally left the Handicraft Center it was getting later.  We then headed to another shrine, Heian Jingu Shrine, which was only a few blocks away.  We arrived there a little before they were closing for the day but what we were able to see was quite impressive.  The shrine is very large.  The grounds take up about a city block with a good portion of it being a large, open, gravel covered area.  We were surprised to see a little old man raking the gravel in the corner and we wondered if he would be raking the entire grounds with this small rake.  He soon stopped to close the gates to the temple so we would not know if he was going to rake the whole place or not.

Entrance to the shrine

Cool Tori gate across the street outside of the shrine

Raking the gravel

After the Shrine we wanted to make one more stop.  We got on a subway for a short ride to the Kyoto Castle, which we knew would be close since it was now after 5.  We were right, it was closed but we wanted to check it out from the outside.  Since it was now quickly getting dark we were only able to get a few pictures from the outside.  This will give us another reason to return one day.

This not the actual castle but part of the wall surounding the castle..we could not get inside to see hte castle

We then started making our way back to the train station to buy our tickets for the return trip to Nagoya.  We arrived back at our hotel room a little after 7.