Kyoto Day 2

On Thursday we headed back to Kyoto.  We left Nagoya on the same train as the day before, 9:10 AM.  This time, however, we were ready.  We woke up on time, we had breakfast, and we headed down to the station with plenty of time to spare.  In fact we were probably there early because we had to wait about 15 minutes until our train arrived.  We got to Kyoto station 34 minutes later and found our way to the local train that would take us to our first destination of the day. 

Chris had come to Japan without Jackie in the summer of 2007 for what was supposed to be a 5 day trip but ended up being extended to nearly two weeks.  As a result he had a chance to do some exploring.  Since we had just spent 3 months in Japan earlier in the year and we had seen the major sights, he had the opportunity to explore some off the beaten path places.  One of the places he stumbled upon was Fushimi-Inari Shrine, just outside of Kyoto, Japan.  What brought Chris to this shrine was a geocache, but what brought us back was the amazingness (is that a word?) of this place.  The shrine is at the bottom of a mountain and there is a trail up the mountain to many smaller shrines.  What really makes this place stand out though, is the thousands of Torii gates lining the path up the mountain.  According to Wikipedia, Inari is seen as the patron of business.  Each of the Torii is donated by a Japanese business.  Merchants and manufacturers worship Inari for wealth. Donated torii lining footpaths are part of what makes this place so interesting and different.  We got off the train and immediately saw a giant Torii gate with a couple of foxes on either side of the gates.  We were not able to understand the importance of the foxes but throughout the walk up the mountain, at each of the smaller shrines, we saw tons of fox statues.  We later found out that the main shrine, on the bottom of the mountain, was founded in the year 794.

We started walking up the mountain along with thousands (or so it seemed) of other people.  Lining the path almost completely up the mountain, for probably close to 2 miles, were thousands of Torii gates.  This was probably the most impressive place we have been to in Japan so far.  The people seemed to thin out the higher we got on the mountain but the scenery got even better.  If we said that the walk was easy, we would be lying.  Much of the walk was climbing stairs.  Stairs are not hard but when you are climbing stairs for a mile at a time it gets old (and difficult) fast.

 

Near the top of the mountain we took a break and had a drink at one of the many little shops that were set up every 10 minutes or so.  We had two drinks: Amazake, which is some kind of rice drink with ginger; and Ameyu, which is some kind of sugar drink, also with ginger.  Both were hot and actually quite good.  We enjoyed these while sitting at a table enjoying the viewpoint near the top of the mountain.  After our drinks we headed back down the mountain towards the train station.  We waited about 15 minutes for our train, which took us back to Kyoto.  

From Kyoto we headed for Osaka, which is one of the major cities in Japan.  We had been to Osaka before; we saw a Sumo wrestling match there with Jackie’s brother when we last visited Japan.  This time we were here for the Hard Rock Café in the city.  We are collecting Hard Rock Café magnets and we hadn’t been to the two in Osaka before.  The Shinkansen station in Osaka was only a 15 minute ride from Kyoto.  From there we boarded a subway for a 12 minute ride to the Hard Rock.  What we were looking forward to more than the magnet was a hamburger.  We hadn’t had a really good burger since we had been home and we were really craving a burger with fries.  We sat down, placed our order and eagerly anticipated our meal.  When it arrived it was absolutely delicious.  We drank a couple of beers with our burger before heading to Osaka Castle.

Osaka castle was only about 5 minutes away by subway.  From the subway stop though, the castle seemed so close but it probably took us 20 minutes to walk to the actual castle.  The castle was quite impressive, probably the nicest we have seen in Japan so far.  While the castle is a replica of the original, it is still impressive.  The castle and the area surrounding the castle sit on about 15 acres in the middle of a major city in Japan, which make the views kind of impressive.  We paid the couple of hundred yen to a vending machine in order to get in and climbed to the top where we were treated to some impressive views of the surrounding city.  Within the castle is a museum and we walked around learning the history of the castle and its surroundings.  Since the castle was getting ready to close at 5, we started heading out.  We made our way back to the nearest train station where we boarded a local train towards the Shinkansen.  We bought tickets for the 6 PM bullet train back to Nagoya, where we arrived just before 7.

Vending machine where we got our tickets

Life sized replicas of the animals on the roof of the castle

 

Once we got back to Nagoya we called Chris’s co-workers to confirm that we were still on for the night: we had plans to see the Beatles perform at a local bar.  Well, not exactly.  The Beatles were actually a Japanese cover band covering the Beatles. They play every 3^rd or 4^th Thursday of the month at a small bar in Nagoya called Armadillos.  We were lucky enough to be there when they played this month.  We met Chris’s two co-workers plus one of the girls from the office. The bar was about a 25 minute subway ride from the hotel and we were meeting at 8:15.  We arrived about 5 minutes before the others; we grabbed a table, and ordered some beers.  Since everyone else had eaten already we only ordered appetizers.  We got some popcorn and some nachos.  The popcorn was normal popcorn. The nachos were by no means normal.  They actually gave us Doritos with melted cheese and salsa.  At first we knew they tasted familiar and it was not until the way out when we saw several bags of Doritos that we knew what we had eaten.  The Japanese band was actually pretty good.  If you closed your eyes you would have thought that the Beatles were actually playing.  The interesting thing about these guys was that when they were finished playing they let members of the audience come up on stage and play or sing with them.  We were not bold, or drunk enough to come on stage with them  and sing or play Beatles songs, but we enjoyed watching everyone else play and sing.  We left the bar a little after 11 and headed back for the hotel.  For the first time since being in Japan we were fortunate enough to have a subway that was not too crowded, which we welcomed.

Not a member of the band, just a dedicated fan