Silver Week Number 2
Originally published at megatiny.com. You can comment here or there.
It’s already been a couple weeks, but at the end of September my friend Bowen showed up in Japan and we took a couple trips around before he headed back home.
One of the trips we took was a whirlwind tour of Koyasan, Nara, and Kyoto. I made a post about Koyasan last year, and it continued its trend of being 10 degrees colder at the top of the mountain. This time, however, we stayed overnight. We stayed at the youth hostel on Koyasan, and I was pretty pleased with it! Each group seemed to get its own room and although there was no sound abatement whatsoever, once everyone got to sleep it was dead quiet. I had trouble getting to sleep, sadly. I blame it on a combination of the buckwheat pillow and too much green tea the previous evening. We ate dinner at a little izakaya (bar restaurant thing), which seemed to be about the only thing up there open after 6pm, apart from the convenience stores. It had some pretty tasty food, but not really accessible for the hard-of-Japanesing. In the morning we went to a Buddhist service (we were told it started at 6:30 but it looks like we got there late-but it still went on for an hour while we were there), and then took the train down to Nara.
It was raining in Nara. Which was kind of unpleasant, but it let up after a little while and we had a reasonable time, apart from the fact that it appears to be the once-a-century-or-so construction period for Nara, and so quite a few things were under construction. One of the main temple buildings was completely dismantled for rebuilding! We also watched people cowering from deer while holding deer biscuits.
The next two days were spent in Kyoto. I have decided that 2 days in Kyoto is the right number of days to spend there. One day is never enough, but 2 is enough to get around and see enough various and sundry things. However, that determination may have been somewhat influenced by general temple overload. We saw quite a few temples on our 4-day trip!
After lunch on the second day, Bowen left for Tokyo, and I wasted a little time in the Kyoto station department store before heading back home to my own comfy bed and pillow. I am strongly considering getting myself some sort of travel pillow to take with me to hotels, since almost no hotels have pillows thin or squishy enough for me.