My feet are in so much pain....
So Kyoto was fun although it involved a lot of walking. A lot of walking.
We (Margarette, James and I) arrived at the station around 5:30 in the morning and cleaned up in the restroom a bit. We were feeling rather grimy from sitting on the bus all night (departed from Tokyo station at 8:50 pm). Since it was too early to purchase our bus tickets at the time, we thought we'd try walking to our dorm, since James had so kindly printed out the sightseeing maps for us.
We walked for two hours to get to the area where our dorm was located. It seemed closer on the map, but then again, the map wasn't proportional - a fact which we discovered an hour into the walking. It also took us a while and a lot of pestering the locals to locate our tiny dorm, which was located on this narrow, obscured side street. Finally, we arrived, and... it was something of a disappointment. The service was unfriendly, the place looked suspiciously unclean, and it cost an extra 100 yen to take a shower for ten minutes. Not to mention 300 yen to borrow a bath towl. We were told we couldn't check in for another six hours, and by that point I was pretty much ready to say "that's okay, we'll find somewhere else."
However, we left most of our luggage there, and began the long trudge back to the station. In hindsight, it might have been better to take the bus back and spare our feet; but, we did get a pretty good feel of the area and it was good exercise. We got lots of pictures, too, so that was cool :) We also stopped by Shosei Garden on the way back to the station - it was pretty, if a bit infested with mosquitos. There was also a bee apparently since there was a sign station "Beware of the Bee." We were intimidated; nevertheless, we forged on.
Upon arriving back at the station, we sat down to rest our feet and then obtained our two-day sightseeing bus passes. And then the actual travelling began.
>
We started by heading off to Arashiyama to go see monkeys
We ended up seeing a bridge instead and just taking pictures of pictures of monkeys >_> By that time, it was around lunchtime, so we made our way to the tourist-trap area to get something to eat, and ended up in this small restauran that served udon, soba, and donburi foodstuffs.
It was the first time I felt discriminated against for being a foreigner.
We ate, and then ran out of that place because although the servers were civil enough, there was still this eerie feeling of "Get out, stupid foreigners" prickling our skins. From there, we browsed through the stores a bit for omiyage (souvenirs), then decided to move on to check out Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion). It was quite nice, but it had started to rain, our feet were tired and so after briefly running through the temple, we took the bus back to the dorm. We had considered changing our reservations to a ryokan (more traditional japanese inn-like place), but by that point we were tired, we didn't know if the ryokan would be better, and we already knew where our dorm was so we settled on staying at Ise dorm.
And we lost the dorm again. The bus stop we arrived at was the correct one, but located on a different street. Eventually we managed to find our way back to the street we were already familiar with. We even met a really nice lady who gave us one of her spare umbrellas. We checked into the dorm and discovered that it was cleaner than we had first expected. After resting for perhaps half an hour or so, we went back out to Gion in the hopes of spotting geisha or maiko.
We arrived at Gion with no problem, but then we made the mistake of letting me lead the way. This was unusual, because both James and Margarette mentioned later that they already knew which direction was the correct one, yet followed me anyway. Let it be noted for future reference that this is not a good idea. However, we did find a nice supermarket and a really quaint Ukiyoe museum because we unwisely followed my lead, so the journey wasn't a complete loss.
We eventually made our way back to Gion and the intersection with the river; I thought the night scene was absolutely beautiful. James and Margarette seemed rather less enamoured, but I think part of it was that they really wanted to eat. They continued to humor me for a while longer and so we walked up and down the streets, passing the geisha teahouse district. The novelty of walking further quickly wore off though, and we decided to head back although we had not yet seen geisha or maiko.
But then, as we were waiting for the bus to take us back to Ise, two maiko (one and a half perhaps ^^;;) passed us by. I was content. It was 10:00 by the time we arrived back at Ise and ate. Although we were only out for one day, I'm pretty sure all three of us felt like three weeks had already passed in the course of that day. Darn those time warps.
We fell into bed exhausted, with a vague plan of what to do the next day, but no real decisions made.
Our second day started off on something of a lazy note. We said we'd get up at 7:00ish, but no one really crawled out of bed until 8:00. We paid the darned 100 yen for the shower, which was actually well worth it after the previous days grime and sweat. Ick.
After a コンビニ (convenience store) breakfast sponsored by Lawson's, Margarette headed off to Uji to check out the Tale of Genji museum while James and I hung around Kyoto Station for a while for some omiyage shopping. Margarette's intended 1.5 hour visit to the museum stretched out to 3 hours because it was a lot cooler than she was expecting it to be ^^;; so James and I decided we'd take a little stroll along the "Path of Philosophy."
So we did that - it was a very nice path, right next to a suburban area stretching from the Ginkakuji temple, to the Ninsomething temple further south. When we finally arrived at the end, Margarette had finished her mini-tour of Uji, so we all gathered at Kiyomizu temple. As always, the street of vendors populating Kiyomizu were quite impressive, though none of us actually purchased anything in the end. We got quite a few silly pictures though.
We had taken care of most of the day by then, but I wanted to go back to Gion to see if we could catch some geisha and maiko as they headed off for work. For most of the day, our group had been trying to meet up with James (from UT) and Maria, who had just arrived in Kyoto themselves, but it wasn't to be. They had probably spent their morning much the same way our group had spent our first morning in Kyoto, so they were ready to collapse in bed.
So our group of three headed back to Gion, and this time, we had even better luck with finding maiko and geisha. We saw four before we went off for some nutritional nourishment. XD We even got pictures this time around!
Anyhow, due to indecisiveness and an unwillingness to eat expensively, we ended up in a rather upscale 居酒屋 (erm... Japanse drinking place?) Wow, did I feel out of place there. It was pretty obvious that we were foreigners due to the blank looks that we gave them every time they came by to pick up an order -_-;; It was pretty embarassing, but I guess it made a good experience. Or well, a memorable one at least.
Seeing as how our dinner was located on the very にぎやか (busy, lively, bustling) Shijo Street, we took some print club pictures, and then wandered up and down the streets shopping yet again for omiyage. You know, for all the omiyage shopping that we did, we didn't end up purchasing very much. Anyway, a visit to God Mountain (the name of a coffee shop) concluded our adventures in Kyoto.
With one last stop at our beloved Lawsons before the bus ride home, we rode back to Tokyo, to arrive yet at around 5:30 in the morning and bum around until the trains finally started up again.
I'm rather content that we only spent two days in Kyoto. Perhaps we didn't see all of the sights, but really, I'm happy with what we were able to do. :D
We (Margarette, James and I) arrived at the station around 5:30 in the morning and cleaned up in the restroom a bit. We were feeling rather grimy from sitting on the bus all night (departed from Tokyo station at 8:50 pm). Since it was too early to purchase our bus tickets at the time, we thought we'd try walking to our dorm, since James had so kindly printed out the sightseeing maps for us.
We walked for two hours to get to the area where our dorm was located. It seemed closer on the map, but then again, the map wasn't proportional - a fact which we discovered an hour into the walking. It also took us a while and a lot of pestering the locals to locate our tiny dorm, which was located on this narrow, obscured side street. Finally, we arrived, and... it was something of a disappointment. The service was unfriendly, the place looked suspiciously unclean, and it cost an extra 100 yen to take a shower for ten minutes. Not to mention 300 yen to borrow a bath towl. We were told we couldn't check in for another six hours, and by that point I was pretty much ready to say "that's okay, we'll find somewhere else."
However, we left most of our luggage there, and began the long trudge back to the station. In hindsight, it might have been better to take the bus back and spare our feet; but, we did get a pretty good feel of the area and it was good exercise. We got lots of pictures, too, so that was cool :) We also stopped by Shosei Garden on the way back to the station - it was pretty, if a bit infested with mosquitos. There was also a bee apparently since there was a sign station "Beware of the Bee." We were intimidated; nevertheless, we forged on.
Upon arriving back at the station, we sat down to rest our feet and then obtained our two-day sightseeing bus passes. And then the actual travelling began.
>
We started by heading off to Arashiyama to go see monkeys
We ended up seeing a bridge instead and just taking pictures of pictures of monkeys >_> By that time, it was around lunchtime, so we made our way to the tourist-trap area to get something to eat, and ended up in this small restauran that served udon, soba, and donburi foodstuffs.
It was the first time I felt discriminated against for being a foreigner.
We ate, and then ran out of that place because although the servers were civil enough, there was still this eerie feeling of "Get out, stupid foreigners" prickling our skins. From there, we browsed through the stores a bit for omiyage (souvenirs), then decided to move on to check out Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion). It was quite nice, but it had started to rain, our feet were tired and so after briefly running through the temple, we took the bus back to the dorm. We had considered changing our reservations to a ryokan (more traditional japanese inn-like place), but by that point we were tired, we didn't know if the ryokan would be better, and we already knew where our dorm was so we settled on staying at Ise dorm.
And we lost the dorm again. The bus stop we arrived at was the correct one, but located on a different street. Eventually we managed to find our way back to the street we were already familiar with. We even met a really nice lady who gave us one of her spare umbrellas. We checked into the dorm and discovered that it was cleaner than we had first expected. After resting for perhaps half an hour or so, we went back out to Gion in the hopes of spotting geisha or maiko.
We arrived at Gion with no problem, but then we made the mistake of letting me lead the way. This was unusual, because both James and Margarette mentioned later that they already knew which direction was the correct one, yet followed me anyway. Let it be noted for future reference that this is not a good idea. However, we did find a nice supermarket and a really quaint Ukiyoe museum because we unwisely followed my lead, so the journey wasn't a complete loss.
We eventually made our way back to Gion and the intersection with the river; I thought the night scene was absolutely beautiful. James and Margarette seemed rather less enamoured, but I think part of it was that they really wanted to eat. They continued to humor me for a while longer and so we walked up and down the streets, passing the geisha teahouse district. The novelty of walking further quickly wore off though, and we decided to head back although we had not yet seen geisha or maiko.
But then, as we were waiting for the bus to take us back to Ise, two maiko (one and a half perhaps ^^;;) passed us by. I was content. It was 10:00 by the time we arrived back at Ise and ate. Although we were only out for one day, I'm pretty sure all three of us felt like three weeks had already passed in the course of that day. Darn those time warps.
We fell into bed exhausted, with a vague plan of what to do the next day, but no real decisions made.
Our second day started off on something of a lazy note. We said we'd get up at 7:00ish, but no one really crawled out of bed until 8:00. We paid the darned 100 yen for the shower, which was actually well worth it after the previous days grime and sweat. Ick.
After a コンビニ (convenience store) breakfast sponsored by Lawson's, Margarette headed off to Uji to check out the Tale of Genji museum while James and I hung around Kyoto Station for a while for some omiyage shopping. Margarette's intended 1.5 hour visit to the museum stretched out to 3 hours because it was a lot cooler than she was expecting it to be ^^;; so James and I decided we'd take a little stroll along the "Path of Philosophy."
So we did that - it was a very nice path, right next to a suburban area stretching from the Ginkakuji temple, to the Ninsomething temple further south. When we finally arrived at the end, Margarette had finished her mini-tour of Uji, so we all gathered at Kiyomizu temple. As always, the street of vendors populating Kiyomizu were quite impressive, though none of us actually purchased anything in the end. We got quite a few silly pictures though.
We had taken care of most of the day by then, but I wanted to go back to Gion to see if we could catch some geisha and maiko as they headed off for work. For most of the day, our group had been trying to meet up with James (from UT) and Maria, who had just arrived in Kyoto themselves, but it wasn't to be. They had probably spent their morning much the same way our group had spent our first morning in Kyoto, so they were ready to collapse in bed.
So our group of three headed back to Gion, and this time, we had even better luck with finding maiko and geisha. We saw four before we went off for some nutritional nourishment. XD We even got pictures this time around!
Anyhow, due to indecisiveness and an unwillingness to eat expensively, we ended up in a rather upscale 居酒屋 (erm... Japanse drinking place?) Wow, did I feel out of place there. It was pretty obvious that we were foreigners due to the blank looks that we gave them every time they came by to pick up an order -_-;; It was pretty embarassing, but I guess it made a good experience. Or well, a memorable one at least.
Seeing as how our dinner was located on the very にぎやか (busy, lively, bustling) Shijo Street, we took some print club pictures, and then wandered up and down the streets shopping yet again for omiyage. You know, for all the omiyage shopping that we did, we didn't end up purchasing very much. Anyway, a visit to God Mountain (the name of a coffee shop) concluded our adventures in Kyoto.
With one last stop at our beloved Lawsons before the bus ride home, we rode back to Tokyo, to arrive yet at around 5:30 in the morning and bum around until the trains finally started up again.
I'm rather content that we only spent two days in Kyoto. Perhaps we didn't see all of the sights, but really, I'm happy with what we were able to do. :D