京都の旅行について
KYOTO!
So it is done, Joshua & I made it to all the way to the ancient city of the King of Japan. And in one piece, if only just barely. It was quite an adventure from start to finish and our experiences ran the gamut, from the tickets being almost twice as expensive as we thought they had been posted as, to sneaking cheap convenience store food into expensive cafes, to accidently spitting on the head of a man in the bus, and even a close call where we almost ended up in backwater Toba, half the island away. All in all, we learned a little bit about life and alot about each other.
Thanks to technology and Rachael's camera, I was able to take a whole load of pictures and I've put up the highlights for everyone here.
So our journey begins. On the morning of Saturday the 29th we schedualed to meet each other at the station at 8 in readiness for our 8:30 departure. Being the genius that I am I barely made it there by 8:15 but there was still plenty of time for our 2 3/4 hour train trip on the lovely Kintetsu. The train ride was uneventful and the most exciting momement of the trip occurred here as entering Kyoto we passed...
THE NINTENDO BUILDING. There it was, a mere several hundred yards from me, busy making me all the video games that I can't afford.
We arrived at about 12:30 and checked into K's Backpackers' Hostel but not before stopping for a brief photo opportunity with one of the amusing vending machines in Japan.
K's was very nice and only a short distance from Kyoto Eki (station). Everything was very clean and well maintained and we stayed in a dorm room with three other people for 2500 yen for one night. We had come expecting snow but were welcomed with a beautiful sunny day in the 60s. After stowing our gear, our first stop was a garden a block or two from the hostel.
The garden was beautiful and if you ignored the sounds of the cars and the occasional sky scraper or apartment building towering over, it could have been out in the middle of the country and not in a 1.2 million person city. But there was a subtle layer of danger masking and mocking the entire sordid foray as we were reminded to
"Be careful of the bee", and we quaked.
Next was a huge temple across from Kyoto Tower and a couple blocks from the gardens. It is the gate to this Temple that I am standing triumphantly under up above.
The complex was made of up several small buildings and two very large ones, and interestingly, one of them was entirely covered in a super structure while they seemed to be doing repairs. In Japan it is custom to ritualisticly disassemble and reassemble traditional buildings now and again but I had always been told they still used traditional methods to do this. There was nothing traditional about this super structure.
After that we went to Nijojo, the castle of the shogun. The shogun had a kicking house and apparently the place is a national heritage treasure of the world or something. So inside was one of the coolest things I have ever tread upon. The coridors of the castle are all built with something called a nightengale floor that squeeks (like a nightengale) when it is walked upon so assassins can't sneak in. This was very neat to me because I had just read this fiction that my mom had bought me called Across the Nightengale Floor. It was awesome actually walking on it after having read about it. But even more incredible to me was that the outer walls of this castle that the nightengale floor was protecting were just paper. You could look where the different screens met and look right out onto the lawn of the castle. What fascinates me is that they put enough effort into protecting themselves to build an annoying squeeky floor but still left the walls of their castle paper and plywood.
Next we took the long bus ride up to the north of the city where we saw the beautiful Kinkokuji temple. Not much to talk about here other then how durned pretty it was. It shone just as brilliantly in person and was built in the shadow of the mountains. Very pretty.
Next we heading to Gion, a district famed for its geisha and traditional shops. What we found was McDonalds and over priced sushi and not one geisha. Needless to say I won't dignify it with any pictures.
The next day we got up early and headed for Ginkokuji temple, up in the NE of the city. The area around it was much what I had expected of Gion (except still no geisha) and was very pretty. The day was still sunny, but cooler, in the upper 40s.
As if staged, two dogs were posed next to a bridge on the way up the hill leading into Ginkokuji. After exploring the temple we walked along the Philosophers Path, which lines along the side of a small canal through this more traditional side of town. We were on a time schedual, as we had to make it back for the 4:15 train, so we hiked through town. It was incredible all the humongous shrines and temples we passed, each one seemingly surpassing the last. After a lunch of yakisoba we got back on the train and headed home. Excluding one mess up that resulted in us almost going to Toba and having to wait an hour for the next train at the transfer we got back to go old Nagoya just fine.
Now back to school... lucky me...