On Monday we left Tokyo and traveled to Kyoto by Shinkansen. Tokyo Station is huge and busy but there are pretty clear signs everywhere to tell you where you need to go, so we found our platform pretty easily and had a chance to buy boxed lunches to eat while on the train.
Erika's had beef, vegetables, and rice with egg and really crunchy pickled vegetables on the side.
The trip took just under 3 hours because there were a decent number of stops between Tokyo and Kyoto. The train would get going to about 250km/h but then have to slow down again in order to safely stop at a station. Eventually we made it to Kyoto and had to navigate the subway system without the benefit of prepaid cards that automatically figured out fares for us. We managed to make it to our hotel though, and were greeted with cold drinks and cookies while our luggage was brought to our room for us. This was definitely our biggest splurge of the trip, our hotel room is gorgeous and the service here is pretty amazing too.
In the sitting area there was a box with tea and cakes.
Among the many thoughtful amenities the hotel provides, they give you a card with the weather for the next day on it. It's signed by a hotel employee, so you know it's official.
Philip wasn't feeling very good on the train, so he ate his lunch once we got to our hotel. It had breaded pork, rice, and a little bit of cabbage salad.
They have these sweet cakes made especially for the hotel.
Yesterday we started by grabbing some pastries for breakfast at a small bakery nearby and then headed into Kyoto Imperial Palace Park to eat. There was a large game of croquet going on, involving 10 players who were all wearing pinnies with their numbers on them. There seemed to be some variations to the rules as we knew them (and they were playing on asphalt!), but for the most part it seemed pretty normal.
After that we caught a bus to the edge of Kyoto where we walked to the zen Ginkaku temple. Most of the walk was along a narrow street filled with souvenir shops. The streets in the whole area are incredibly narrow, and there's barely enough room for the cars to pass pedestrians. I don't know what would happen should two cars come face-to-face.
A map of the temple grounds.
A worker raking sand outside one of the buildings.
Some of the local wildlife. It was the first time either of us had seen a mantis in the wild.
Some of the large sand sculptures.
The entire gardens were incredibly well-manicured and serene. This was the busiest temple we visited, but was still peaceful in its own way.
After we left Ginkaku-ji, we walked down the tiny side streets towards Honen-in, which we managed to find despite the fact that there were no signs for it along the way we went. We managed to find a sign for it on the path we
left on, of course.
We then followed the
Tetsugaku no Michi (path of philosophy), which is a narrow path along a cherry-tree lined canal. We found all kinds of wildlife in the canal, and managed to see a few fish hunting for food.
In some parts of the canal there were a lot of sea shells too.
We found these cats that apparently didn't belong to anyone along the path.
Just past the end of the path we reached Eikan-do. This was a large temple complex where we were allowed to visit many of the buildings and see some impressive statues and incredibly ornate temple decorations. Photography is not allowed inside the buildings, so we can't show you any of the really cool stuff.
This was one of the few trees we managed to find that had already changed. I can only imagine how impressive Kyoto looks in the fall!
This pagoda was up a bunch of stairs on a hillside. Unfortunately we were too tired after a full day of walking to make the climb.
We continued through the small backstreets towards the subway station. Nearly all of the streets have streams running along them through the gutters, giving home to all kinds of wildlife. We managed to find crabs in one gutter.
The moisture was also perfect for mushroom growth; they popped up everwhere.
We passed this impressive looking building along the way.
We finally made it to the subway station to go back to our hotel. This subway station was completely enclosed from the tracks, and there were platform doors that opened so that you could get onto the train.
This is the Kamo river that runs through Kyoto. It's quite shallow, and a popular place for wading.
Another stray(?) cat.
In the evening we went out for our first sushi dinner. It's hard to believe we've managed to go this long without eating sushi! It was a conveyor-belt sushi place, where the dishes go around the restaurant on a conveyor, and you just grab whatever plates look good. At the end they count up your plates and charge you based on that. I think we even managed to figure out what most of the stuff we ate was!
This was the stack of plates we ended up with between the two of us.
After that we walked around the covered pedestrian shopping area that was nearby. We found a 2L can of beer, complete with a handle so that you could presumably drink directly out of it.
Kyoto is absolutely littered with bicycles. There are signs everywhere warning you that your bike will be impounded if you park it on the sidewalk, but people seem to ignore it completely. I'm sure they make a good amount of money off fines. This was a paid parking area for bicycles.
This restaurant had a giant animatronic crab over the entrance.
And there was a store with an impressive amount of mushrooms. The ones on the right come pre-packaged with limes and fern leaves.
