Foreign languages frustrate me.
Sorry, just had to get that out.
We somehow managed to sleep through almost half of our time in Kyoto, which seems to be a re-occurring theme in our lives. We've seen so much in the past couple of days it's all running together, and I keep finding more pictures and having that "ah-ha" moment when I remember something about the trip.
Needless to say, this post will continue to expand as I sort through the 351 pictures we took while exploring the city.
No, that is not a typo.
Thursday and Friday of our "trip within a trip" was spent at "home" in Kyoto, hitting as many "must-see" places as we could in two days. Well, in the late mornings and afternoons.
Most guide sources recommend spending 10 days in the former Japanese capital, and they say four is the bare minimum to dedicate.
That just wasn't possible, so we did what we could.
Thursday, we bought a one-day bus pass and spent the day in the northern and western areas of Kyoto.
The first stop was a highly anticipated western-style birthday breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs and granola with a side of toast. Scratch that. In Japan, you get toast with a side of eggs, bacon and granola cereal.
Seriously, that was how the menu read.
From there, we headed to the Golden Palace, a gold-plates structure that sits on a lake in the mountain foothills. It was shiny.
We stopped at a few more shrines and castles in the area, including "the" zen garden of the world (the one that all other zen gardens are compared to.)
We then attempted to hop a bus for a bamboo forest and instead followed the guide book's suggestion and got lost in Kyoto.
We were the only tourists who saw this petrified rock pile.
The bamboo forest was worth the trip.
I tried three times to type out a description for the road to get to the forest, but I settled for posting the following picture. "Beautiful" just sounded too cliche.
The bamboo forest trail meandered through a dense thicket of towering trees, temples and tombstones. In some places, you couldn't see through the bamboo stalks.
We did some shopping in the village area, got lost again, and finally made it home.
Ok, for slight elaboration on that second detour: Ray didn't know that I had slipped the camera into his backpack on the bus, which resulted in me sprinting four blocks after the bus until he found it.
I'm pretty sure I knocked someone over. Maybe more.
We (let me clarify: not me) failed to recalibrate our position after the chase and wound up a good km east of our hotel.
All's well that ends well.
For dinner, we had our new favorite Kyoto cuisine: ramen with shumei and fried chicken. The chefs remembered us from earlier in the week, and they have become quite fond of us. One gave me free rice, and they didn't laugh at us nearly as much as they did on our first visit.
We conched out shortly after arriving home; I can seem to get enough sleep no matter how hard I try. Ten hours of sleep and I'm still fighting to keep my eyes open.
That's part of the reason I had to eat crap for breakfast.
Ok, it wasn't literal crap but it might as well have been: donuts from 7-11 were the only recognizable thing I could get my hands on, so I did the dirty deed and boy did they taste good. Yes, they have 7-11's here.
We had a tour of the Imperial Palace at 10 am (which I thought was 10:30) and after ignoring the alarm for an hour and packing up the room, we were scurrying in with just enough time to spare.
You have to book tickets well in advance for the Imperial tours, because you have to get "permission" to enter. I say that like we're so important, but I imagine they let just about anyone in there and it's really just for show.
The grounds were immaculate and the tour was extremely informative. It never ceases to amaze me how closely blended everything is in these towns.
We were standing in the emperor's tea garden, where some of the most famous tea ceremonies occur, and you can hear the intersection alerts signify it's time to cross the street.
There were some places in the castle that were off limits, and we were under the watchful eye of an Imperial guard the entire time, but you can't shake a fist at a free tour of an emperor's palace.
Well, you can try to shake a fist at the guard, but I don't recommend it.
We found a cute cafe near our next stop, some kind of ninja-proof palace a few miles from the Imperial Palace. Ray finally got his curry and rice, and I found out that the Japanese will fry just about anything in tempura batter.
Next, we saw Nijo-jo, a castle built by a shogun with the explicit intention of out-doing the Imperial Palace. It was built with nightingale floors, built intentionally by the residing shogun to creak with each step taken. This was done to prevent sneak attacks by ninjas and samurai.
Naturally, I was able to walk across the floor making no sound whatsoever. NOT NINJA PROOF!
JK.
We had a great view of Kyoto and the mountains from the castle walls, and we took a 'bonus' tour of an art gallery as well.
Most of the ancient structures we've seen have been decorated with painted sliding doors, and the gallery displayed the artwork that originated inside the shogun's private dwelling inside the ninja-proof castle. Since that area of the castle was off limits, it gets dubbed "bonus."
As at the Imperial Palace, the ground crew constantly performs maintenance and upkeep. The tour guide told us that some projects just continuously roll; they finish one task throughout the grounds, like re-thatch the roof, then no sooner have they finished than they go right back to the beginning because it's just that time again.
I assumed it was because the grounds were so immense that the projects just took so much energy, and I was right. When you cut the grass of a 5-square-km palace with a knife, you're bound to go a bit slow... Like this guy.
We stumbled upon another bamboo forest in that area, and could hear a lot of monkeys. We didn't see any, but the forest was still interesting.
With six hours to kill until our overnight bus ride "home," we headed to east Kyoto, which is a popular night life area.
Our guide book told us it might be possible to spot geisha, who usually try to remain unseen, so we set out to stalk down and spot as many as we could.
This may sound creepy and a complete waste of time, but when you have hours to kill and nowhere to spend it, stalking famed and mysterious locals doesn't seem like the worst pastime in the world.
We spotted 13 geisha in about an hour's time, which is pretty profound since a good portion of that was spent inside shops looking at goods.
Ray made me sit outside a liquor store and pretend to be on my phone so I could sneak pictures of one geisha. I'm lucky I didn't get stabbed.
We ate one last time at the ramen shop near our hotel, and found out exactly what it means to be a "regular." The lofty chef who initially laughed at our food selections came out to greet us at the door and tried his best to speak as much english as he could.
He even snuck me some extra pork.
I wish I knew how to say, "We won't be back" in Japanese, because they probably expect us back tomorrow.
Unfortunately (for our bellies, not our adventures) we'll be in Tsukuba in our cozy apartment; that's if this 8-hour overnight bus gets us to Tokyo as planned.
The bus reeks of Japanese snacks and cigarettes, and none of the 50-plus occupants speak English. Im at the point where everything I eat makes me sick, probably from the lack of sleep and constant stress of traveling, not to mention I'm having to eat way out of my GI's comfort zone.
The swaying bus isn't helping matters.
Tomorrow, we hope to take advantage of being in Tokyo early. We'll try to catch some fish market action before it closes down and sneak some time at the aquarium to see penguins!!
Ray's already asleep, which means it's just me and my PC for the next 2:28 minutes of battery life. Hopefully I can catch up on some writing assignments and get a head start on client programs while I can!
Sleeping upright has never been a strong point of mine.
Until next time, thanks for reading! While I'm doing this to keep a memory of all the places we're seeing, it's nice to know others are benefitting from reading it, so thanks for sharing :)