Kanazawa

In the morning we caught the train from Kyoto to Kanazawa. This time we didn't reserve our seat in advance (with the JR rail pass you can get free reservations but you need to make them at the train station), we got on the train but the car was crowded (although no one was standing). In Kanazawa we were in a very nice hotel where somehow our reservation was screwed up and we were given a nicer room. We were a bit worried that we would have to pay the greater bill, but it all worked out in the end. We decided to walk around the town, which turned into a day of at least 20km of walking!

First we went through the old samurai district, to see the earthen defence walls of the town and to go into some of the poorer foot soldier houses.

We continued to walk to the temple Myoryuhi, also known as the ninja temple although there were no ninjas there. The temple is tiny on the outside but confusing and large on the inside with 23 rooms and 29 staircases and 7 different levels but officially only 2 floors (the stairs to the third floor was a side wall in a closet).

The temple was built by Toshitsune of the Kaga clan and he built many temples to house his soldiers and this temple stood in the middle and was the lookout. There were hidden stair cases below floor boards that could be pulled out, stairs where the risers were made out of rice paper so you could watch from underneath who was going up the stairs (and possibly stab them), double sliding doors for quick escapes and a room for committing seppuku when you lost the battle. You had to make a reservation to visit the temple, although the tours we saw were never full of people, perhaps it was a way to limit the crowds.

Following the temple visit (my favorite of Kanazawa) we walked up to the famous Kenrokuen strolling gardens next to the old castle. The gardens had some famous pine trees that needed wooden supports and were hundreds of years old.

There is also the famous two-legged lantern which looked very picturesque next to the water.

There was also the oldest fountain in Japan which flowed based on gravity fuelled water pressure.

Our walking wasn't finished, we next walked to the rebuilt castle of Kanazawa (which they were still rebuilding).

It was interesting to see the wall construction, all bamboo and mud.

Back at the hotel we checked in and then headed out again to visit the Chaya district, similar to Gion in Kyoto with old wooden houses lining streets. It was too bad we only saw it in the dark, I thought it would be more lively at night similar to Gion. We didn't find anything to eat there, but luckily we had our taste of Takoyaki earlier at one of the street vendors.

Kyoto Day 3

On our third day in Kyoto we headed out to the famous Fushima Inari shrine, this shrine includes ~1000 Tori gates and you could have seen a small part of it in the movie Memoirs of Geisha. Unlike Switzerland, Japan has many train companies running their own stations and train lines, the biggest is Japan Rail of which we have a pass for, but to get to the shrine we took a different rail system, a commuter system for Kyoto. We walked through the shrine, which was huge and stretched up the mountain. Gates and gates and gates and tons and tons of tourists.

They thinned out as we got higher up the mountain, and we only went halfway up!

The shrine is to? a fox, and the fox likes deep fried tofu, so there was part of the shrine where deep fried tofu was left.

There were fox statues all throughout the shrine, and for ~5CHF we had a wood fox face that you would write a wish on and hang on the shrine, and I guess at a special temple day they would burn the offerings.

After the gates we went back into Gion and tried to find the Takoyaki place (octopus balls). I missed making Takoyaki in Vancouver, however the place was closed but we were directed to another great restaurant. We sat at low tables which had a large hotplate set in the table (actually, most of the table was hotplate). Again Sachi ordered and we had Yakisoba (noodle dish which was so good we ordered a second) and a second dish of pancake with noodles and egg and different variations of filling on top. Very tasty.

To finish our large lunch we had flavoured ice for dessert, this is apparently the thing to have, especially during summer festivals (and was also shown in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha). We got a giant pile of ice shavings with syrup flavour and cream drizzled over it.

Once again we were so full after lunch that we didn't really eat anything for dinner. After lunch we walked around the shopping areas of Kyoto, first in the older Gion area, and then to the more modern and less touristy section next door. Oh my was there a tremendous amount of shopping, it easily dwarfed anything in Switzerland, and Canada too for that matter. I believe lots of people come from all the neighbouring areas to shop in Kyoto on the weekend. They had huge long covered arcades just for foot traffic and full of shops, there were lots of Kimonos being sold (the cheap ones for ~30CHF that we saw many girls wearing around Kyoto) and young people calling out in front of the shops about the deals inside. In contrast to Canada (and even Switzerland I believe), Japan still has the department store culture and we visited a rather upscale one that even had a Kimono section. The real Kimonos cost start at 10,000CHF/CAD and we saw one at ~37,000 CHF/CAD (and we didn't go inside the section to have a look around). Sachi left to return to her home town, and we went back to the hotel for an early night of packing and sleeping.

Kyoto day 2

On our second day in Kyoto we first went to the Nijo palace, a previous palace of the shogun. It was just us, a handful of tourists and a million school children who showed up at the start of the day! It was a Saturday, Sachi guessed that they were on a school trip for a few days. We bought our tickets and went inside, first waiting around at the front of the palace and taking photos.

Inside we experienced the nightingale floor, to prevent people from sneaking around the palace all the floor boards were attached to metal hook like pieces that you could see underneath when you looked outside, and when the floor flexed as you walked on it, a high pitched rather melodic squeak was heard. So when all the school children walked along the floor it made a lot of noise! The palace was lovely inside as well, although the rooms were all very similar, tatami mats on the floor and large painted panels all around the room. No photos were allowed inside, although most of the panels were painted reproductions with the real panels in a separate museum on the site. After the visit to the palace it was back on the bus to see my friend Sachi who came up from her home town to visit Kyoto with us!

Food in Japan gets a lot easier with a native Japanese speaker to interpret the menu! We went to a lunch spot recommended at the hotel and it was very very good! The first indication was the line up outside the door at 11:30 to get in. I had a fantastic tempura menu, Mic had grilled pork and Sachi had a menu that included a bowl of rice with a liquidy paste of potato spooned out on top. There were lots of little bowls with other parts of the meal and it was so tasty and filling we only had a light dinner in the evening.

We started our day together by taking the city bus to the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji), a very very popular shine. The shrine was the former residence of a Shogun who retired there, and after his death was turned into a temple. The place was very very full of tourists taking photos. Yes, the temple is entirely covered in gold leaf.

We wandered around the gardens (on the industrial scale tourism trail), ate an ice cream and went back into Gion to check out another famous Kyoto temple: Kiyomizudera Temple. Man was that place full of people!

One thing I've come to realize about Japanese temples is that the larger ones are collections of many buildings and smaller side shrines which can stretch out. At one of the first temples we walked by there was this sign:

Apparently it lists ages of men and women who will have a bad year this year. It also lists the prices for what you can buy from the temple to try and counteract this bad year.

This temple had a huge wooden terrace held up by many large wooden beams which looked quite impressive when seen from the other side of the ravine. Apparently the beams are held together without any nails.

On the way to the temple we finally saw the old beautiful streets of Gion, full of tourists (Japanese and foreign). It seemed to be the thing to do for Japanese girls, get dressed up in a simple kimono and wander the streets of Gion, their hair all done up and with the typical white socks with sandals.

However it was in Gion that I saw a Maiko, or quite possibly a tourist done up with a much more impressive kimono and the white face makeup (and we got our photo taken with her).

As the sun set we went out for some sake, I didn't realize it was the equivalent of wine at the dinner, and the youngest girl is responsible for filling everyone's small cup. We tasted a hot sake and a cold fruity one and had very fresh sushi. In fact, the fish tank was right in front of us and we would watch the chef reach in and pull out and prepare the next animal on the menu.

Kyoto day 1

After departing from Hotel Urishima (the boat driver took our picture in front of the hotel and gave us posing directions)

we caught the train to Kyoto (about 5 hours which included taking a bullet train, yes it went fast, although for the short part we were on it didn't feel any faster than the TGV).

We arrived in Kyoto and immediately had to try and find our hotel, the tourist office wrote out our hotel name in Japanese, told us which bus to take and then said for us to just ask for help. We are staying in a hostel kind of place, likely a very old, redone house, all small small corridors and creaky wooden floorboards and a small tea garden (about 4 square meters) in the middle of the house, very nice. We are staying at the top in the deluxe room, but the three nights here cost us as much as a single night at Urishima! The thickness of the futon mattress makes that clear, I needed to pile two on top of each other to make it through the night.

After we dropped off our stuff we headed out to the Imperial park to check out the palace (it was closed). In the pond there were lots of koi.

The park itself was very similar to European city parks, large open spaces with large trees and large open boulevards. One funny thing we are starting to see more is people carrying a camera on a stick to take selfies. This guy we saw had a gopro on it (perhaps not what the company intended it for, usually you are supposed to hold the gopro on the stick while you jump out of an airplane or surf through shark infested waters or something, not walk around a Japanese garden), but most of the other ones we saw where cell phone holders.

So it appears that the final step of tourist interaction, were in whatever language or signs you could manage you would ask a total stranger to take a photo of you in front of some random monument, might be passing (incidentally, the worst example I ever saw of this was tourists - not American - getting their group photo taken in front of the ovens of Dachu, all smiles).

After checking out the gardens we wandered around to try and find a place to eat, in our favour, Kyoto is a fantastic place for food, against us, we couldn't read any signs, and most of the restaurants around our area were these cute intimate places where the outside looked like the door to a house with only a panel with Japanese writing in front.

However, in the end we found a very obvious place, and since we were hungry we just went in and sat down. The waitress didn't speak any English, but the menu had some English and we realized we were in one of those restaurants where you order all the exotic insides off the cow and roast it on a small roasting stove they would bring to the table. I am not very adventurous when it came to random insides of the cow, so we settled for tongue, diaphragm, veggies and spare ribs. The meal was very good, I've had diaphragm before but not tongue, both were tasty. It was fun to cook the food and Kyoto reminded me of eating out in Vancouver, you could always find something interesting.