Summer Trip Part 3: Kyoto

(continued from part 2)

Kyoto is not very far from Osaka. It only takes half an hour by train, and it's a wonder how they're even considered 2 different cities. That is, of course, until you get there. Osaka felt like a city with a lot of people, movement, and modernity. Kyoto, on the other hand, seems to try to preserve a traditional atmosphere with a modern city built around that.

As you may know already, Kyoto is famous for having well preserved cultural buildings and sites. Kyoto escaped much of the firebombing during World War II, so lots of old wooden structures from previous eras still remain. Because of that, Kyoto is both a domestic and international tourist hub. I wasn't used to the amount of foreigners and English speaking competence, but it was a nice change.

After getting to Kyoto, Kristin and I had no game plan. We hung out at the tourist information center for a while, and the ladies there showed us where we could go and how to get around. After checking into our hotel and dropping off our baggage, we went to our first site: Arashiyama.

Arashiyama is on the eastern outskirts of the city, and it's well known for it's bamboo grove walkway. Getting into the shade and listening to the deafening sound of the cicadas was a welcome respite from the heat.

It looks empty here, but it was actually crawling with tourists.

The walkway is pretty short at around 2 km, and it ends at a nature park of sorts. There were lots of stairs to climb, at the end of which was an observation platform overlooking the river.

There were little ferry boats running up and down the river to the remote tea houses that you can see in the picture. We followed one of the ferry boats back down into the populated area of Arashiyama, crossing their iconic bridge and stopping in at a small teahouse to eat some shaved ice. We didn't know it at the time, but this would start a 3-part shaved ice saga.

Uji shaved ice 宇治かき氷

After having our snack, we wanted to explore a bit more in Arashiyama. There was a monkey park nearby, but it was already past closing time. We wanted to stay to watch cormorant fishing that night, which are leashed birds that dive underwater and gather fish for their fisherman owners. Pictures of it look pretty amazing because they dangle a giant flaming torch in front of their boats, but we opted to split when the rain started to fall.

We rode the cablecar back over to our hotel area, and then rode a bus to the Western side of the city. This place is called the Gion district, and it's a lively downtown known for it's month-long festival. It was mostly filled with lots of expensive shopping and tourist traps, and Kristin and I accidentally wandered into the red-light district "love hotel row" while looking for a place to eat.

The busy streets of Gion

To escape the hustle and bustle, we took refuge in the nearby Yasaka Shrine. We wandered about for a bit in the dark lantern-lit grounds wondering where we should go next.

Yasaka Shrine actually sits in a park shared with a Buddhist temple. We tried to make our way over there, but the park is actually crazy massive. That's the thing about Kyoto: if you look at a map of it, you can see the city sprinkled with parks, and at first glance, the city doesn't really look all that big. However, it's because the parks are all so damn immense that they make the rest of the city seem smaller than it is. After walking for many minutes in the dark park and passing some sketchy people, we turned back towards Gion to get back to the hotel and call it a night.

The next morning, we woke up early to get some bakery pastries for breakfast and pick up our rental bikes. Renting bicycles is a very popular and convenient in Kyoto, with a lot of different companies and plans to choose from. We opted for the Kyoto Cycling Tour Project (KCTP for short) for their bike selection, convenient locations, and English website service.

The reason we picked these bikes up so early in the morning was because we had an appointment with the Imperial Household Agency. More specifically, we were going pay a visit to the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Visits to the Imperial Palaces, or any of the other Imperial properties in Kyoto, require you to register with the Household Agency online first, and are otherwise free of charge. Note that only the Kyoto Imperial Palace has English tours, and that visiting Imperial properties is very popular among Japanese people too, so expect Japanese-speaking tours to be fully booked months in advance.

Without further ado, here are some photos of the Kyoto Imperial Palace:

That's a fancy parking space!

The massive main chamber: Shishinden

Closeup of cedar bark roof on a large gate. The thick roof edges are actually only for decoration, and the roof itself is much thinner.

Buildings with different architectural styles. The red paint is made of cinnabar.

Main palace garden

Everything is stamped with the Imperial Crest: a chrysanthemum.

After our 90 minutes tour, we hopped back on our bikes and trooped over to the northwest edge of the city. Here resides one of the most famous sites in all of Japan: Kinkakuji, also known as the Golden Pavilion.

Though not quite a temple, it's a Buddhist structure of significance and houses a Buddha statue along with some other symbolic figures. It's plated in actual gold, so seeing it in person was significantly more impressive than any picture could ever be. A short walk through the gardens later, we bought some omamori charms from the vendors (I'm not sure if it's kosher to be calling them that) and left to eat lunch at the all-you-can-eat obanzai-ryouri across the street.

After filling up, we plopped our bulging bellied atop our bikes once more and rode back to the east side of the city. Much less well known than the Golden Pavilion, there also exists a ginkakuji, or Silver Pavilion.

As you can see, this one isn't actually plated in silver, although stories say that those were the original plans. We wandered the gardens for a while before exiting.

Another thing Kyoto is famous for is drawing on the sides of mountain faces. Every year, they scorch a symbol into the vegetation, whether it be a torii gate, a sailboat, or the kanji for "big". Just behind Ginkakuji is one of these mountains, called daimonji 大文字, or literally "big written character". We didn't have much time left before we had to return the bikes, so we tried to hike it as fast as possible. It was a short but very steep climb, so while it only took us about 25 minutes to jog up it, we reached the top panting hard and drenched in sweat. We were rewarded with a view over all of Kyoto, even though it was rather hazy.

We descended the mountain as fast as we climbed it, and went back to the Gion District to return the bikes. We wandered through the area and found a crowded restaurant called Hyouzou to eat at. Here, we ate kushikatsu and hiyashi-udon and finished off dinner with another shaved ice. It's called Hyouzou-kun in honor of the store and turned out to be HUGE, even though it was only flavored with condensed milk and fruit.

We made our way back to the hotel, winding through the crowded streets during the tail end of a festival parade. We were a bit too exhausted to see what the festival was about, but we looked at some of the palanquins before continuing to our lodging.

We stayed at a different hotel the second night. As we wandered down the dark streets somewhat out in the boondocks of Kyoto, we reached an area that felt a bit like an Indian casino reservation. There were bright neon lights and gaudy western statues and decorations. I started to get an inkling feeling when we passed hotel after hotel, each with prices by the hour and facilities listed like a picture menu outside. When we arrived, it became apparent that it was indeed a love hotel. The place was very nice and incredibly spacious, even though it smelled like cigarette smoke. There was a slot machine in the room, and the jacuzzi bathtub came with a television and disco mood lighting included. As we headed to bed, we noticed a panel where you could choose different kinds of lighting schemes, which I'm assuming is for changing the mood while you "did the deed". As we were about to turn off the lights, we noticed a vibrator sitting atop a stand beside the lighting panel, making the fact that it was a love hotel achingly obvious.

The next day, we awkwardly made out way out of the hotel's discreet exit, which was different from the entrance. It was our last day in Kyoto, so we made our final destinations count. First, we went to Kiyomizu-dera, probably the most internationally visited Buddhist temple in the country. It's best known for the height of the sheer drop from the platform of the main hall to the ground below.

At the temple complex, there is also a shrine with a popular attraction: the "love stones". The idea is that if you can close your eyes and make your way from one stone to the other unassisted, you will find true love. It seemed like fun, but all the people wandering around not paying attention made colliding with someone a great possibility.

As we exited Kiyomizu-dera onto the busy market street, we stopped by a nearby sweets shop for part 3 of the shaved ice saga, this time choosing a mango puree topping.

The mango puree was great in itself, but the really special part about it was the shaved ice. Most places will serve a "crushed ice" type of thing, where ice is pulverized into small, but still hard and crunchy, crystals. This shop had a legitimate ice shaving machine, which uses a sharp blade to gently glide over the large ice block and whisk just the thinnest sliver off at a time. The result is a texture something like cold cotton candy (or Aomori snow). I've had this kind of shaved ice all over Taiwan, but finding it in Japan is difficult.

We only had enough time for one more destination, so we went south to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This shrine is commonly known as senbon-torii 千本鳥居, or "one thousand torii gates". Here's why:

Lining all the paths are hundreds and hundreds of torii gates. The name senbon-torii is actually a vast underestimation. There is a trail that runs throughout the shrine complex grounds, and the entire length of it is lined with these torii gates of various sizes.

We followed the winding and hilly path for a kilometer or 2 before reaching a fork in the road and a trail map. It turns out we'd only just begun the trail, and that it actually winds up and across a mountain ridge to the east, lined with these torii gates the entire way. We didn't have much time, and we were getting swarmed by the terrifying Kansai mosquitoes, so we chose the shorter path back to the main shrine and the bus stop. Still, just imagining how many of these structures were built is just mind-blowing!

For dinner, we ate at an udon restaurant just next to the bus stop. The workers were friendly and offered us English menus when they saw Kristin. We had a curry udon and a hiyashi udon, both delicious and made with chewy handmade noodles.

Finally, we bused back to the nearest train station, said our goodbyes to Kyoto, and took the next train to our next destination: Tenri!