Leaving Tokyo - Kyoto

V came to Shinjuku Station on Friday night to see me off. I got on the 9:30 PM night bus to Osaka with two buddies from school, Wei and Micah, and we were off. 9:30 is too early for a night bus since you're just not that tired. Luckily I had planned ahead and not slept much the night before. So I chatted up the guys for a little bit and tried to tuck in for the night. The seat was a bit more uncomfortable that I thought it would be, but what I really didn't anticipate were the stops at Tokyo Main Station, Shinagawa Station, Yokohama and every two hours after that until Kyoto.

Although our hotel was in Osaka, we had planned to do Kyoto first and managed to get off the bus early. As a result we ended up in Kyoto before 6AM. So, we took in the view of Kyoto station for two seconds, dropped off our crap in a coin locker, grabbed a bite to eat, and hit the road.

Koji Temple is home to Japan's tallest pagoda and was our first stop in Kyoto. The problem was that we arrived in Kyoto so early that even temples hadn't really opened yet. So we gazed at it from afar, took a look at some of the surrounding little temples and walked north to the Higashi and Nishi Honganshi temples. These two giant temples are both zen buddhist temples and rival institutions merely a few blocks from one another. We stopped by the west one first and prayed vehemently before hitting up the east one. These temples are ridiculously huge and largely neglected by tourists. The interiors just exude zen and we ended up spending quite a lot of peaceful time there. Below is the Higashi Honganshi Temple.

If I had to pick which one I liked better, I guess I would say the east one. Something about it really appealed to me. The west one had a white lady practicing tai chi alone in the courtyard and the east on had people feeding pigeons. I mean pigeons are kinda cool. We spent the next hour or so trying to figure out what to do next and how to get there. The subway system in Kyoto is quite expensive and doesn't always stop where you need it to. The buses in general hit up all the sights but are impossible to figure out. We decided to pay the 500 Yen for the unlimited bus pass and use the trains as necessary.

I insisted that we go to Fushimi Inari Taisha next as it was one of the must-sees on my list. After asking a friendly policeman how to get there, we took the train there and then made our way through the little Fushimi town. Actually, we got distracted along the way by yatsuhashi - triangle filled mochi. This one famous store Shogoin Yatsuhashi has been selling them since 1689. Man that is a looong time. I ate a lot of free samples and then bought the obligated box. We headed further uphill and stopped again to buy a couple of these strawberry filled chocolate ones to fuel up before heading up the shrine stairs.

Fushimi Inari Taisha is known for the thousands of gates you pass through on your way up. At the bottom, there's a large shrine to pray at. So I did.

I shook the crap out of the bell.

And prayed.

And off we went to climb up the shrine. The gates of Fushimi Inari start out huge and then taper down to size a bit.

But they go on forever. There are construction crews constantly building new ones and renovating old ones. Personal and corporate donations fuel the construction and the size of your gate depends on how much you donated. I'll come back one day and built a gate of solid gold. The ones near the bottom are the most dense, but they consistently covered our entire path to the fourth station (not even halfway) and it took us over half an hour.

At the fourth station, we took a nice break. Wei and I had Kyoto's famous matcha warabi mochi and Micah had a kinako ice cream. I was a little disappointed to find that the warabi mochi wasn't cold at all; something that I would remedy shortly. Still delicious of course.

Someday, I would like to climb the whole thing, but we really needed to get moving with only one day in Kyoto. Getting down the stairs was a breeze and once we made it back to the stairs we decided to go to Kyoto's most famous temple, Kinkakuji. This is also about the time I started to stalk schoolgirls. Schoolgirls are the most chatty bystanders, and I was extremely amused to listen in on Kansai-ben. A lot of people native to Kyoto and Osaka speak with a regional accent that just sounds like tons of fun. せやな～。

The fastest way to Kinkakuji was to take the train partway before switching to a bus, so we hopped onto the JR and got off at enmachi (better known as money town; no seriously, that's a direct translation). In money town, we got asked by a nice man if we needed some help. He told us to take bus 204, so we took bus 205 to the wrong place. Not so shortly thereafter, we figured out how to ride the bus properly and finally got to where all the tourists were.

Except we ate lunch first. Everyone was hungry. Luckily there was a soba place nearby and I got to try another one of Kyoto's specialties: Nishin (herring) Soba. Pretty good. More importantly I ate me one of them matcha ice cream anmistu's.

It was yummy. Matcha is simply ｇround up green tea leaves. So in traditional Japanese tea, the leaves aren't steeped into hot water, but rather mixed in. This makes matcha sound kind of like a cheap version of tea, but in reality the process for creating matcha is quite labor intensive. In order to create a tea leaf that can be ground and drunk, the tea plant must be shaded for it's entire life to generate more sugar content. The tea is then dried, but unlike normal tea, it must be kept flat so that it can be ground later. The labor intensive nature of certain matchas can make them extremely expensive.

Kinkakuji was beautiful but unpleasantly swarmed by Chinese tourists. There are so many goddamn people in China that when they visit other areas of Asia in force they just take over the place. Places like Tokyo do not qualify for obvious reasons. I think I enjoyed the tranquility of the Honganshi temples more. Plus you can actually go inside those and pray. No one can come close to touching Kinkakuji; it's covered in gold.

From here, the Kyoto bus failed us as it took us nearly an hour including a half hour transfer to get to the Imperial Palace. Once we got there, we walked around trying to figure out how to get in before I asked another police officer. Turns out that if you're a foreigner you need to go and get a pass and reserve an hour long tour between 10 AM and 2 PM at the Imperial Household Agency.

Undefeated, we headed towards Nijo Castle which supposedly closed at 5 PM...unfortunately it turned out last entrance was at 4 PM. Perhaps a bit defeated, we started checking the closing times of Kyoto landmarks and discovered that Kiyomizudera closed at 6 PM. Determined to get there on time, we got into a taxi this time. 1500 Yen later, we were finally there!

So, we actually went to Kiyomizudera not knowing how amazing it is, but apparently it's one of the most treasured temples in Japan. The temple is basically built into a cliff and overlooks Kyoto. It's an amazing view, but suffocatingly coupley for three guys. Pretty sure there's some sort of love link with that temple.

It was getting pretty dark and we kind of just rushed through without being able to see anything. Two girls from school also happened to be in Kyoto at the same time, so we met up with them for dinner. But not before I stopped to eat a matcha creme puff. Kyoto is famous for matcha and so I ate me some matcha. But I could eat more. Lots more.

We walked from Kiyomizudera into Kawaramachi with Shiang Ping and Sarah. Sarah had previously lived in Osaka, so Kyoto was also somewhat her stomping ground. It still took us at least an hour to pick something to eat as we roamed down some geisha streets to find that the restaurants were all too expensive. Kyoto is home to the not unsavory type of geisha and supposedly they treat it like an art. Maybe I'll find out someday.

We ended up eating a delicate Kyoto cuisine meal which was kind of good and severely overpriced. At this point everyone was pretty much crashing from a full day of walking and lack of sleep, so we bid the girls goodnight and headed for Kyoto Station to catch a train to Osaka. While trying to figure out how to get to the Hachijo exit, a random guy offered to help us again. Kyoto people are really nice! Train -> Osaka -> hotel -> bed.

Kyoto was really interesting but a pain to get around. It definitely requires more than one day, but I think it might be both convenient and cost effective if I can rent a car with a bunch of people and drive. Some of the landmarks are pretty inconvenient to get to by public transportation. We started sightseeing at 6 AM and ran out of time rapidly as we spent a whole lot of time walking (and climbing stairs). Another important thing to consider when visiting temples and such is that most will close at around 4 PM. Well I'll be back for sure. There are a million other things to see that I missed out on.