Kristin Reporting!
This is our third day in Kyoto, although only our second day seeing Kyoto itself. Our hotel stay included breakfast vouchers for use at the hotel’s two restaurants, so we started the day out with a traditional Japanese breakfast! As you might guess, this was quite a bit different than a western style breakfast, and featured a lot of fish and tofu, as well as miso soup. I actually liked the breakfast for the most part– there were only one or two things that I found unpalatable. Unfortunately, Kristin seemed much less enthused by it.
[Kristin Interjection: I think I did pretty good for being a picky eater! Miso soup is always good. The green juice was some kind of fruit juice and I liked it a lot, but I have no idea what it was! D did a great job and practically devoured everything!]
Since we had skipped breakfast on our first day in Kyoto, we had an extra voucher, so we decided to cash it in at the buffet breakfast just to get some ice cream. Yes, you can actually get gelato at this hotel for breakfast! Sadly, that is about the only redeeming quality for the buffet breakfast (we tried it yesterday, and it pretty much sucked).
With our stomachs full, we checked out and stored our bags at the hotel’s “cloaking” desk. Then proceeded to the train station to grab the train to the Fushimi-Inari Taisha shrine. To get there we had to take the same train line that we took to Nara, only this time we needed to take a local train, rather than the express. (When we went to Nara there was an announcement on that train that it did not stop at Fushimi-Inari-Taisha.)
Fushimi-Inari Taisha is literally a short distance up the road from where you exit the train station. It is very convenient to access. Fushimi-Inari Taisha is another Shinto shrine, and it was very similar to the other Shinto shrines that we have seen. What is unique about this shrine is that it has corridors of red-orange torii gates leading up the mountain that it is built next to. Amusingly, here you can buy blessings shaped like a torii gate, instead of the standard wooden panel.
[Kristin Interjection: You could buy one to “take home” and bring back later. So I bought one because it is going to be a perfect Christmas tree ornament!]
The gate corridors were actually quite impressive to walk through. Apparently, the gates continue all of the way to the top of the mountain, although it does seem that the gates become more widely spaced the higher you go. I suspect that it requires a great deal of effort to maintain these gates. There was evidence of dry rot or patching on several of the gates, and some of the gates had clearly been replaced because they were much newer than others.
As we hiked up the mountain, we encountered a nice shrine in the middle of the forest, featuring several stone lanterns, stone torii gates, and some other stone monoliths. Unfortunately, there was some reconstruction work being done here, which sort of marred the effect, but it was still good to see. With our (not unusually) ambitious plans for the day, we did not have time to hike all the way to the top of the mountain, but we made our way up to a view point.
Having achieved our goal of reaching the viewpoint (or at least some viewpoint: the maps were kind of unclear), we hurried back down the mountain back to the train station. We traveled back to the central train station and switched to another train to take us to Nijo Castle. This castle complex was built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, and symbolized the power and riches of the newly established Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo.
This castle is known for its “nightingale floors”, designed to warn against intruders. These floors were designed so that the nails rub when the floor was stepped on, creating a squeaking sound. The layout of the castle featured the public audience rooms toward the fore, with the inner chambers of the shogun set further inside.
[Kristin Interjection: What amazed me is that this wasn’t the obnoxious squeak that we associate with nails rubbing beneath the floor boards of our homes. It was a melodious chirp that sounded like pleasant birds. Hence the name “Nightengale floors”. We weren’t allowed to take photos or video inside the castle, but it didn’t say anything about audio recordings, so I recorded a clip where it is possible to hear the floors chirping.]
Now, these rooms were mostly unfurnished, but they still featured some very nice wall paintings, featuring tigers and other exotic animals and birds. A very intricate wooden wall carving of peacocks was also built between two rooms– it’s hard to believe the amount of time and skill that must have been required to make some of these works!
A lot of these paintings were actually recreations, with the originals moved to another location on the site for preservation purposes. Unfortunately, there was some more reconstruction work going on here, which meant some of the wall panels and patterns were missing. It’s a shame because I would have liked to see the castle in all its glory.
A stroll through the castle grounds brought us past another castle that had been transferred to the grounds at a later date, but it was not open to the public. The grounds themselves were nice but not all that memorable, and we quickly exited the castle, after a quick stop at the book shop where we picked up a book and some postcards. There was a bus stop directly out front of the castle, and we hopped onto a crowded bus to take us to our next stop: The Golden Pavilion.
Like Todaiji Temple, the Golden Pavilion is a huge tourist attraction, and there were tons of people here (probably more than at Todaiji to be honest). Fortunately, the layout of the site has sort of been designed to take this into account, and you basically are funneled in, pointed to a lookout point where you can snap a few photos, and then walk through and exit the other side. Somehow the experience didn’t manage to be as annoyingly commercialized as Todaiji either.
The Golden Pavilion is actually pretty self explanatory. It is a small building built along the edge of a small pond that is entirely gilded in gold leaf. The pavilion is actually a Zen Buddhist temple, popularly referred to as Kinkaku-ji (“Temple of the Golden Pavilion”) but officially known as Rokuon-ji (“Deer Garden Temple”). Unfortunately, like many historical Japanese buildings, the original burned down in 1950 and what stands here today is an exact recreation dating to 1955.
Along the way to the exit of the temple, we encountered a small stone shrine, with a stone bowl. Here people were throwing coins, in an attempt to get them into the bowl, presumably for some sort of blessing. Kristin gave it a shot and, against all odds, got her coin to land in the bowl on her second try. My own luck was not so good: despite several tries, I never managed to get anywhere near the bowl. The extreme lightness of the coins made it difficult to judge how much force you needed to use. There was only a very small variation between using too little, so the coin fell short, or too much, so it flew past.
[Kristin Interjection: My success was further proof that luck is a tangible skill! Or, that luck is a resource pool that I’m burning through rather quickly on insignificant things like coin tossing, and, when it runs out, I’ll surely drop dead on the spot! ;p]
Outside the temple grounds, we were greeted by another surprise: a vending machine selling Dr. Pepper cans! It was an extreme rarity to find Dr. Pepper in Japan. Despite checking almost every vending machine we came across, this was only the third machine we saw that had a Dr. Pepper in it. As I recall the other two were at the SEGA arcade, and Venus Fort, both in Tokyo. We purchased two Dr. Peppers here to drink, and then bought a couple of extras to take with us.
From here we had only a short twenty minute walk to our next destination Ryoan-ji Temple. This is said to host the best example of a Japanese rock garden. A Japanese rock garden consists of a gravel area, with various rocks added artistically to it. Straight lines are drawn in the gravel, and contour around the other shapes placed in the space.
While the rock garden was nice to see and definitely worth the stop, I couldn’t help feeling a bit underwhelmed by it. From the description I was expecting an absolutely massive grounds, but the rock garden was really quite small– no more than about a hundred feet in length. I also felt this style of garden was a bit stark. I much preferred the type of Japanese gardens we saw back in Himeji.
[Kristin Interjection: I was expecting a huge rock garden because it was “the best example” in Japan. But I guess size doesn’t have anything to do with quality! That must be an American mind set! So, I was a bit disappointed also!]
Next we walked to yet another train station and caught a train back to Kyoto’s main station. We had planned to try to see one more site today, Toji Temple, home to a five story pagoda, which is the tallest pagoda in Japan. This site was another short 15-20 minute from the station. Unfortunately, when we got there we discovered it had already closed, but we were still able to view the pagoda from the outside.
On the way back to the station we stopped by a Mr. Donut we had passed along the way and purchased some chocolate donuts as a snack to eat on the train (unlike the vanilla donuts, the chocolate ones actually taste right). We then collected our luggage and boarded the train to Hiroshima, where we will rejoin the ship tomorrow.
The train ride to Hiroshima required us to switch trains at Shin-Kobe station (“New Kobe”), but it was otherwise uneventful. We could have actually switched at Shin-Osaka, but the phone app Kristin downloaded suggested making the switch at Shin-Kobe instead, I think because it didn’t require us to switch tracks (the ticket counter attendant who helped us book our tickets this morning seemed surprised by the choice).
[Kristin Interjection: Happily she didn’t argue because my Japanese wouldn’t have been good enough to handle THAT!]
In Hiroshima, I had booked rooms for us at the Sheraton hotel, right outside the train station, so we quickly checked in. I think this was actually the nicest hotel we stayed in, and ironically also one of the least expensive. One thing I did find a bit odd was that the frosted glass on the toilet and bath/shower areas only extended up part of the way with the rest being clear, so if you were tall enough you could easily look in over the top. I would guess this hotel was designed with couples in mind, although that begs the question as to why a couple would require two beds?
With our luggage now safely stored inside our room, we ventured out in an effort to find something to eat. Fortunately, this time we were here early enough that some, although not all, restaurants were still open. We elected to try a noodle restaurant, which apparently had been serving noodles here for more than 50 years! I guess that’s a noteworthy accomplishment?
We ordered both an udon and soba dish to see the difference between them. Udon noodles are thin, and sort of similar to what you might get in a cup’o’noodles, while soba noodles are much thicker. I preferred the udon noodles myself, although I honestly found both dishes to be rather bland and uninspiring– definitely not the best meal I had in Japan. While I’m glad to have tried them, I probably wouldn’t order another noodle dish in the future, at least not something without a lot more spice.
[Kristin Interjection: They were decent noodle soups. I like them the same way that I like a bowl of chicken noodle soup. They could have been better with more spice and a bigger variety of vegetables added to the broth. Definitely a good kind of soup for a rainy day– very warm and comforting. It was good to try them as I had never tried either Soba or Udon before.]
And that pretty much was the end of the day. It’s hard to believe that our time in Japan is already almost at its end!
[Kristin Interjection: Actually, we ended the day with an hour and a half phone call to our Mom which kept us up way too late! But we hadn’t called her in quite some time and she was really happy to get a chance to talk to us!]
Tomorrow’s Adventure: Hiroshima, Japan (March 24, 2016)
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