First, I will have to apologize… this post took longer than I anticipated.  I have thousands of photos from the trip, and much to say… but cutting that down even for one day has proven to be a lot of work!  It may take me a while to get through the whole trip.

This morning I woke up early due to the time difference, I suppose.  I decided to go for a short walk around the hotel / station area.  It was around 6:30 AM.  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just wanted to see how the morning hours looked around the area.  It was a quiet, pleasant walk.  I’m rarely up and outdoors this early so it was a nice feeling.

Bus Terminal Early Morning

Station Entrance

This Model is Apparently Called the Toyota Comfort

The station was peaceful, not much traffic.  Mostly folks starting to get on or off buses nearby.  I took a few more photos and decided to head back to the room and wake up the girls.

We weren’t sure what to eat for breakfast, so we stopped by a hotel restaurant called Le Temps.  The prices were stunning, which I expected because it’s a hotel restaurant.  The food however was very good.  I had a coffee and pastries, and the girls decided to have an omelet.  Japan has wonderful pastries, and many places to eat pastry and baked goods.  Coffee is somewhat of a luxury item and is expensive just about everywhere.  At this particular restaurant, ordering a coffee by itself is an 8 dollar venture.  We enjoyed this breakfast but found other options during the rest of the trip.

We also walked around the station area some more and discovered an underground mall called Porta.  It’s amazing how much stuff you can find underground or above you in Japan.

Kyoto Station Warming Up for the Day

Restaurant Window in Porta

Some quick googling about Kyoto before our arrival brought up a walking tour called Johnnie Hillwalker’s “Walk in Kyoto, Talk in English” tour.  It promised to take visitors into lesser known areas and back streets of Kyoto to see something beyond normal tourist attractions.  It meets up right outside Kyoto Station 3 times a week, and it’s very inexpensive, about $20 for adults and $10 for students up to 15 years old.  I knew this would likely be a good walk, and it was.

The tour meets outside the station, near the bus terminal.  Johnnie himself was absent this particular day, but his associate Mie was running the walk and proved to be a wonderful guide and person.  We started the walk by going underground and arriving at Higashi Honganji temple, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto.  It was explained to us that the temple (like so many others in Japan) is currently under maintenance and thus some areas were obscured by scaffolding and drop cloths.  Wooden structures like these can be taken apart board by board and re-assembled.  That is done every so often to check for decay or repairs that may be needed.  It seems like a daunting task to me.  This temple in particular was enormous.

Waterway

Gate

Not Wet but Well Worn

Roof

Gold Detail

The rest of the walk involved visiting several Shinto shrines, a graveyard and some back streets with craftsmen working on paper fans, ceramics, etc.  We stopped and ate a piece of inari sushi (which we loved and later found in grocery stores) and had some tea.

Shinto Shrine Detail

Paper Fans in a Shop

BOSS Coffee is the Boss of Them All Since 1992

Kyoto Streets

The Nintendo Playing Card Co

One great surprise was a stop at the original Nintendo building, where they started out in the 1940s making playing cards.  I am a huge video game and especially Nintendo fan, so this must have been fate.  I’d heard about this building before but never thought I would see it.  They have long since moved to a standard boring office building elsewhere in Kyoto but someone is apparently keeping this address alive too.

Making Traditional Sweets

Alleyway Dog

Unfortunately the worst part of the tour was the tourists… the others accompanying us on our walk were insufferable.  One woman kept monopolizing the tour guide’s attention and time.  Another man was so upset that there were some mosquitoes around one of our stops, he decided to lift his leg and park his tennis shoe on the side of a temple entrance fountain and wash it off with the water (this water is for purifying yourself before entry to the shrine)  It made me sad and embarrassed to be in the same group.  Why would anyone do that?

The tour ended near Kiyomizu Temple, one of my favorite spots from my last trip to Japan.  We made the long walk up to the temple, stopping halfway at a quaint little place called Oggi Cafe.  We didn’t know what to expect, and what we found was quite interesting.  The theme was antiques.  Several artifacts were proudly displayed around the tiny cafe, including a wooden cash register with a hand crank, an old clock and one of the original Bissel sweepers in a corner.  It seemed to feature food from around the world.  I had a dish called “beef with rice” and wasn’t too sure what I would get.  What I did get may have been one of the finest meals I have ever had.

What is This?  Where Can I get More? (Photo by Sarah Chang)

It was incredibly simple… some sort of beef “sauce” or gravy with small, tender bits of beef and some rice shaped into a heart.  I loved it.  If we could get something like this in the states, I would never stop eating it.  Unfortunately, I’ve never seen anything like it before.  It wasn’t curry, and it wasn’t just beef gravy.  Of course it could be a very common meal from somewhere in the world.  Since the rest of the menu was so eclectic, I’m thinking it’s not Japanese in nature.  Perhaps someone will recognize it and tell me what it is beyond “beef with rice,” but I’ve certainly never had anything quite like it.  The cafe was so small, they sat us at a large table with a group of young Japanese folks.  We didn’t talk with them unfortunately; my Japanese isn’t good enough to play translator or hold a decent conversation.

The walk up to Kiyomizu is quite nice.  Shops adorn both sides of the narrow road and there are many places to snack and browse.

Walking Up to Kiyomizu

It’s a large complex of buildings and there is the customary water/dragon fountain at the entrance.  Dragons are a symbol of water in Japan and the water flows from the dragon’s mouth.  This water is taken and poured over each hand.  Some is used to rinse the mouth and finally another bit is poured back over the ladle itself.

Teresa Enjoying the Purification

Kiyomizu is a huge complex of wooden buildings perched high up in the mountainside near Kyoto.  There are many pathways to explore and several different important buildings.  One of the highlights of the complex is a natural spring where water flows in controlled streams over visitors who can extend long ladles out to catch the water and drink some of it to ensure health and cleanse the spirit.  I wish I had taken more time to get pictures of this, I think there could have been some nice opportunities to shoot the water hitting the ladles extended outward.

Looking Down at the Spring Area

The wooden structures are beautiful and very interesting to explore.  There is a feeling of peace and serenity about the whole place, minus the tourists (Japanese and foreign)  You get a sense of being way, way above Kyoto and removed from the reality of the city life.

Kiyomizu-dera

Overlooking the Spring and Various Buildings

View of Kyoto from Kiyomizu

The shot above was tricky to process.  The sky and most of the city was completely blown out due to the bright clouds.  I tried Lightroom’s digital grad ND filter to darken the sky and leave the trees at normal exposure and to my surprise it worked extremely well.  I shoot in RAW so this also helped preserve some detail.

Dressed Up

My wife noticed these adorable girls who were also visiting and wanted to ask for a picture.  They kindly obliged!

After Kiyomizu we walked back down the mountain and found a bus back to Kyoto station.  The bus was an adventure in itself- it got very crowded and we ran into a bit of trouble with the payment system.  The buses in Kyoto are simple enough, the fares seem to be a flat fee.  To say we didn’t know what we were doing when paying the fare would be an understatement.  The driver was very tolerant of us which was good.  Apparently buses here have two places to put money- one for breaking change, one for payment.  So you can get the change you need right there at the front of the bus.  We didn’t seem to catch on, however, because we tried putting our fare in the change slot, our change in the fare slot, and all sorts of other combinations.  Finally, the driver just took our money and deposited it in the correct places.

This was a long day, so we ended up falling asleep early back at the hotel after watching some Japanese game/variety shows.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 5:23 PM and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.