Holiday in Japan - Kyoto

We spent three days in Kyoto, a beautiful city that has an enormous amount of culture and history. In fact the city has a law that requires buildings to be painted in theme with the rest of the city - earthy and pale colours. Even Macdonalds in Kyoto uses a dark red instead of the usual garish colours. We caught the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, which travels at around 250km/h! Unfortunately we were in the smoking section of the train, though it was a new experience for me because smoking is banned on all trains in Queensland. During a 5 minute stop at Nagoya, Chihiro went to get some drinks from the station shop with our vouchers. I realised she'd left her phone and purse on the train with me, and started to get worried when the train was about to leave. I couldn't see her anywhere on the platform or back at our seats, so when the doors started closing I tried to block them. A conductor immediately came over and started talking to me in Japanese, obviously telling me to let the doors shut. I tried to explain in Japanese to the conductor that my friend was still on the platform, but my vocabulary was extremely limited. I went back to my seat imagining Chihiro having to beg for money to make a phone call, but luckily she had managed to get back on the train several carriages further up!

On the first day in Kyoto we visited Nijo castle, a massive area with huge walls, double moats, gardens, and many buildings, including the imperial palace. The craftsmanship and effort it would have taken to build was very impressive. After that, we went to a small craft shop nearby where we did yuzen dying, which is a type of screen printing. Even though we had to select pre-made patterns, we could be a bit creative with the colours and shadow tones. We stayed at a hostel called K's House, which was very nice - new and clean, with full kitchen, living, and outdoor areas, and less than AU$40 a night. The beer vending machine next to the free coffee and tea came in handy too!

The next day was Sunday, and Chihiro had heard of some markets at Toji ("East Temple") which was within walking distance, so we headed off there through the busy Kyoto streets. We became slightly lost, but as we got closer we could see the five-layed tower that it's famous for. It also had some highly manicured gardens and a large Buddhist temple, all surrounded by a sea of market stalls. We spent a few hours wandering around looking at lots of nice things and still only managed to see about half of the market. I got some presents for family and friends in Australia, and also found a really nice Yukatta (men's summer kimono) that wasn't too expensive.

Next we took a bus to kiyomizu temple, which is famous for it's platform construction on the side of a steep hill, and for the holy water that comes out of a spring there. We walked up the hill along a back-path that went past a huge graveyard made of many different levels. From a distance it looked like a miniature city full of skyscrapers. There was another temple nearby that was for good luck in love, which we also visited (not that I need it, hehe). On the way down the hill we went through long twisting streets full of tourist and craft shops. Many of them had free samples of the sweets and food they were selling so we tried a lot of them as we wandered around. I think my trip to Kyoto involved the most shopping I've ever done in my life. The final stop of the day was Sanju-San Gendo, an extremely long temple housing 1001 statues of bhudda, with a huge one in the middle. Like most temples we couldn't take photographs inside, but it had an interesting museum section. It was also the place where the samurai Musashi Miyamoto had many duels.

On our last day we used an all-day bus pass to see several famous temples, the first being Ginkakuju (silver temple). It was quite small, and aspired to the minimal aestheticism of Zen. It was set in beautiful and tranquil gardens with little waterfalls, ponds, and streams. The floor of the garden was carpeted in many different types of moss, some of which are highly prized while others are regarded as weeds!

Kinkakuju (gold temple) on the other hand was incredibly ostentatious, being covered in gold foil. It was nice, but very crowded, and it was difficult sometimes to take a good photo because of the busloads of tourists being herded along the pathway. For lunch, we visited a stylish tofu café which where we tried tofu prepared in 10 different ways (all of them delicious) and some refreshing yuzu juice.