June 10, Wednesday

We made it to Kyoto! We didn’t do anything but travel today. We took the bullet train and it was actually pretty cool. It goes about 170 miles per hour and is a lot like riding on an airplane but with MUCH more leg room.

We bought these Bento boxes at a kiosk in the train station.  They are very popular snacks to eat on the train, so we figured we’d try them out.

They were revolting … the first thing I saw when I opened this one was a gelatinous baby octopus.  The rice in the front corner was studded with those baby sardines we saw at the fish market (eyeballs and all; when they get wet, they look like worms).  The other sections had slimy unidentifiable grossnesses in them.  Almost all of this went into the garbage can.

The kids had better luck with theirs, but they were still pretty awful.  They fought over the recognizable bits and threw away the rest.

Our apartment in Kyoto is a lot nicer than our place in Tokyo. It’s a lot bigger, too … and less than half the price! All three kids get their own room in this one, if you count the fact that Holden is taking the pull-out couch in the living room. He had the option of sharing a bedroom with Josie but he decided he wanted the privacy and he jumped on the living room because it has the TV and is closest to the internet connection box. (Better wifi in the front room, basically.)

We got into the place and then Adam and I went shopping for groceries. This apartment is on the 5th floor of a building with a grocery store on the first floor, so getting food is going to be easy. It looks like the neighborhood is really cool, too, but we haven’t had a chance to go exploring yet. We’re kind of wiped out from getting here… we had to take three trains in Tokyo to get to the bullet train station, and then another two train changes and a several block walk in Kyoto lugging all our stuff. Getting suitcases onto those crowded commuter trains is a huge pain in the ass — times 5.

June 11, Thursday

Kyoto is really pretty and Adam took more photos today than he did the entire week we spent in Tokyo.  The weather forecast predicted that it was going to rain heavily all afternoon, so we spent the morning touring some of the outdoor temples while it was dry. Kyoto is relatively small and most things are walking distance from our apartment, if you don’t mind a hike.

And we didn’t mind the hike … Kyoto has gardenia bushes planted along all of the sidewalks so the air smells heavenly.  In this photo below, you can see an example of the gardenia hedges lining the streets.  Gardenias are my all-time favorite flower.

They are in full bloom, too.  This is the best smelling city!

Kyoto is far more quaint than Tokyo and has a much calmer vibe.  We’ve seen a lot of tourists here.  Most of them are Westerners and we’ve heard most of the European languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc.

In spite of this, Kyoto has fewer signs in English.  There are a few, but not nearly as many as there are in Tokyo.

Below:  admiring some watercolors.

A shop specializing in orchids.  These were the most impressive orchids I’ve ever seen outside of a botanical gardens exhibit.

Josie standing in a beautiful entrance to a restaurant.  We wanted to eat lunch here, but it was too expensive … they had a prix fixe menu set at US$60 per person for lunch, and around US$90 for dinner.

Gateway to Maruyama park and the 1350+ year old Yasaka shrine.

Below:  We saw a thing like this in Tokyo at the Imperial Palace.  It said there that you are supposed to use that little bamboo basket to pour water on each of your hands and then rinse out your mouth as a purifying ritual before you pray at the temple.  This temple in Kyoto didn’t have any instructions in English, but we assume it’s the same process.

We rinsed our hands, but I refused to let anyone rinse their mouths.  The water is probably clean, but you never know.  It’s not worth the risk of getting sick.

Holden refused to participate.  He doesn’t like getting wet.

Each of these shrines had a huge rope attached to a bell.  We saw people praying and then pulling the rope to ring the bell.  Unfortunately, this temple/shrine didn’t have anything labeled in English so we didn’t really know what we were looking at here.

Josie was desperate for a bathroom, so we found the public restroom on the shrine grounds.  These were the potties.  (Note the cartoon instructions on the wall.)  Josie decided she wasn’t desperate, after all, and nobody used the weird squatty-potty.  Adam and I told the kids that most of the toilets in China are like these, and that was enough information for them to unanimously decide that we don’t ever need to go to China.  (We’ll see …. China is really a neat place to visit!  I’d dearly love to go back, and take the kids with us this time.)

Prayers written and tied to a fence near the main temple.

This guy was doing something with long red strings.  We were there really early and all these guys were still in the process of setting up for the day.

They still sweep the grounds with homemade brooms.

After the Yasaka shrines we took a long walk to another heritage site, the Nijo Castle.  It is one of the seventeen Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which have been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Below: Isabella is taking a photo to one of the gates leading into the Nijo Castle compound. The castle was erected in the early 1600s (started in 1601, completed in 1626) by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate.  It was built as the Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa Shoguns.

Visitors are allowed inside the buildings but photography is strictly prohibited.  You have to take off your shoes, too.

The floors have built-in squeaks so that nobody could sneak up on anybody else in the castle. The wikipedia page about Nijo explains: One of the most striking features of the Ninomaru Palace are the “nightingale floors” (uguisubari) in the corridors. To protect the occupants from sneak attacks and assassins, the builders constructed the floors of the corridors in such a way as to squeak like birds when anyone walks on them. (It sounds funny with hundreds of people filing through … everyone shuffles along in their socks, very quiet and respectful and somber, with a background noise that sounds like dozens of cartoon mice.)

The inside of the Castle looked a lot like the rooms where Po lived and did his training at the Jade Palace in Kung Fu Panda.  (Yes, I know that’s Chinese and we’re in Japan, but the style is remarkably similar — mats on the floors, no furniture, walls made of paper, etc.)

The entire building is made of wood, which is impressive because it’s so old.  Wood structures generally end up being destroyed by fire or rot after a relatively short period of time.  In the European castles, the stone structures are still around but most of the wooden parts are long gone.  This entire thing is wood, and still in fantastic shape.  (We couldn’t read the signs, so perhaps a lot of it has ben replaced or restored since the early 1600s.)

[note:  I did some online research when we got back to the apartment.  “The central keep, or Tenshu, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 1750.  In 1788, the Inner was destroyed by a city-wide fire. The site remained empty until it was replaced by a prince’s residence transferred from the Kyoto Imperial Palace in 1893.”  So, not all of it is original to the early 1600s.]

Below:  We think these metal things are ancient bells, but the kids all thought they looked like Daleks.

Gorgeous gardens.

Nijo Castle is pretty far from our apartment.  We walked a long time to get there, and on the way back Josie hit melt-down mode.  Suddenly her leg hurt, her feet hurt, she had a stitch in her side, she was so thirsty she was “going to die, and nobody even cares!” and she needed food.  We started looking for a place to eat lunch, but didn’t really find anything suitable until we were nearly back to our place.

Below: an example of the shops here in Kyoto.

After the fantastic lunch we had in Tokyo at the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, we decided to take a chance on another one. This time we weren’t so lucky. The food was only OK, and the atmosphere was pretty terrible. They can’t all be winners.

Below:  Holden is starting to really get the hang of eating noodles with chopsticks.

We did a little shopping on the way back to our apartment.  I finally found a kimono.  That’s one of the things I wanted to buy while in Japan, but I struck out big-time in Tokyo. I wanted something that I could use as a bathrobe back at home, but the kimonos we found in the mall were serious affairs that started at US$5,000 and went up from there.

In Kyoto, I found some of the silk bathrobe-style ones I’d had in mind, but they were called “Happy Coats” and not kimonos.  A Kimono is a much fancier thing that’s meant to be worn in public on special occasions.

By this time it was starting to rain, so we headed back to the apartment and called it a day. Adam had work to do, and by the time he was done with that it was wine time.

June 12, Friday

Kyoto has breakfast places!  They are all French.  A place just downstairs from our apartment is a boulangerie called Shinshindo and they open at 7:00 a.m.  They serve what we have come to know as “full English breakfast” — something we never really saw in France.  We went there yesterday and enjoyed it so much we went back this morning.

I still don’t understand why Japanese restaurants don’t serve breakfast.  Getting restaurant food has been somewhat of a chore here.  The Japanese restaurants, in addition to not being open for breakfast, have very short lunchtime hours, too.  Most of them open at 11:30 a.m. and close back up around 2:00 p.m.  They don’t open again until dinner, at 6:00 p.m. or so.  If you find yourself hungry at 3:00 p.m., you’re stuck with getting a French pastry in a coffee shop.

Below;  Holden lounging on his couch-bed.  

Shop that sells handmade brooms, welcome mats, and other types of cleaning supplies made of straw.

On the very, very long walk from our apartment to the Heian Shrine, this school bus full of elementary children passed us.  They waved. 

Entering Heian Shrine.  The shine was originally built at 5/8ths scale in 1895 for the 1100th anniversary of the establishment of Heian-kyō, and was to be the main monument for that year’s Industrial Exposition Fair.  After the Exhibition ended, the building was kept as a shrine in memory of the 50th Emperor, Emperor Kanmu, who was the Emperor when Heian-kyō became the capital.

[from wikipedia:  Kyoto was shocked and depressed after the capital was moved to Tokyo. Later, the citizens came together to build a new city after World War II. The construction of Heian Shrine was a symbol of revival for the city. The revival consisted of the new Kyoto in education, culture, industry, and daily life, where at the same time the “good old” Kyoto was maintained.

In 1976, the Shrine was set on fire; and nine of the buildings, including the honden, or main sanctuary, burned down. Three years later, the burned buildings were reconstructed with money collected from donations.]

Japanese writing looks really pretty when it’s carved into stone. 

The Japanese-style garden takes up about half the land area -over 30,000 square meters. The garden was created over a 20-year period of time by Gardener Jihei Ogawa 7th. The water used in the ponds comes from the Lake Biwa Canal.  It’s stunning.

They have a huge pond full of irises.  We got lucky and happened to be here while they are in bloom. 

I’m not sure what type of fish these are.  They look kind of like catfish.  They will come to the surface with their mouths wide open, baby-bird style, hoping for treats.  You can pet them on the head with your finger.  

A really fun feature of the garden is these stepping stones.  

Isabella was trying to arrange some sort of “Abbey Road” walk across the pond but it didn’t come out in the picture.  Josie was too nervous about falling in to stride across the stones properly.  She hopped from one to the other.

Kids having a good time. It was sprinkling this morning so we all had umbrellas.

Adam told the kids, “OK, do one funny pose” and Josie’s reaction was to poke Isabella in the face. Holden is saying, “Josie, that’s not a funny pose” and Isabella is just waiting for the shutter click. 

This bridge has a treat box full of puffed rice cakes you can purchase and feed to the fish, ducks and turtles in the pond.  We spent a solid 15 minutes doing this.  Holden was excited to see all the turtles.   Rare (to Japan, anyway) types of turtles live here … the Yellow pond turtle and the Japanese pond turtle.

Another wedding party setting up for photos. 

Holden displaying his superior umbrella-swinging skills.  I was hating that we’d brought these along because the kids were constantly whacking each other with them, swinging them into things, using them as canes, etc.  

A short walk around the corner from the Heian Shrine and gardens is an active Buddhist temple, graveyard and monastery. Kurodani Temple was built in 1175 and still used. The graveyard is a burial site for many of the falled Shogunate of the battle of Toba-Fushimi (1868).

By this time in the day it was starting to get really hot.

This temple is open to visitors.  You must remove your shoes at the bottom of the stone steps. 

Pictures are forbidden inside, but Adam cheated and took a couple hip shots.  I hope we don’t get in trouble for publishing them here, but it’s just so pretty I’m going to do it anyway. It smelled heavily of incense in here.

Shots of the graveyard situated at the back of the Buddhist property.

Another one of the “Daleks.”  It turns out they are, indeed, huge bells.

Below: Kids waiting at the foot of our apartment complex’s entrance. I ran upstairs to put away the umbrellas.  We never ended up using them and were tired of carrying them around. Holden and Josie are drinking tiny cups of mocha frappuccino that Starbucks was handing out as free samples.

There is a huge (and I mean HUGE) shopping area right down the street from our apartment.  We ate lunch over there and then spent a good deal of the afternoon wandering through the shops.  Adam and Holden were bored nearly to tears and Adam didn’t take any pictures.  Josie and Isabella enjoyed themselves so much we had a hard time dragging them out.

We were so hot and sweaty by 2:30 we headed back to the apartment for a siesta. Around 4 p.m. Adam, Isabella, and I decided to walk back to Gion – the geisha district … we walked through  it on our first day, but were there too early and nothing was open.  Holden and Josie were both tired of walking and not interested in seeing the geisha district again so they opted to stay home.

Adam [photo below]:  I almost missed this place – walked by it once without seeing the logos. We went in and it got VERY fancy very quickly. They had all of the M bodies and lenses, complete S2 line of equipment, field glasses, telescopes & etc.  

Just a little hole in the wall from the outside appearances. Many of the fanciest stores and restaurants we’ve run across carry this theme. Very modest entrances – some we almost were afraid to enter because they looked so downtrodden.

Back in the Gion Geisha district. On their way to work. Performances at higher end restaurants and some theaters are given nightly.

These Geisha’s don’t do any of the naughty bits. I had to look that up as well. The Japanese, apparently, get a bit put off by our Western bias to focus solely on the more puerile aspects of this tradition.

According to what I’ve read on the internet, the Japanese value pale skin very highly. Everywhere we go, we see ladies using umbrellas as parasols. There will be no freckles! 

This area has many shops offering high-end (expensive and hand-made) tourist goods.  

[photo below:] We took a different route back to the apartment and ran into this … Fugu!  The restaurant is called Yamafuku and all they serve is Tiger blowfish.  I looked it up when we got back and discovered the Tiger blowfish is the most prestigious edible species of pufferfish and the most poisonous.

I grabbed one of their menus.  The cheapest dish offered is “Thin strips of skin dipped in boiling water” for ¥648.  The most expensive is “Yamafuku Tiger blowfish VIP full-course meal” for ¥10,584.  They also offer a dish called “Blowfish bone with flesh residue” … that doesn’t sound very appetizing to me.

Isabella really wants to try the blowfish, mostly so she can say she’s done it.  I was put off by the alive fish swimming around in the tank.  I hate being responsible for something being killed, and I refuse to eat raw animal.  Just … NO.  Adam and Isabella may go back tomorrow just to try it.  This place is only open for dinner.

Last shot of the day.  This is the river directly across from the Tiger Blowfish restaurant. 

I was planning to do three blog entries, one for each city we visit on this trip, but Adam took way more photos in Kyoto than I expected.  I’m going to split our Kyoto portion into two separate posts.  More in a couple of days!