Konnichiwa Kyoto

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I took so many more photos than are up on my flickr stream. Here they all are in their glory (and not so glory). They should be in the same order as the text below.

Christina and I set off for Akihabara on the 8:11 Tsukuba Express. At Akihabara we hopped across on the JR line to Tokyo Station and then skipped to the Shinkansen which took us to Kyoto. I am always in awe of the ease of Japanese rail. Everything runs on time and frequently. The ticket barriers even speak of efficiency! None of this time wasted in opening a gate for the ticketed passenger to walk through. Instead the gate is always open and closes on the unticketed passengers. Think about the precious time saved when millions must pass through the gates every day.

The Shinkansen is of course the bullet train that the world is in awe of (apart from France). It took about two hours and forty minutes to get to Kyoto. We passed Mount Fuji on the way. The morning was clear and it rose up glistening white. The country between the cities was mainly a mix of small buildings and farm land. No space is wasted in this area of Japan. We also passed the Sanyo Solar Ark.

Once we arrived in Kyoto, it was straight to the Tourist Information office in the station for us. We grabbed maps and suggested walking tours from the helpful woman on the desk (who annotated a map demonstrating that she was able to write upsidedown as easily as the right way up... the words, not the orientation of the writer). Then we grabbed some ramen noodles and braved the outside world.

The station was amazing. We left the 10th floor and entered this huge atrium with steps and escalators that went all the way down to the bottom. The steps were full of people sitting and watching a stage far below on the third floor. We took the escalators down and tried to block out the noise from the people "beatboxing" on the stage.

Our first impression of Kyoto as we left the station was one of rather cheesy ugliness as the building in front of us was decorated with a huge lighthouse type structure. In the evening we saw this all lit up on the skyline and grew to like the architectural oddity but at first we were laughing at it. It was only a few minutes away however that we saw our first temple.

I noticed that about Kyoto, that the temples and shrines just cropped up in the most normal settings. Of course they would though. Churches are found in residential areas, after all, with no great touristy fanfare. But it seemed to me that in Tokyo this was not the case and it surprised me to find religious structures in Kyoto alongside houses and shops.

Our hotel was Western style and pretty expensive for one night. If I was to visit Kyoto again, I would definitely try harder to find accommodation that was both more Japanese and cheap.

After capturing our breath at the hotel, we embarked on our weekend of Kyoto discovery. With walking guide and maps in hand, we took a bus to the Nanzenji Zen Buddhist temple. We entered through a two-storey gate. Although the site dates back to the thirteenth century, like most of Kyoto the gate was rebuilt after being destroyed in the fifteenth century. The setting was rather beautiful. Many trees, tall and thin, and artfully placed and carved rocks. Incense was burnt just beyond the gate. What would undoubtedly be overwhelming if indoors became an uplifting and relaxing addition to the air. In particular I loved the aqueduct in the grounds. It took me some time to wait for the arches to clear of people but once they did I was able to get a shot of the line of arches.

Christina and I moved on quite quickly because the day was disappearing and there was more to do. We took the "path of philosophy" past some teddy bear fishermen to Ginkakuji.

Ginkakuji was designed as a retirement villa but turned into a Buddhist temple. It was meant to be covered in silver but that never happened and what stands there now is a nice wooden pavilion topped with a phoenix. Surrounding the pavilion is a Zen garden and pond from the fifteenth century. I loved the garden. Sand was formed into a truncated cone, placed near more sand raked into smooth curves. It was almost an optical illusion with the curves of the sand following the curves of the ground and exaggerating them.

We walked up a path on a hillside overlooking the Silver Pavilion. The hillside was gently wooded and the ground was covered in a rich green moss. Unfortunately there were many tourists and it was hard to enjoy the setting properly because we had to move on.

We left the Ginkakuji just as it closed and hopped on a bus that ran south to the streets of east Kyoto. Christina's guide book suggested that this was full of old wooden houses and narrow streets and was the former "entertainment" district. However, when we got there it was early evening and the area was pretty quiet. The maps didn't cover these small back streets at all well so we wandered aimlessly for a while discovering the ornate carvings on the buildings and the lanterns that lit them (plus an inflatable Spider-man). We had hoped to get some proper Kyoto cuisine in this area but we weren't able to find any restaurants. So we settled for a family style restaurant near the river.

The next day we started before nine and got to our first port of call by ten. This was the Kinkakuji: The Golden Pavilion. We arrived there with a load of school kids and had to fight the crowds to get a glimpse of the golden pavilion across the lake. The pavilion is actually rather new as in 1950 a "fanatic monk" apparently burnt the fourteenth century building (who knew monks were such pyromaniacs?). The covering is real gold leaf.

Once sated with the expense of the place, we moved on the path through more wooded and mossy areas to the tea house. The old tea house was not open to the public but they had one for us tourists. There were bright red parasols and tables covered with red cloth to sit on. A Japanese woman brought us a bowl of matcha and a small sweet each and we sat for a while in this serene setting. On first sip, the tea was unbelievably bitter but it grew on me and by the bottom of the bowl, I wanted more. The sweet was rather bland tasting icing around a red bean paste filling but it seemed to suit the strong tea well.

Next on the agenda was the Ryoanji Temple which had a, and I quote, "rock garden surrounded by low earthen walls [that] may be thought of as the quintessence of Zen art". Well, all I can say is Zen art is quintessentially dull. I will further quote the leaflet: It is up to each visitor to find out for himself what this unique garden signifies. I am sorry to say that I was too lazy to do that and rushed on to sit for the best part of an hour by the lake by the temple. It was full of lotus flowers and terrapins and the blue sky.

We then walked to the JR line and caught the train to Nijo-jo (castle). This dates back to the seventeenth century and has bumped the Met in New York off the top spot in my "places I want to live in (when the world ends) list". The castle is bounded by a moat and wall and within it is an inner moat. In the outer circle is the Ninomaru Palace and the best place I visited in Kyoto. The building was a series of linked rooms with straw mats and painted walls. The art was amazing and I am not even a fan of Japanese art; it bordered on the abstract possibly depicting landscapes. I especially loved the windows covered with thin white paper that let the sunlight in and made the rooms glow. Of course, the main attraction of the building are its nightingale floors and they really did sound like birds calling. With all the tourists, it was as loud as the dawn chorus.

We also wandered the garden of the palace with its large lake and stone work and also the more modern garden along the north side of the castle. We rested for some time in the inner section of the castle. There was a high point where a castle tower once stood from which we got some great views of the castle and the city beyond its walls.

Feeling quite exhausted, we left Nijojo for Kyoto train station. We had intended to do the old Imperial Palace but the weekend had truly worn us out and we were thinking of the train journey back to Tokyo quite fondly. Before leaving Kyoto (on the 1800 Shinkansen), we rode the station escalators right up to the roof of the station and took in some great views of the city (spoiled in the photos by reflections). There was a brass band playing on the stage this time and we saw the expanse of Kyoto to the music of 2001.