Japan - Kyoto part I, with trips to Osaka and Nara

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Yup, another blog. I am trying to catch up after two weeks of writing nothing (I blame you Beth!!!!). This one focuses on my week in Kyoto with Beth.

So on our first full day in Kyoto, we decided not to explore Kyoto.....LOL. We decided to go to Arashiyama instead, which is right up in the north of Kyoto. According to Fran (Beth's sister who is living in Kyoto for a year), it is the best place to see sakura (cherry blossom) near Kyoto. As it was a Sunday and a beautiful, sunny day, the place was absolutely heaving with people! So much so that we had to shuffle from place to place.....

The first place we went to was the monkey park at Arishiyama, which involved a 20 minute or so walk uphill (boo!), in the hot sun (double boo!), so it was pretty hard work.
On reaching the top, there were monkeys everywhere and we had a great view over to Kyoto. The monkeys were pretty cute and as they were so used to people you could get really close and take some pretty good pictures. There were signs, however, saying that you shouldnt look the monkeys in the eye, so it was fun taking pictures of monkeys while trying not to look at them too hard!

There was this special building with wide meshing over the windows, where you could go in and feed the monkeys if you wanted to. We opted against doing that, as it seemed to send the monkeys a little crazy...

Then it was back down to the main part of Arishiyama to look at some cherry blossom (it was everywhere) and the scenery; a river with row boats on it, filled with couples, hoards of people picnicking under every sakura tree in sight (hanami, which invloves a lot of sake or beer) and a lovely clear blue sky.

Beth and I then decided to hire some kimonos and get dressed up. I had never realised how much you had to wear before you were even allowed to put the kimono on. The 'underwear' was a little ridiculous and practically a kimono in itself. It involved being wrapped in several layers of white cloth, tied with ribbons. It felt a bit like being made into a mummy when they were doing it, and they pulled the ribbons pretty tight!
Once we were suitable, they finally put the kimonos on us. Then it just needs adjusting for height, width and then everything is tweaked until it is all straight and flat....Then the obi is tied on around the waist, and the tying itself is a work of art. It takes years to learn how to do it all properly and I could easily see why.

Surprisingly, getting dressed in the kimonos didnt actually take all that long, as the people there know what they are doing. So once we were given the appropriate bags (to match our kimonos) and the geta (the special japanese sandals) for our feet we were ready to hit the town!

We went for a walk through a bamboo grove, with the bamboo soaring straight up to the sky. There were so many bamboo trees growing so close together that it was much, much darker in the grove than it had been else where and it was nice and cool and we were protected from the sun (and protected from getting too hot in our many, many layers!!).

Kimonos are very restricting; you cannot take big steps (not without showing your 'underwear' which is extremely inappropriate!) and it is awkward to sit down, but yet the are AWESOME. You sort of glide (ish) wearing them, and the obi keeps your posture nice and straight. No longer are you big, hefferlumping gaijin (japanese word for foreigner), instead we were graceful ladies (hah!).

We walked around and did some shopping, and then we sat under some sakura and watched the evening progress (where Japanese kept taking pictures of the oddity that was two foreigners in kimonos...). All very serene.

Eventually we had to give the kimonos back and we had to head home to Kyoto. It was weird putting our own clothes back on, we instantly felt much drabber and we could suddenly see the slight sunburn we'd got walking around before we put the kimonos on....

The following day was also spent outside of Kyoto. We had decided to hope on the train and go to Osaka as the forecast for the day wasnt great, and Osaka is famous for its covered shopping streets.

When we arrived we headed straight for Osaka castle. It is sad that it is only a reconstruction, but as the japanese have a habit of building in wood, very few of their old buildings survived all the fires, and natural disasters thrown at them by time. Osaka castle has burnt down several times and rebuilt each time in a slightly different way. Originally it was a black castle with gold animals at the top, but today it is white, with only a small bit of black at the very top. The whole castle is now a museum about the history of osaka, osaka castle and the feudal lord who fought over it. It was really interesting and had many beautiful things inside, and when we reached the very top of the castle we had a great view of Osaka.

It started to rain pretty much as soon as we left the castle, and the wind was so strong that we were having leaves and dust blown in our faces. Sure made walking difficult. But it was fine that it was raining, as we were heading for the covered shopping street of Osaka. The street goes on and on for what felt like miles, in a completely straight line; shops, arcades, restaurants on both sides. We went past and in lots of different shops, some names that jumped out at me were 'womb' (for a womans clothes shop!!) and 'aimer feel', which had some very strange outfits in the window. This was one of a few shops that Beth and I felt too scared of to go in.

We stayed until it was dark, as we wanted to see all the lit up billboards and adverts that Osaka is known for. It was kind of beautiful in an uber modern way.

We then went for okonomiaki for dinner, which is the traditional Osaka meal! It is a cross between a omlette and a savoury pancake, and it has sauce on top and any other flavours you want inside. We went for one shrimp and one pork, which were both delicious, and we washed them down with some hot sake. Perfect.

The next day was spent completely in Kyoto ('at last' I hear you say!). We borrowed a bike off Fran and hired another and decided to go to Ginkaku-ji, the silver pavilion.
The way there was a little nerve racking, as we didnt know where we were going, and as people cycle on the pavement, you have to dodge hoards of people, vending machines, lamp posts, traffic and numerous other things. Japanese people dont keep over to one side, they hog the whole pavement, and sometimes dont even move over when you ring your bell. Beth had a near miss between an old lady and a vending machine (she has the bruise to prove it).

In Japan you can only park your bikes in designated areas or shrines. So we cycled to a shrine in the centre of the area we wanted to explore, and parked up. We then walked to this very small shrine whose animal is the rabbit. It being the year of the rabbit, and Beth and I both having been born in the year of the rabbit, we thought we had better check it out. The rabbit statues and lanterns were very 'kawaii' (cute) and the shrine was pretty.

Then it was on to the path of philosophy, which you walk up to get to numerous shrines including the silver pavilion. The path follows a small canal (river?), and there are cherry blossom trees lining it the whole way. It was lovely as the sakura were in full bloom and some where being blown down, falling softly.

The silver pavilion is known as such as it was going to be covered with silver, to make it partner the golden pavilion, which is covered in gold leaf, but the money ran out. Instead the silver pavilion boasts a zen garden, silvery gravel raked into lines and some made into a volcano shape. The silver pavilion isnt the most spectacular thing Ive seen but I enjoyed seeing it, and the gardens were nice (though they would have been nicer if we hadnt had to keep avoiding slow moving, small Japanese couples, intent on taking up the whole path). Walking up the steps in the garden, you can see the Kanji burnt into the opposite hillsides. This is done every autumn.

Then it was back down the path of philosophy and back onto the bikes, to cycle down to gion, the old geisha district of Kyoto. Again, this has been reconstructed mostly, still it was easy to imagine how things would have been in the past, geisha and tea rooms everywhere. We stopped off at the shrine at the bottom of the Gion area, where a nice man in a ticket booth randomly gave us some photos of maikos (trainee geisha). The pictures were beautiful.

Beth and I then headed to the river, where we had a picnic on the grass, surrounded by Japanese donig hanami, as the river was lined with sakura trees.

That evening we met up with Fran and cycled to this amazing sushi place. Not only was nearly everything on the menu only about 60p, but if what you wanted wasnt on the conveyer belt, then you ordered it on this cool touch screen things, and it was then delivered to you on a mini shinkansen (bullet train) on a track. A sushi shinkansen!!!! I ate so much and it was all DELICIOUS.

The next day we went to Nara. It is known for the wild deer that roam everwhere, though they are pretty tame from the sheer number of tourists that go to see them, and from being fed special deer cookies.
The first place we went to was a temple with two pagodas, one three tier and the other five tier. there were deer happily sitting in the shade of the trees in the temple grounds, but they freaked Beth out a bit as they were quite big. Deer Fear!!!

She was right to be cautious as there were signs everywhere warning that the deer were wild and therefore unpredictable, so could attach you (love the fact this was shown with a little drawing of a deer attacking an old woman!).

I decided to feed some deer some deer cookies. This didnt do much to make Beth feel better about the deer as I got absolutely mobbed. I was butted from all sides, and one deer kept taking huge bites outs of the whole stack of cookies I had. I retreated and even managed to escape with a few cookies intact! After that I was more careful with my deer choice. I picked one lone deer to feed, however, as it was bobbing its head the whole time, I thought Id managed to pick a crazy deer. It was only after a few more joined it and started doing the same thing that it dawned on me that they were bowing (kind of). They were bowing so quickly and over and over again that it looked more like head bobbing than anything else. We had been told that if you bow to the deer at Nara that they bow back, but we hadnt believed it!
So I bowed to the deer and it bowed back!!! It was pretty amazing, and he got a cookie for his efforts. After that Beth decided to have a go at bowing and feeding the deer, as the three around us seemed much friendlier and less forceful than the ones before.

Once we had run out of cookies, we headed to another temple which had the biggest Buddha in Japan in it (Toji temple). As such, to fit the Buddha in it, the temple itself is huge; it dwarfs the people around it. Apparently it was once even bigger but was unfortunately destroyed, and when it was rebuilt it was built shorter and narrower, hard to imagine looking at it.

The Buddha iteself was like nearly every other Buddha Ive seen since leaving home, except it was enormous and sitting on a giant lotus leaf. As you look at it, youve either got to crane your neck up or stand away from it to see it all.
It was at this temple that i found a charm for travelling. As Ive already been in two earthquakes , and had a near miss with flooding and other problems, I thought it might be prudent to get the charm....can t hurt right?

After the temple we headed back to Kyoto to do some present shopping for the people back home at Kyoto Tower. There were so many beautiful things and also lots of yummy samples (MOCHI!!!!!!!).

We spent the next day checking out some more of Kyotos temples and shrines. We went to visit the number 1 temple in Kyoto, Kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion. It is absolutely gorgeous when you look at if from across the pond, its gold coating glimmering in the sun. It is hard to imagine someone having the money to cover a building in gold.

Beth and I found, however, that when you go up close to the golden pavilion, it seems a little too much. It doesnt look quite real, and it seems just a little gaudy... Still, well worth a visit.

Next we went to Ryoan-ji temple, which is famous for its zen garden, Hojo garden. The 15 rocks arranged on a surface of white pebbles in a rectangualr site symbolically represent nature, even though there is neither a single tree or blade of grass in the garden (yes, i did copy that from the leaflet!). It is also known as the 'baby tiger crossing' because it resembles a tiger crossing a mountain stream with its cubs....or so they tell me, I couldnt see it.

The garden was smaller than we expected but it did have a very peaceful quality about it. However, I wouldnt want it in my garden as you could never walk in your own garden as youd ruin the carefully raked pebbles....

Lastly we went to Ninna-ji, which used to be an old imperial palace before it was made into a temple. You can see both the old palace and the temple but you have to pay to get into each bit. Having decided we ahd seen enough of temples for one day, we decided to check out the palace. Japanese palaces are nothing like the ones back home. They are very simple in comparison, although it had some beautiful paintings on the walls and sliding doors. The wood was also beautifully carved in places.

On the way back to our ryokan from the temples, Beth managed to hit a small Japanese child with her bike (he was also on a bike). He wasnt hurt, and as we had literally just eaten a huge amount of banana icecream, Beth was so hyped up on sugar, that she was struggling not to laugh at the whole situation, as she and the childs mother continually bowed and apologised to each other. It looked very comical from where I was standing, both bowing and constantly waving their arms, the kid still on the floor a bit confused by the whole thing. We were both glad the kid wasnt hurt at all, and hopefully next time he wont come out from behind a parked car, while cycling his bicycle on the wrong side of the road (though to be fair, he was just following him mum, silly woman!!).

That night we met up with Fran and went to Nijo castle, as just for a few weeks, it is open to the public at night and all lit up. It was so beautiful, with lanterns everywhere and all the sakura trees lit up.
There was a room with traditional Japanese harps being played, and it was so interesting to watch how they are played. Can t say I was the greatest fan of the actual sound of the harp but it did seem to make the night slightly magical, as though we had stepped back in time.

After we had finished at the castle, we went for Yakinikku. This is where you have a grill in front of you, built into the table, and you just order whatever meat, fish or veg you want and cook it yourself. The place we went to was all you can eat AND all you can drink!!! We had a time limit of 90 minutes but I reckon we got our moneys worth as we gave it a pretty good go. By the time we were told our time was up, we had eaten so much it was hard to move. I was stuffed to the brim but it was so worth it.

We got up ridiculously early, as we had heard there was a spring festival at Heian-jingu shrine, however, we had been unable to find out any information about what was actually going to happen and when things would start.

We arrived to find some banners up, but nothing else seemed to be going on. Disappointed, we decided to explore the gardens around Heian-jingu and take part in a traditional tea ceremony. It wasnt set up for tourists at all, so Beth and I just copied what everyone else was doing and muddled through. We knew we had to turn the cup and admire the cup and maccha (thick green tea) and do some bowing, but we didnt know when to do these things or how often! It was nice to watch the tea prepared, the paste put in hot water and then carefulyl whisked. Lastly a little cold water is added to make it the perfect drinking temperature. Maccha tea doesnt taste all that great....nothing like normal green tera. It is thick and tastes a little like seaweed, something I dont mind eating but didnt really want to drink. The sweet we were given with the tea was quite nice, as it was a sakura sweet, because it was sakura season. This meant we didnt get the normal maccha flavoured sweet, which tastes just like the tea and according to Beth, is horrid!

By the time the tea ceremony was over, and we had managed to finish the tea and sweet, my legs were about ready to fall off from the kneeling. We then continued our walk around the garden, which was extremely nice. The garden and some of the buildings were used in the film 'memoirs of a geisha'.

As we were about the leave the garden, we spotted some people in ceremonial clothes! So something was going on!! When we got back into the main temple area, we found lots of people seated watching a ceremony.
Beth and I didnt really understand what was going on, but we could tell it was all about spring as the miko had sakura branches on their head-dresses and the shinto priest were making offerings of fresh fruit and veg (which were on these things that looked like birdboxes!) to the deities. All the while music was played and chanting going on. Once this was done, some more priests came from across the courtyard carrying a covered box. No idea why or what was in the box, but it all looked very cool and it was nice to get a picture of their outfits. Pretty soon after this we decided to leave as these ceremonies can go no for hours, with not a lot happening except an extreme amount of chanting. We had seen what we wanted to see, so were ready to move on.

We had planned to go to the monthly handicraft market at a shrine not too far away from where we were. It is the biggest market of its kind in Kyoto. However, when we got there, we found that it had been cancelled (though it took us ages to find that out, as we dont understand kanji, and therefore just thought we were in the wrong place for ages, walking past the sign that said the market was cancelled numerous times. Only found out after we found a nice lady who spoke a little english...) for no apparent reason, which annoyed us as it had been advertised as being on this month.

To finish off our day we went to Fushimi inari, another shrine used in the movie 'memoirs of a geisha'. The shrine is famous for having over 40,00 torii gates (the red shinto gates), covering a walk way that goes on for over 4km. We had gone just to look at the main shrine, take pictures of the fox statues (the fox being the animal of the shrine - it represents cunning and getting money, so the place is always full of businessmen) and walk through a few of the gates, but we ended up doing the who main walk. We almost got lost a few times in the maze of torii gates, as our inability to read kanji yet again caused us problems. Not being able to read kanji meant we didnt know which paths to follow to do the main loop. Some paths take you off for miles and take you to other shrines, while others take you all the way back to the beginning or are deadends....not what you want if you want to go the complete loop route. Still, we managed to go the right way by guessing and following other people. And 'yata' (hurray in japanese), we managed to do the whoel thign. Then it was time to go home and rest and enjoy our last evening together as Beth was heading back to Tokyo the next day so that she could catch her plane home on the sunday 😞.

OK, and that concludes this blog. The next blog will be about my time in Kyoto all on my lonesome....

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Photos

Hojo Garden
At Ryoan-ji

Ceremonial outfits
Carrying the mysterious box!!