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Published: October 10th 2008
In the 3 hour journey from Tokyo to Kyoto it didn't even seem like we'd left Tokyo's suburbs. Japan may have some amazing countryside, but we certainly didn't spot any from our window. Mount Fuji should have been visible, but the weather wasn't playing ball, and you could see about 3 feet out the window. I've dived with better visibility.
Whereas Tokyo was mostly muggy and cloudy, we arrived in Kyoto about the same time as a tropical typhoon. Fortunately the city was mostly on the outskirts, so the typhoon mostly manifested itself as torrential rain (albeit the heaviest rain I've ever seen), thus neither of us where whisked off to Oz followed by an annoying yappy type dog.
Kyoto though, is absolutely amazing, one of our favourite cities of the trip. It always improves things to get some insider info, and we were lucky enough to have our mate Elliot to show us the sights. It's somewhere between the old heartland of Japan (an ancient capital, but then Japan has a few of these), the spiritual home of the country (there's about 5 shrines and temples for every day of the week), and a University town, with all
the student related bars and fooderies that brings.
The best way to see the place is like the locals do, from the back of a bike. Thankfully, Elliot is an old Yorkshire mountain biker. Like any self respecting rider, he has bikes to share. It's perhaps surprising, then, that they were of the 'basket on the front' variety...
Anyway, we hit the trails pretty hard, which meant pootling around the shrines and streets of Kyoto at about 4mph. A particular highlight being the Philosophers Path, a piece of singletrack with a river on one side, and a series of highly technical shop fronts on the other. Named due to the locality of the nearby university, Japan's studious philosophers would wander these trails doing their thing. De Gorski (r) Trail Rating:
Technical:- 3 (you don't want to end up in the drink)
Physical:- 4 (those bikes have only one gear)
Fun:- Make that 9, bro
Philosophical Ponderance Ratio:- Off the scale
Ideal bike:- Hmm, well, you don't want too heavy a front basket, but if your ma wouldn't ride it, it's no good.
I could add a further category: shrines and temples spotted... The Japanese religion of
Shinto really puts the poly in polytheism. There's a god or spirit for pretty much everything, animate or otherwise. If it's got a noun, it's got a fella to pray to. Add to this the Buddhist temples, and every other building is a decorative prayer or meditation spot. It's not really buddhism in the classic sense, mind. According to Elliot it's not unusual to see a Xen Buddhist driving about in a blacked out BMW.
To counter all that religion, the city has almost just as many bars and restaurants, and we set about trying to visit them all. It was a lot of fun - the bars are all interestingly decorated, they have a super professional attitude to giving you great drinks and great food, and there doesn't appear to be a closing time. A top city, in other words, and not a bad place for our last stop on the trip.
Until next time we can afford to head off for a year...
Sayonara
Si & Nat
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