Night Hiking

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Another thing you can do in Kyoto, besides speed tourism, is night hiking. But one of the key considerations for night hiking is that you have to do it at night. So we had to do a bunch of boring stuff in the day to get to it, and I'm going to write about that first.

Actually, something awesome happened the night before, after speed tourism.

We met up with Maria, who was also at our hostel in Tokyo, and went over to the local sake bar. This sake bar had exactly seven seats in it, and all of them were around the bar. It also had a karaoke machine. This place ticked a lot of boxes for us.

We clapped along while a local man sang along to a Japanese song, and then Mitch, Mike and myself totally butchered Summer of '69.

Oh, and for some reason the woman that owns this sake bar has some samurai swords and costumes in the corner for patrons to try on, which we were totally on board with. I think she gets a lot of customers from our hostel, which is just around the corner.

In summary, it was a totally awesome experience, and we're really starting to tick through all of the essential things to experience while in Japan.

The next day was really for some proper sightseeing. Actually, our bicycle blitz of Kyoto really gave us a good sense of what Kyoto was like, and what we wanted to do while we were there.

First stop was the train station, because I had lost yet another sushi bet and this time I owed Mike a plate of sushi, and there was a conveyor belt sushi place at the station. I can't remember why, but I just know that I did. We also figured out that you could get on top of the train station (which was also a mall) and get a bit of a view of Kyoto.

And we bought ourselves a one day transit pass to get us around to some key temples and shrines. Unlike the previous day, we were going for quality instead of quantity. The first stop was the Temple of 1000 Buddhas. This place is very much what it is advertised to be, and there are 1000 statues of Buddha arranged on steps packed inside the temple. It's staggering, especially when you find out that they spent over 100 years crafting the statues, and lost a bunch in a fire that they had to re-make. Wild stuff. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside, but you can find images on the internet if you search "Sanjusangen-do".

You also need to take your shoes off at the door and wear slippers. Apparently they expect one size to fit all, and that size is much smaller than size 12, so they really only fit over my toes. I wore them to keep up appearances, but my heels were on the carpet. Hopefully that's not totally disrespectful, but I have a feeling it definitely is somehow.

The Golden Temple is one of the more famous sights in Kyoto, so we figured it was worth a visit. It was was quite a sight to see it shining in the sun. It is actually painted in real gold, so it is also exactly as advertised. But you can't go inside, but I don't think there's anything inside anyway. It's a temple for show only, I suspect. There is a pretty nice sized garden to walk around in, and an ice cream stand that we couldn't say no to.

We tried going to a Zen temple and hopefully see a real full sized Zen rock garden, but it had just closed. Just our luck, I guess.

It was a long bus ride back to the hostel, and we'd managed to work up an appetite over this relatively easy day, so we went to the udon place recommended by the hostel. It was tasty. I also caught a glimpse of who I assume is Japan's equivalent of Ali G., or maybe some Japanese rock star, or maybe just a crazy person. It's not really that important.

Back at the hostel we met up with another Canadian who we had previously made plans with for the evening. There was a shrine we had visited yesterday on our speed tourism adventure that had peaked our interest. The Fushimi Inari shrine has hundreds or maybe thousands of red gates over top of kilometers of trails in the hills on the edge of Kyoto. It's also open 24 hours, so we figured it would be fun to visit at night.

The other Canadian was named Justin, and he had been teaching English in South Korea for the last year and was loving it. Mike also eventually figured out that they had a mutual friend in Winnipeg, which is pretty ridiculous. Anyway, Justin's idea was to buy some sake and bring it with us on our visit to the shrine.

This was a good idea.

As far we could figure out, the red gets at the shrine are paid for by individuals or families. We also guess that the size of the gates corresponds to the price you pay, and the size you select is probably a sign of your wealth. Maybe you buy a gate in exchange for a free pass into heaven, or maybe I have no understanding at all of the Shinto religion. Actually, it's the latter, definitely the latter...

At night, there are lights to guide you around, but there are lots of choices for trails. Where there are gates it feels like a tunnel. It's pretty neat. Sake makes it better. The four of us all felt fairly adventurous, so we chose to go for a long walk, and stopped at various spots along the way for sake breaks.

Soon, we were totally lost.

But we weren't concerned at all. First, because we drank a bunch of sake. Second, we were a group of Canadians, and getting lost in the woods is a part of our culture. Third, there were vending machines every 300 meters, so it didn't seem too remote. And finally, we were still on the Kyoto. It's not like we were really lost. All we had to do was take a trail that went downhill back towards the train station.

Our adventure walk took us way back into the shrine, and we we stumbled upon a mini waterfall (which was literally a trickle of water that fell about 20 feet), and had an impromptu drum circle on some bamboo growing in the woods.

Eventually we found our way out of the shrine and to a road. It was a pretty long walk out, and in many other countries besides Japan, if you were walking on a isolated road in the dark you might be half expecting to get stabbed. But, since this was Japan, we were more likely to end up on a game show, or be apologized to.

We made it out, anyway. And back to the hostel before calling it a night. We were heading back to Tokyo the next day in search of robots...

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Photos

Kyoto Skyline
Much less dense than Tokyo

Throwing Stones
For luck?