Kyoto

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We only had two days to explore Kyoto, hardly enough time to get a feel for one of the highlight cities of our trip. And we had to find a balance to keep everyone happy.

When planning this trip, it was Kyoto that threw us when we started looking at hostels. We just couldn’t find one with space for us. Or even a cheap hotel. I’m sure there was a hostel somewhere in Kyoto with a spare family room, we just couldn’t find it online. So we ended up booking a hostel in Nara, a 45 minute train ride away. And then went on to book the rest of the accommodation for the whole trip. Just because we, and thousands of others, had decided to go touring in cherry blossom season. Sigh. It was hard trying to fit in where we wanted to visit with where we could get affordable accommodation.

Anyway, back to Kyoto. We had two days to fit in as much as we could, and we ended up with one jam-packed day and one long, more relaxed day.

Our hostel in Nara was a 5-10 minute walk from the station, and the slow train took about an hour to get to Kyoto, but the main station in Kyoto was very central for everything we wanted to see and do.

The first day we battled the crowds in the station tourist office to try and find some maps or info in English, and bought one day bus passes. We were going to drag the girls round the Southern Higashiyama district, meant to be the main sightseeing area and “at the top of any Kyoto itinerary”. Our guidebook had a walking tour in it, so we decided to roughly follow that. And follow the hundreds of others exploring the same area. Places before this had been busy, but this was crazy.

The first place we looked around was the temple of Kiyomizu-dera. Not that we could see a lot really as the main temple was covered in plastic wrap and under-going restorations or renovations. We did go in the Tainai-meguri. I’m not sure how to describe it or what it is exactly, but you pay your ¥100, take your shoes off and put them in a plastic bag, then descend down into the darkness. You hold onto a rope that leads you round in a big loop, doubling back and going round and round, past a rock in the darkness, then back up into the light. Weird. Symbolic. Meant to be entering the womb of a female bodhisattva.

Our walking tour took us along two streets in what are said to be one of Kyoto’s loveliest restored neighbourhoods, Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka. The names mean ‘three year hill’ and ‘two year hill’, referring to the ancient imperial years when they were first laid out. Now they are crowded with tourists wandering along looking in the traditional style shops and taking a break in one of the many tea houses. They were lovely streets; paved, old wooden buildings, neat little antique type shops. We stopped at one of the many ice cream stalls and treated the girls to some ice cream. Samara had been asking for a green ice-cream since we first saw them earlier in the morning. I’m not sure what flavour she was expecting, but she says that green tea ice-cream is yummy. Katrina had strawberry. We also saw our first (and in the end, only) geisha here. They were a pair of tourists who had paid to be dressed up as geisha, but that was good enough for us. We had no problems taking photos of them, after all, people were forever taking or trying to take, photos of the girls without asking.

They led us to a couple of temples, one we never did find a name for, the other was Kodai-ji, founded in 1605. We had a look round the outside of the temple, impressive, but didn’t pay to check out the gardens. It was getting too close to lunch time. We also forgot that just because somewhere is called a park and is coloured green on the map, it doesn’t mean that it actually is a big grassy space. Just because for us a park is an expanse of grass that you are allowed to sit and run on doesn’t mean that is the definition of park for others. We forgot that we had been to concrete parks in other places, we had a momentary mind blank, and ended up perched on a rock surrounded by concrete and some fenced off, non-green, “gardens”. At least it was car free and the girls could run around a bit, but still…

People must have been setting up for a Hanami Party that night. There were food stalls going up and lots of tatami mats everywhere. The cherry trees were very attractive covered in blossom, but we couldn’t help coming back to that lack of green.

From the park we stopped at two more temples, Chion-in and Shoren-in. Chion-in was a massive complex of buildings, or a complex of massive buildings maybe. The entrance gate, San-mon, is a two storey Buddhist temple gate leading to a huge set of steps up to the temple itself. Which, of course, was partially encased in scaffolding and tarps/plastic for restoration. We did get to go inside some of the way and Samara got to experience a ‘Nightingale’ floor, one that sings or squeaks at every step. Great for detecting intruders!

Shoren-in was very peaceful compared to all the other temples. Again we didn’t pay to go inside, but did have a nice wander round the outside and some of the gardens.

From there we took the bus back to the central station and hopped on a train to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. Once again busy, but at least there was some green! The guidebook described it as ‘magical’ and ‘otherworldly’, ‘hypnotic’ and bamboo stalks continuing forever in all directions. Hmmm…it was pretty neat. There was a lot of bamboo, but perhaps not continuing forever and perhaps not magical and hypnotic. Impressive yes, hard to photograph definitely.

The following day was more child-focused. We took the girls to the aquarium and to a castle.

The aquarium wasn’t too bad, most of the displays had adequate space. The seals were neat to watch but the tank was a little small, and the dolphins, well, I don’t agree with keeping them in captivity. They were unfortunately fun to watch, though you could clearly see they got bored and fidgety when they had to stay in one area during the show.

The castle was Nijo-jo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was originally built in 1603 as the official residence of the first Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu. It was impressive! We walked around the hallways surrounding the main rooms of the palace, all with nightingale floors to Samara’s amusement. There were some neat screen paintings but it was otherwise unfurnished. Also as part of the castle complex were extensive gardens – decorative and orchards – and a second, closed, palace.

From there we went to meet another contact from Couchsurfing, a lady who had emailed us apologising that she couldn’t host but would love to meet us and have dinner with us. So we met her at her local train station and went back to her apartment. She has two boys, older than our girls, but they still managed to play together. We had a lovely dinner with her and found out more about life as a family in Japan before heading back into Gion district for some night time exploring.

We wandered a few key streets, no more geisha, maiko or geiko, but plenty of cherry blossoms. It was nice strolling around after dark, even if there were hundreds of others also enjoying an evening stroll! We found a lovely street full of blossoming trees and a nice stream, Shimbashi or Shirakawa Minamidori. Busy busy busy!



More later from our time in Nara. Thanks for reading.

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Photos

Kiyomizu-dera
shame its under wraps!

Japanese tourists
We saw a lot of people dressed up like this, lovely outfits

Chion-in
yep, we know, you cant see much. Neither could we when we were there.

Comments

[Erika]

Kyoto
A pleasure to read and to look at the pictures. And thank you for writing. Enjoy! In Germany the flowering period of the cherry blossoms came to an end two weeks ago (very early this year). Erika

[taracloud]

Beauties and the beasts
Beautiful cherry blossoms, and how great that some tourists were dressed in kimonos for a taste of authenticity. But, like you, the crowds and lack of green would have been a bit much for me. How lovely that you got to have dinner with a real Japanese family at their home, and the girls got to play with kids from another culture. Happy travels!