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Published: August 22nd 2014
Righty ho...weird!
we haven't got a clue what this was all about?We were very excited about the next part of our trip, the historical Kyoto (again with a HUGE list of things and places we wanted to see!) and most importantly, our first experience of the Shinkansen (bullet train)!
We had to catch our train from Tokyo station, we arrived early so we had time to grab some breakfast and stop off at a Circle K to spend the last little bit on our Suica cards on lunch for the train. We then had a hell of a job cashing in our Suica for the ¥500 (£2.87) deposit – we have put a note on this at the end of the blog!
Shinkansen…faster than a speeding bullet? It was probably entirely obvious to everyone on the platform that this was our first Shinkansen journey…we were like kids in a sweet shop. We took a few photos of the trains and waited while the cleaning crew went to work (complete with hard hats!). What we found a really good idea was that there was no concept of ‘facing’ seats i.e. facing the direction of travel (we’re looking at you here, British train companies). There is a little thingummiejig lever on
the bottom of each bank of seats that when pressed swivel the seats so they are facing the travelling direction!
At exactly 11:03am, we left Tokyo and wow, the journey was amazing. There was loads of room for luggage above our heads, plenty of leg room and the seats reclined and it was so, so quiet! Take a look at the video we shot of inside the train, you can hardly hear anything and we are going top speed.
It’s actually very hard to believe that the Shinkansen was first put into service in 1964! Yes, it’s old technology, like a lot of Japan’s transport network but it works so well! The Hikari 700 series Shinkansen we were travelling on was introduced in 1999 and has a maximum speed of 285km/h (for our parents, that’s 175mph!). There was even a trolley service with a JR employee in a pretty apron selling (amongst other things) ice cream!
After we had stopped at a couple of stations, we noticed that about 5 minutes before we stopped, a nursery rhyme tune was played (we’d heard this in Tokyo when a subway train had arrived). We could only think it was
to wake people up and to alert them a station was coming as the Japanese seem notorious for falling asleep on trains (seriously, every person as soon as they got on a train seemed to fall asleep!). This tune playing is a brilliant idea and one Donna could have done with in her previous job, on the very early morning trains to London! Even the toilets on the Shinkansen were spotless – electronic of course and even better, a separate little urinal booth for men! We sound like such train spotters, but were in transport heaven 😊.
Our first run at Nijo-ji…we time things badly sometimes! The afternoon we arrived we headed out to explore straight away and got a JR train (for free!) to Nijo station. In hindsight, it was a bit of a walk in the afternoon heat and we should have just paid to get to the closer station 😉. Then again, if we hadn’t have walked we wouldn’t have seen the lovely (and not so well known) ancient garden of Shinsenen. Shinsenen is the oldest existing garden in Kyoto and dates back to the Heian era (794-1185). According to historical legend, Shinsenen is said
to be the place where Minamotono Yoshitsune, a famous warrior, met a woman he fell in love with—Shizukagozen. It had a huge pond with a house boat and a lovely red bridge crossing the pond, called the Houjo bridge. It’s believed that if you have a very serious wish and cross the bridge, your wish will be fulfilled.
So, we then headed to Nijo-ji and found it closed! Apparently it’s closed on a Tuesday…even with all the research we did, we didn’t stumble upon this little fact! Disappointed, we carried on with our plans for the rest of the day.
Pontocho alley, Gion and ‘Kenny G’ We wandered down the historical Kiyamachi Dori (Dori=street) which runs parallel to the river. Kiya is an old Japanese word for ‘wood stores’. It was a very pretty area with a canal running down the middle and overhanging trees. There were also lots of restaurants in this area, but none were open…even at 6pm!
We then headed to the river itself and had a nose at Pontocho Alley, again a lovely area but the restaurants…phew, overpriced tourist traps or what?!! Pontocho Alley, as the name gives away is a very
small alley-like street which is lined with restaurants. The restaurants on the river side of the alley were at least 20% more expensive than the restaurants on the other side! We had a look at the menus and just couldn’t bring ourselves to pay those prices for such ordinary food…even if the setting was nice!
Onwards we had a walk around Gion, which again was a very pretty area, especially when it was all lit up at night. The problem we had with the Gion area was that it seemed a bit dead. Basically, all of the Ochaya (tea house, an establishment where customers are entertained by geisha) only cater to established customers, or those accompanied by an established customer, with reservations. Apparently, relationships to ochaya can often be traced back generations, and are generally associated with a family or company. A customer cannot switch ochaya and even frequenting another ochaya is considered a very serious breach of manners! The reason why it seemed a bit dead was because the ochaya have an entrance which has either a wooden shutter or a curtain over, so everything just seemed closed. The only reason we knew they were open was because
The cleaning crew
...we loved the fact they were colour coded and the guy had a hard hat on ;) we saw a couple of taxis pull up outside ochayas and Japanese people go in.
In the middle of Gion is the Kenniji-ji, which we promptly nicknamed the Kenny G temple and had sexy sax music running through our heads the entire time we were walking around! Kenniji is a Zen Buddhist temple, founded in 1202 and claims to be the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto. We got there too late to go in and see the Zen gardens, but the grounds and buildings were lovely. It was very interesting to see a different style of temple compared to the more ornate and colourful Shinto temples.
Ninen-zaka, San’nen-zaka, Kodai-ji and Yasaka shrine The Japanese take such care of their heritage and restore historical sights very lovingly and carefully, this is demonstrated in the Ninen-zaka and San’nen-zaka restored neighbourhood.
Ninen-zaka and San’nen-zaka are quite narrow pedestrian streets paved with big smooth, stone slabs and lined with wooden houses; the majority of these houses are shops and restaurants, shops selling tourist trinkets or food unique to Kyoto and of course, the green tea it’s famous for. This area is one of the only places we have seen which
has been entirely of the traditional wooden style buildings. These walkways are rather steep and walking them in 39 degree heat that day, almost wiped us out! We have to say that Ninen-zaka and San’nen-zaka were charming and definitely one of our favourite parts of Kyoto. We much preferred this area to the more famous Gion district because there was so much more to see.
We basically did a long slightly L shaped walk…we walked up to Kiyomizu temple, then along the restored streets to Kodai-ji (Zen) temple and then downhill all the way to Yasaka (Shinto and one of the most famous in Kyoto) shrine. The Yasaka shrine was quite interesting, there were a few priests preparing the central dance stage. The central dance stage gets lit up at night with lanterns and each lantern has the name of a local business inscribed on it, for which they have donated a (probably large!) fee to the temple. On another covered stage area, there was a lady singing a traditional song and she seemed to be really enjoying herself! After walking through the temple grounds, we then headed downhill again to Tully’s for a much needed coffee and cake
pick us up 😊
Nanzen-ji area…a surprising aqueduct and a Philosophers Path Nanzen-ji is another Zen temple in Kyoto and it’s grounds are free to wander around but you have to pay to get into the actual temple. Entering the grounds you are greeted by the huge Sanmon gate which is taller than the trees. Passing through the temple grounds was an amazing brick aqueduct which was built during the Meiji period (1868-1912). The aqueduct was constructed as part of the canal system to carry water and goods between Kyoto and Lake Biwa in neighbouring Shiga Prefecture. The aqueduct was a real surprise, with lovely brickwork and we enjoyed the cool shade underneath it!
On the other side of Nanzen-ji grounds was an area known as the Philosophers Path and for some reason we had Harry Potter magical words running though our heads (thinking of the Philosophers Stone maybe?!). Rather than it being a path, it was a narrow road with lots of houses and was a nice scenic walk to admire the traditional architecture of the houses. A lot of the gates to the houses were open and wow, the gardens on these houses were amazing…they
must have to employ a gardener full time to maintain the perfectly trimmed trees and raked stones! A job Donna thinks she would like 😉
Nijo-ji…our luck was in! Our second visit to Nijo-ji was a lot more successful…the castle was actually open when we went and we were so glad we made the effort to go back. Nijo-ji was built in 1603 by the first Shogun of the Edo period (1603-1867). The Tokugawa Shogunate fell in 1867 and Nijo-ji was used as an imperial palace for a while before being donated to the city and opened up to the public as a historic site. It is arguably the best surviving examples of castle palace architecture of Japan's feudal era.
Nijo-ji takes up a huge area of land, with several layers of defence to guard the Shogun. There was the Honmaru (the main circle of defence which was a moat and a huge thick, steep wall), then there were some gardens, then the Ninomaru (or secondary circle of defence which was another moat and a huge thick, steep wall!) and some more gardens (imaginatively called Ninomaru gardens!).
We paid our ¥600 (£3.44) entrance fee, entered via
a gate in the outer wall and a gravel path took us to the Karamon gate which is the entrance to the secondary circle of defence and where the main attraction is…the Ninomaru Palace! Donna had remembered to take our socks with us for going into the palace as she didn’t fancy walking bare foot where other sweaty feet had walked (honestly, she isn’t that OCD, just a bit squeamish about some things!). The palace building itself has another unique defence measure built in, something called ‘Nightingale floors’. We think the Shogun was a little paranoid, with all the defence mechanisms built into the castle…we know he didn’t want to be assassinated by a ninja, but y’know he went a bit overboard with the defensive provisions! Anyway, these nightingale floors were fascinating and we were coming up with all sorts of ways they could have been constructed to chirrup like a bird. Neil’s main theory was a speaker activated by an infra-red system 😉.
Nijo-ji was Neil’s favourite attraction in the whole of Kyoto…why you might ask? Well it was not the thought of being a ninja creeping through the palace, but simply because the
gift shop at the end of the route around the grounds sold Meiji ice cream (quite cheaply as well considering it was a souvenir shop!) and it was the icing on the cake that we could sit and cool down with a tub of ice cream 😊.
Kyoto…a fascinating mix of old and new One of the first things that struck us about Kyoto was the fact that there was so many more women here than in Tokyo! Seriously, it was a noticeable difference, as was the atmosphere to the city. It’s very difficult to describe, but we got the feeling in Tokyo it was very office and work orientated and quite serious (apart from when we were out and about on a Sunday); Kyoto was a lot more laid back, relaxed and more informal.
The city itself was a mixture of old and new, the old areas had been restored and preserved magnificently and new areas were nice to walk around because there were covered walkways along all the buildings which really helped with the fierce sun and heat! The only downside to these covered walkways was the speakers playing really irritating sleigh bell type
music that drove us mad!
Kyoto seems to be a place where a lot of people (men and women, but mostly women) hire kimonos and just wander around in them, for the experience. Fair enough, but they must have been sweltering as they are very thick…it wasn’t cheap either from what we saw so assumed it was some kind of ‘status’ thing as to why people were doing it. We have to say that some of the kimonos we saw were gorgeous, really, really lovely. Our main disappointment was that we only saw two geisha, but at least we saw two and it’s better than none!
The subway system in Kyoto was slightly different again to that of Tokyo and we had a slight brain fart when we looked at the map and ticket machines for the first time! We must have looked like bunnies in the headlights while we were standing there, because a kind lady offered to help and show us how it worked. It’s this kind of unfailing politeness and kindness that made us love the Japanese people. We have put a little more about this in the observations section below.
Food and booze 😊
We managed to stumble on the Kyoto branch of The Hub British Pub and guess what? It was Happy Hour, so we thought it would be rude not to partake! After a jumbo Moscow mule each, we decided we would go and eat at the Asahi restaurant just around the corner. Yes, you read that correctly…Asahi the beer company has restaurants and most importantly huge vats of beer! The food at the Asahi restaurant was nice, slightly expensive at ¥4000 for the meal (that’s £23 including a beer each!) but we did it for the experience more than anything. It was done out really nice inside with chandelier type lights, muraled walls and it was quite an experience with the Japanese guys on the table next to us stacking the empty beer glasses up! The Asahi beer was very nice as well 😊.
While we were exploring Ninen-zaka and San’nen-zaka, we noticed a huge queue at a shop and it was for shaved ice. This is really popular in Japan so we just had to try it! The lady in the shop took out a block of ice and put it next to a machine that
Houjo Bridge at the ancient garden of Shinsenen
It is believed that if you have a very serious wish and cross the bridge, your wish will be fulfilled kind of whipped and shaved the ice. The closest we can describe it as is like an iced candy floss. You then choose the flavour you want and it’s added, we chose lemon and although it looked a completely off-putting luminous and radioactive yellow, it was actually quite delicious and did an excellent job of cooling us down!
We discovered a coffee place we have never encountered before, although Americans and Canadians reading will probably know it - Tully’s coffee. It was (seemingly) everywhere in Japan and very popular. It was a nice place to chill out (literally we were escaping the heat) with a HUGE iced café latte and comfy leather chairs. We especially loved the big and bold Homeland (TV series) style jazz tunes that played in every branch…we noticed that the Japanese love their jazz tunes in cafés, restaurants, shops and even in the lifts/lobbies of hotels! It made a nice change from the elevator muzac music that normally plays in these places!
Our other food discovery was the absolutely delicious
onigiri. They are white sushi rice pressed into either triangles or balls, wrapped in nigiri (seaweed) and sometimes have fillings. When the combinis like
7-11, Lawson and Family Mart sell them for ¥100 (57p!) you can’t really refuse. Our lunch on the train was made up of a delicious salad and two onigiri – one had just soy sauce flavouring and the other had lovely pickled veg in it..yum!
The main foodie experience in Kyoto is definitely the Nishiki market. It’s one big long (covered) street which stretches about 5 or 6 blocks in length and it’s just full of food shops and the great thing is that there are samples of everything available! Pickled veg, seaweed, sushi, rice, sweets, rice cakes…everything you can imagine they sold. We tried a sesame flavour rice cake, which turned out to be huge but very, very tasty.
Our last food note is about the Yatsuhashi biscuits which Kyoto is famous for. They are crunchy biscuits which look like the curved roof tiles on the Shinto temples! They are cinnamon flavoured and absolutely gorgeous…they taste like a cross between a waffle cone and thin almond Belgian biscuits. They went very well with our iced café lattes and we now wish we had bought more than one packet! 😊
Japanese people are the Nanas of Asia! Police academy!
not a hard hat in sight...tut tut! This first observation is going to take a bit of explaining! Why do we say the Japanese people are the Nanas of Asia…well, in shops, hotels, everywhere actually, they just chatter away to you in Japanese whether you understand them or not! In our experience, this is exactly what Nanas do, they just chatter away not minding if you don’t understand or listen! It’s actually a lovely personality trait, the Japanese don’t just assume a foreigner doesn’t speak Japanese and it’s the only country in Asia where we have encountered this. We would be addressed in Japanese first, then, if the person could, they would switch to English, if not, they would carry on chattering in Japanese and we would somehow manage to communicate.
We have said before that the Japanese are unfailingly polite, we actually had many occasions where people stopped what they were doing to ask if we needed help (if we were looking at Google maps for example) or people just wanting to say hello. We have to say our British manners kicked back in as soon as we landed and it was fantastic to be back in a country where doors were held open,
people said please, thank you and were super courteous. We half expected, in the Nana tradition, for a sweetie (like a Werthers Original) to be offered as well! 😊
We learnt a few words of Japanese for while we were there and had an app which had some useful phrases, but we honestly didn’t feel like there was a language barrier and didn’t really notice any problems. We did notice, whenever we said ‘arigatou’ to someone, without fail we got a ‘dou itashimashite’ (you’re welcome) reply.
This will sound very weird to some people but we found the order and rules of Japan to be a nice change. After travelling and living in SE Asia for such a long time, and the unbridled chaos that sometimes happens concerning transport, things never leaving on time and sometimes being treated like a second class citizen, Japan was an orderly breath of fresh air!
To us, looking at the Shinto and Zen temples in Kyoto, it was ‘quintessential Asia’; even more so than when we went to China. When we used to watch Asian films as kids, we imagined Asia to be exactly what we found in Japan on this
Vending machines
...so let's close the shop but put vending machines out there instead?! visit. Donna will freely admit her interest in Japan started when watching the Karate Kid films as a kid!
You will notice on every blog we mention covered shopping streets, this seems to be a staple of the Japanese shopping experience. Every city we visited in Japan had these covered shopping streets and we didn’t see any shopping centres like you find in other countries (for example, like Siam Paragon in Bangkok). Larger shopping centres in Japan tend to be located outside of cities and the city centre shopping is like how it used to be in the UK to shop when we were kids – lots of department stores and the arcade-like covered streets.
Our next blog is going to cover the trips we did to sights outside of Kyoto 'centre', so there’s lots of torii gates and big bamboos to come.
Cashing in your Suica stored value card Suica cards are accepted in most major cities in Japan, however, the deposit can only be refunded by the company who issued it. So, because we bought our card in Tokyo that means that only JR East company can refund it; if we had taken it
to Kyoto we could have used it there but as the operating company is JR West, we wouldn’t have been able to cash it in. If there is any money left on your Suica at the time of cashing in, JR company takes a ¥210 handling fee, so the key is to have your balance lower than ¥210! We had ¥70 left on ours and took it to the JR Ticket Office in Tokyo station (where the Shinkansen bookings are made) and got our ¥500 each deposit back. Unfortunately, although you can buy and load the cards in the machines, an actual office has to make the refund.
Kyoto hotel: Almont Hotel, a 7 minute walk from JR Kyoto. ¥8370 per night (£48 at ¥174 to £1). This hotel was a bargain, it was easily a 4.5* hotel. The staff spoke excellent English and on check-in gave us a huge variety of maps and tourist information for Kyoto along with English instructions for all the room gadgets! The room itself, for us was an ok size, but we travel very light; anyone with large bags would have had difficulty and that’s the same for most hotel rooms in Japan!
We got room pyjamas again, slippers, all sorts of toiletries, a humidifier, hair dryer and even CNN on the TV! The hotel also had a private onsen (that’s a Japanese bath) – separate ones for men and women. We were well up for going and then we found out you had to be completely naked, so…we chickened out 😉
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Onsen chickens! Boo!
I loved your excitement about the Shinkansen journey, and you've made Kyoto sound even more attractive to me now. I think I would feel at home with all the 'order' and 'balance' in Japan :)