One more form of transportation - Biking

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Last evening we exhausted our financial resources, so we had to replenish by stopping at the ATM in Seven Eleven. Meanwhile, we grabbed food before hunting down a bike rental shop. In Tokyo, a couple people at the hostel with us mentioned while we were in the common room how nice it was to get around Kyoto on bikes. IchiEnSou had pointed to one down the street from them. For only $5, we were able to rent bikes to explore the city for the full day. Excited about not having to walk as much, especially since the Kyoto public transit system is nowhere near as good as Tokyo's, the boys jumped on that opportunity. We each got bikes with baskets in either pale blue or teal to go on our adventure.
My first stop was actually a recommendation from the hostel host. She pointed us to Chionji Temple. This was a great place to start because it was far away and we could work our way back to the hostel and bike rental shop for dinner time. To our surprise, Chionji Temple has a market on Fridays. We spent some time not only exploring the temple but scanning the homegoods market for some neat finds. They had everything from wood carvings to baked goods. There was a daycare or kindergarten at the edge of the temple grounds and the kids were outside for some activity. It looked like they were dancing and singing. I let Tyler be the creeper and take the pictures. When we were ready to leave, luckily the steps of the temple made it easy for us to find each other again, because the place was packed with people and it took no time at all to lose Fred. (his height helped us find him, too).
Just down the road from Chionji was a popular temple called Ginkakuji (the Silver Pavilion) that draws a lot of guests. When we first walked in a group of landscapers were trimming the bushes with the oddest shaped ladders that bowed out and got narrower like a tree trunk. Tyler commented on the fact that in the US they would have been using some type of saw or motorized device, but in order to maintain the peaceful atmosphere in the temples the gardeners we've seen all have been doing it by hand. Inside Ginkakuji we saw some really awesome rock and green gardens. Another odd detail that added to the ambiance of the temple was that this one's ground was covered in moss instead of grass. Granted this one was further up on the mountain than the ones we had seen before, but it really gave a different feel to it.
Kyoto is literally littered with temples and shrines and we would be here a month to hit them all. So I picked out a couple that the Lonely Planet tour book made sound interesting for us to visit. The next one was further away, but there was a really neat trail along a small canal called the Path of Philosophy for us to bike down. It was a pleasant ride off the streets and was scenic because we passed a number of small temples, shrines, and tea houses. One particular spot had a little cart out front with the shops sign and it was filled with cats!
The next temple was called Eikan-do (Zenfinji Temple) and it was more of a complex than a temple. We had a lot to explore. Parts of the temple were connected by this really neat wooden walkway/staircase. It is fascinating all the intricate details that go into each temple. This one has little flower chains attached to the drainage spouts. Many temples also have wells with little dragons squirting out water. I can't help but call each one of them Mushu when I see them. All of these temples have been covered with breathtaking painted interior walls (which unfortunately you can't take pictures of) and gardens that give me chills. I can't even begin to explain how amazing they are in words so I'm going to have to continue to use pictures to truly explain the beauty of each one.
I forgot to feed the boys again, so we had to go on a hunt to find lunch after that temple. Unfortunately while my map did a good job identifying major and minor roads, it didn't so much tell us where the restaurants would be found. We were right by the next temple, so we dropped off our bikes and went for a walk to find a restaurant or cafe. I sadly took us a poor direction and we ended up stopping to get directions from the International Community House. Like usual, we ended up at an amazing local restaurant and loving our food. Japan really excels in focusing at what they are good at. Most restaurants have pretty limited menus and not a huge variety of food types, but what they do have is fantastic.
Satisfied from lunch, we made our way back to Nanzenji Temple. This interesting temple actually had a roman style aqueduct! It wasn't just for show either, there was still water flowing through it to the temple. Since this temple used to be part of a palace complex, there was a separate garden section for us to explore which was very green and lush. From there we went to the actual temple portion where the building was surrounded more by the rock gardens that I typically associate with Japanese temples. Ever since the tour of the Tokyo Imperial Palace, it is easy to see the pieces (stones representing the islands of japan, and setting up the structures to represent a continent and the way the pebbles are to represent water) in each garden now.
The guide book had raved about the Shoren-in Temple so I made us stop there and was a bit disappointed. It was much smaller than the rest and while peaceful because less of a crowd here the general look and feel of the temple was pretty generic. The only plus to the visit is that we saw a bride and groom taking their wedding pictures all decked out in their finest kimonos. Next door was a much more impressive temple named Chion-in. Fred took us up the very intimidating large staircase entrance versus the normal side gate. However, this one's main building was under restoration so it was completely covered with a 'pop up' building/scaffolding. It was a pretty impressively large building so I'm sure the true temple was pretty impressive. Unfortunately we couldn't see it. They had a limited pathway open to some parts of the temple that we wandered around very briefly (what we did see was gorgeous of course). By the end we were all pretty templed out, so we instead decided to ride our bikes over to the Kyoto Imperial Palace.
The palace was a bit of a bike ride and happened to give us the opportunity to ride along the canal. When we got to the canal there was a stairway down to get to the pathway alongside it. Fred and Tyler grabbed their bikes and hustled on down. Imagining how much of a difficult time I would have doing that, I opted to ride on the road up above. While I had to deal with stop lights and took 5 minutes longer to get there, I at least didn't have to carry my bike up and down stairs (they weren't little stairways either!). Looking at the Kyoto Imperial Palace map board, we chose to ride around the complex. I am sure glad we did, because it was huge! There wasn't a whole lot to see because everything was blocked off with walls - even the garden. Just the park area was open for people to explore. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to book us a tour of the palace when we were back in the US, so we were just able to ride around. It was actually quite a workout because the roads were all pebbles instead of smooth. Most of the time we followed grooves in the pebbles from other people biking a pathway through.
Making our way out of the palace grounds we headed back to the hostel's part of town. We chose to ride along the canal again and the guys found a ramp down for me. It was quite a pleasant ride with a great view of the city and the canal. Less people were down there allowing us to cruise a little too. At one point we found some stepping stones spanning the breadth of the river. Parking our bikes, we went to go explore. Fred found a couple stones further out and had to take the challenge to jump out to them. He made it (just barely) in tact and without getting wet! I'm glad we didn't have to make a hospital run, the river is very shallow. In fact, chilling on those stones I noticed that there was actually a stone pattern designed underneath the water. Fred decided to take off one shoe and walk through the water to return from his far off rocks instead of risking the chance for falling by jumping back. We continues on finding a family of ducklings, a crane fishing for dinner, and some giant fish swimming upstream going over waterfalls. Tired from our excursion, we headed back to drop off our bikes.
During our bike ride, we had noticed a number of restaurants that had outdoor patios overlooking the canal. We found a restaurant like that for our dinner. It turned out that on the patio you had to order a course meal, so again we dined like kings. We chowed down on edamame and salad as they cooked our main courses. We had yakatori, mushroom skewers, deep fried gourmet cheese, and grilled duck slices that tasted like bacon. Just writing about it is making me drool again. It was such a pleasant evening, that we sat and chatted on the patio as we finished our drinks. Tyler and Fred had both been commenting this entire trip on all the things that reminded them on anime and how they understood where a lot of the inspiration for things that went on in there came from. Sitting at dinner Tyler noticed sitting by the canal a girl dressed in a kimono blowing bubbles - just one more thing to add to the list. We have been doing so much physical activity and eating this trip, we weren't done after our dinner. Thinking we wanted ice cream (not hard to come by anywhere in Japan) we went in search for it at a nearby mall. Instead we found some fun sweet shops that we got cakes to bring back with us to the hostel. Tired from our day and full, we relaxed at the hostel for awhile. This gave us the opportunity to catch up on emails and blogging as well as letting the guys plan out their trip back to Tokyo the next day. They were leaving me to go back to the US and wanted to spend one more day in Tokyo with Elliot. I'm sure the stories from their visit will be even crazier than what they had with me, because they won't be tired from a day of exploring with me!
After planning finished and showering off the days sweat, we went back out to Gion in search of a Geisha. We just happened to see one walk into the restaurant next to our bike rental place as we returned our bikes, but none of us had a camera out. Gion was dead. The only people we saw out were a few other tourists like us - cameras ready - looking for Geishas. Just as we came to the end of the road, though, our luck paid off and we saw one! She was walking with two businessmen to who knows where. Tyler and I followed her attempting to get a picture. I'm not sure we have one that turned out well.
Ready to close out their last night in Kyoto, the boys hunted us down a bar. It took awhile because they were a little picky, but eventually we found one that had kind of a pub feel to it called the Cheese House. Yes, we did order a plate of cheese to eat as well. As we were glancing over the menu, I noticed that one side of it said Unlimited Drinks for 60 minutes. Since it was only $13 for 60 minutes, how could we say no? We set our clocks and I set up a tally sheet, then away we went. Now the drinks were pretty cheap at the bar to begin with so we calculated that we each had to drink about 4 drinks each to get our money worth. Well, I drank my 4 drinks. The boys on the other hand, went beyond the call of duty and finished off 7 each. The nice thing about it was it gave us the opportunity to try some things we may never have ordered otherwise. Fred had this odd alcoholic green tea flavored drink and Tyler tasted one that reminded us of candied bananas. I had some Mango wine and finished off the drinks with my favorite - Malibu Rum. Happy we had one more experience to peg to Japan, we called it a night (it wasn't early by any means). Per our Kyoto habit, we stopped at McDonald's on the way back.

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