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Published: October 8th 2007
So, on the 26th, thanks to my host family figuring out the train route to take, I managed to find my way from Tsuru to Kyoto without incident. Because of the geography of the area, I actually had to go to Tokyo (east) before I could go to Kyoto (westward). However, the exciting part of that is I got to ride the shinkansen, also known as the bullet train.
You gotta check out the video of it. It goes a good 200ish miles per hour. It is one fast train. Via shinkansen it only takes about three hours to get from Tokyo to Osaka.
Somehow, my dad and I managed to coordinate our plans such that we were able to meet in Osaka and get over to Kyoto without incident as well. Wonders! Ceasting! Never!
We found a nice little ryokan to stay in. For those of you who don't know, a ryokan is a traditional-style japanese hotel. The rooms have futons and tatami mats, there are communal bathrooms (not as scary as it sounds), and they serve traditional type meals. Overall a pretty interesting experience (and usually fairly expensive....)
Unfortunately, since we were all a little
The Happy Terrace
On top of Kyoto Station, this terrace was freakin sweet.exhausted the whole time, we didn't go to very many places, but the places we did go to were pretty neat. Kyoto station in and of itself is a pretty cool place. It's about 10 years old now and very modern looking. It has restaurants, concert spaces, and even a mall.
On the first day of sight-seeing we went to a Buddhist temple founded by Ieyasu Tokugawa, basically one of my favorite shoguns. The main building is undergoing some renovation, but its still pretty astounding.
After that we headed over to Nijo-jo, Tokugawa's castle in Kyoto. It was enormous, and the grounds actually had two enormous houses within it. We could only go in one, for the sake of preservation. As well, we couldn't take any pictures inside the one house, because there are paintings on all the doors which are a good 400 years old or so. They are all very elaborate and gorgeous, you'll have to just trust me on that point.
One of the coolest things about the house, though, are the nightingale floors. Tokugawa had the house built with these floors that squeak every time you walk on them, no matter how softly
The GATE to the temple
This is the ENTRANCE to the first temple I mentioned. The actual main building was enormous, though we weren't able to go in. you step, so as to keep people from being able to sneak into the house. That or someone did a horrible job of installing the floors and that was the excuse they made up so Tokugawa wouldn't kill them.
That evening we went to a sake bar, which was owned and operated solely by a very thoughtful, soft-spoken Israeli man. I just thought I'd put that out there.
the next day, we went out and saw the Kyoto Imperial Gardens, which is a giant park in the middle of Kyoto. It has a bunch of different gardens within it, and a castle that you can't go into unless you've made reservations. Still an exciting castle. It was big! Tough to walk around (as in the castle was tough to circumvent)!
We also walked around a couple of neighborhoods, but those are the highlights from Kyoto. It has a pretty mellow vibe around it, and is basically made out of temples and castles. It's a very historically important town, and there are some especially unique temples, like the one made out of gold, but we weren't able to get to that one as it is out on the
The Outside of the Nijo-jo
This is essentially the outer-moat around the outside of Tokugawa's place edge of Kyoto.
More on Japan in our next Lecture. Don't forget to turn in your homework.
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