Advertisement
Hurro
Before I move into today's activities I want to put all of your minds at rest. Last night I braved the hotel food and had dinner in the Japanese restaurant. Now I'm not scared of hotel food, but I am scared of hotel prices. The meal in the end wasn't to badly priced (around $45).
I had a radish salad and Japanese Beef filet. The salad arrived first and the 1st couple of mouthfuls took a bit of getting used to.
The salad itself was nothing out of the ordinary (White Japanese radish, lettuce, cherry tomato) it was the Japanese touch that gave it a distinct taste. Bonito flakes and Dried seaweed. Neither ingredient do I have a dislike for, but in a combination in a salad gave it quite a pungent smell and flavour. I persevered and in the end enjoyed it.
The filet came out a minute or 2 later. The portion size was small (2 small thinly sliced filets with a dipping sauce and fresh greens) which I expected. The steak was divine. The Japanese know how to cook beef. It is cooked to rare then thinly sliced. The dipping sauce that came with it was
magnificent. I had had the sauce before when I went to Denny's a few nights earlier. I would love to know what it is, but no point in asking the waiter as I may as well ask what time the next flight to Moscow is, such is their grasp of English and mine of Japanese. There was uncooked baby asparagus in the greens. Anyone who knows me knows I hate Asparagus. However I had never tried this before. So I ate it. I will confess it was actually pretty good. So fear not I had eaten something other than Fast food.
So onto today. The bus pick-up for todays tour was 8:25. That is how precise the Japanese are. Not at 8:15 or 8:30 but 8:25. Sure enough when I arrived in the lobby a couple of minutes before, in walks one of the tour operators to sticker, ticket an usher me (and a few others) into the bus.
My tour was to be broken into 2 parts a morning tour and afternoon tour (go figure) separated by a lunch incorporated into the package (yay another meal I didn't have to make tough decisions on).
After 1 more pick-up
we were ready to start the tour. The bus was almost full, with the populous quite varied, Australians, Brits, Euro's (don't ask me from where as I wouldn't have a clue), Canadians, the ever popular (not) Yanks and a lone Kiwi.
1st stop was the Nijo castle. This was the original residence of the 1st Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu and was built in the 1600's. The site has be deemed a world heritage site by UNESCO so it has pretty significant piece of architecture. We were given the history lesson on the Shogun, some of the rituals, the class system (particularly the feudal Lords who were regional rulers who reported to the Shogun), the mighty Samurai and the Shoguns 300 lady servants.
The floors of the building were quite intriguing. When you walked you heard the "nightingale call. This is the distinct sound of the squeaking floorboards. They were intentionally designed to squeak. The buildings are not very secure so it was easy for intruders to sneak into the buildings. However their presence was signalled the moment they stepped foot on the floor. Pretty smart for the 1600's! We saw some original wall paintings from the same era. The detail
was just fantastic.
Next stop was the golden Pavilion (proper name is Rokuon-ji temple) a 3 storey temple built by Yoshimitsu, the 3rd Shogun of Ashikaga around 1397. It has been classified as a Zen Temple in accordance with his will. The exterior of the top 2 floors is covered in gold gilt (20kgs of it). The roof has a golden Phoenix on it. The phoenix represents paradise. An impressive building with stunning gardens. There were 2 other significant peices in the grounds. A pine tree sail boat that was constructed by the Shogun to "sail to paradise", although apparently he committed Suicide and noone is quite sure why?! The other is the stone carp jumping up a waterfall (the carp represents heaven as they climb waterfalls and rapids to reach their "heaven")
A top the hill over-looking the pavilion, a Chinese character is etched into the hillside. There is significance (of course), but didn't quite catch what it was all about.
Final stop for the morning was the old Imperial Palace. This place was the original Emperors palace prior to moving the residence (and the capital) to Tokyo.
This is not a place you can just take
a wander around. As we arrived the rains came. You cannot enter any of the buildings in the palace, only wander around the outside. So I was going to get wet.
To access the palace everyone had to complete a form stating who we are, where we were from etc, which the tour guide collected and delivered to the police officers in charge of the entry (apparently it is a huge honour to be given a policing job at the old palace and requires special training. Believe me when I say these guys take their job seriously). We had to all line up 4 abreast 1 behind the other (in the pouring rain), so we could be counted in. The tour guide was mildly frantic trying to keep us all in check. We spent around 50 minutes learning about the history of the palace and the royal family (and their traditions).
Thankfully lunch was the next stop, with no breakfast I was a little weary and starting to get templed out.
The lunch stop was at a Handi-craft centre. A full buffet lunch. It was great with a huge spread: Pasta, Chicken meatballs, vegetable curry, tempura Vegetables, Prawn sushi,
fresh fruit, salads etc. Most of the tour groups eyes (and stomachs) lit up at that site. We all certainly made a dent in the buffet table.
After lunch I had about an hour to kill before the afternoon tour starting at 2pm. I mulled around the hand-craft store for a bit, had a bit of a chat to an American marine who was on the tour (he is stationed at Okinawa although his 4 year contract is just about to expire), and another yank who worked as a civvy to the American army in Korea (he was a little socially depleted *read extreme computer nerd* so the conversation was brief).
The afternoon tour was more of the same. 3 different temples from different buddhist sects. The Shinto temple was pretty impressive. All had magnificent gardens. The Japanese sure put a lot of attention to detail.
Now for my rant, and based on the brief discussion I had with an Australian couple I won't be alone on this rant.
Why is it that when you take Yanks out of the states they become rude, ignorant, pig-headed wankers?? There was a family of 4 on the afternoon tour.
Mom, Dad and their 2 teenage daughters. On the bus they could be heard over everyone else. The daughters constantly complaining about how bored they were and "not another temple", "I didn't want to go to Kyoto, I wanted to go to Tokyo" etc etc. They were really really annoying. The father was constantly winding up his wife (who eventually packed a complete sad and I felt a little sorry for her). But when one of the girls started making very ignorant statements about some of the aspects of the religions that were being spoken about I wanted to gag her and cut off heard head with a Samurai sword. I'm certainly no religious fanatic, in fact i'm boarder line agnostic, but when you are in someone else's country, learning about their religion / history, in their temples, you keep you informed ignoramus comments to yourself.
Phew glad I got that off my chest.
Tonight is my last in Kyoto. Tomorrow I jump back on the Shinkansen and head south-west to my penultimate destination. Hiroshima.
This is the place I most wanted to visit. The historical significance of this part of the world (albeit from the most tragic of
circumstances) was one of the main reasons for me venturing to this part of the world.
I've enjoyed Kyoto. It is a little more laid back (and much easier to navigate) than Tokyo and I would certainly recommend it as a must if you come to this part of the world (I have seen a lot more non-Japanese folk here than in Tokyo), but perhaps keep your temple viewing to 1/2 a day so you don't get temple over-kill (anyone who has been to Thailand and been on one of their temple tours will know what i'm talking about).
Kombanwa
Advertisement
Tot: 0.119s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0649s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Food
In Hiroshima you should try the Okonomiyaki. It's often referred to as a Japanese panckage or omelette. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki#Hiroshima_area