Saturday morning David and I met at the train station and went to Nagoya, where we took a shinkansen to Kyoto. It was only a 40 minute train ride, those bullet trains are amazing! We grabbed some maps from the tourist information desk when we arrived and Peter (a fellow JSPS-er from the UK) met up with us at the station. Our first stop was to the hotel that Peter and I stayed at over the weekend, Gojo guesthouse. We were able to drop off our luggage and then walked to the first set of temples for the day along the Southeastern part of town. This is one of the main sightseeing areas and was mentioned in my guidebook as being a good place for a 1-day walk around town.
The cool thing about Kyoto is that while walking to a major temple, you find lots of smaller temples and interesting sights along the way. It makes for a very relaxing stroll! After a while you forget all of the names of the temples you see, including the big ones. When I made captions for my pictures yesterday I had to go on wikipedia and google maps so I could add the names of the places I went :) The three of us spent the day wandering around, taking pictures, and narrowly escaping getting drenched from an afternoon storm.
At around 5:30 we headed back to the hotel to check in (we just dropped off our bags in the morning since it was too early to get our room) and David headed back to Okazaki. One of the guesthouse staff members asked us to wait a few minutes, since our rooms were in a separate annex building of the hotel. When he was ready, we met him in the entry way and found a car ready to take us to the annex. Needless to say Peter and I were both confused...it was only a 2-minute drive through some very small and winding roads. The guesthouse staff guy carried my bag up the stairs for me and we met another staff member who showed us our rooms. The annex was another old Japanese house that smelled like old wood and tatami mats (absolutely lovely!). We showered off all the sweat, relaxed in the living room and planned out our itinerary for the next day, and then headed up north for dinner.
A fellow Okazaki-er was also in town; he had just recently made his plan to come and we only found out we were going to be in Kyoto on the same day a couple of days before (we even ran into him while walking around on Saturday afternoon, which was pretty funny!). One of Kevin's friends is living in Kyoto for her EAPSI research and we met up with her (Sara) and a friend of hers who was in town for a conference. The restaurant was called Goya and served Okinawan food. Okinawa is a small tropical island waaaaaaaaaaaay south of the mainland. I didn't know there was such a thing as Okinawan food, but now I do and I love it! The dishes reminded me a lot of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, with lots of light noodles, delicious spring rolls, and amazing salads. It was the best meal I have had so far (well, except for my home stay mom's cooking) and it was nice to chat in the company of other 20-something American/English friends. After dinner Kevin and the girls went to an onsen and Peter and I went downtown to grab a drink. We went to an English-style pup to see what the Japanese take on it would be; it was pretty lame bar but we played pool, drank a pint of Bass (yum), and watched a rugby match (New Zealand kicked some South African butt!!). We then took a long walk (about 20 minutes) back to our hotel along the river. There was some music and a fire dancer right where the downtown area and the river area meet, which was so cool to see. The river walk was very peaceful and we saw some beautiful restaurant patios with lanterns all lit up for the lovely summer night. It was such a great way to end an amazing Saturday!
On Sunday morning we grabbed a coffee from the main lobby of the hotel and then caught a bus to the train station to get some breakfast. Peter was dying for a muffin and I was getting ravenous as well. We settled on starbucks which is expensive ($5 for a brewed coffee) but it satisfied my craving for some delicious breakfast pastries and massive amounts of coffee! Then we got on a bus that took us to the northwest side of town to see one of the most famous temples in Kyoto, the Kinkaku-ji. This temple is also called the Golden Pavilion, which is because the temple is plated in gold! It was sugoi (cool) and the bright blue sky and lovely trees and ponds around the temple made for some nice photos. We also ran into Kevin and the girls; they got their early and were on their way out since Kevin was heading to Hiroshima that day. After exploring the temple grounds we walked over to Ryoan-ji. This temple had one of the best gardens I've seen so far. This temple's main claim to fame is its rock garden. When we got there we were a bit underwhelmed; Peter is geologist and after taking a couple of pictures he exclaimed "Why am I taking a picture of a rock??" When I got home and read about it, I learned that of the 15 boulders in the garden, no matter what angle you look at the garden you can only see 14. There was even a paper published in Nature with some fancy computer spatial analysis of the garden. So that made it really cool!
In the afternoon we did some shopping and meandering in the city center after an AMAZING ramen lunch. Ramen at a restaurant is nothing like you get for 40 cents at the grocery store. The noodles are the same but the dish usually comes with meat and vegetables and makes for quite a refreshing and delicious meal. Not to mention the endless "irrashaimase" and "arigato gozaimasu" from the shop employees as people enter and exit. No matter where you eat in Japan, you are always surrounded by a chorus of welcomes and thank yous! We went back to the hotel around 5 to shower, nap, and have a beer at the lobby before heading back to the downtown area for dinner. That night we had Japanese curry; it's a lot like Indian curry but not as spicy. I hadn't eaten this kind of curry since the lab trip in late June so I was glad to have it again after a long time of not eating its deliciousness. After dinner we wandered around downtown for a good bar. We found a lot of not so good bars...but eventually we stumbled across a 'dive' that was full of Japanese 20-somethings and had a nice view of the river. Peter had Yebisu (one of the better Japanese beers, though they are all good in my book) and I had cold sake (a perfect end to a hot and humid day of sightseeing). I also was hankering for desert so I ordered crispy, thick-cut toast (sounds weird but it was really good) with ice cream, bananas, caramel, and cinnamon. Yumm :) Then we did some more walking in town and then went back to the guesthouse by one of the millions of side streets. We took a different street each time we walk to and from the annex to the main building; some routes were more successful than others but we got to see a different part of the neighborhood each time.
Since Peter had some lab work to do and also had a long journey back to his place (5 hours with lots of transfers), he left Kyoto in the morning. My train trip back to Okazaki was much easier (less than 2 hours with only 1 transfer) so I decided to spend the entire day exploring more of this amazing city. In the morning I walked along a new side street to the bus stop and stumbled across a small bakery. I got an amazing ampan (I usually only get them fresh since the convenience store ones aren't very good) and a croissant to snack on later in the day. I then took a bus to Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion. This one was not plated in silver (the guy who wanted to do it died before it could get done/funded) but it was a beautiful temple and garden and ended up being one of my favorites. It also had some really neat sand sculptures; it must have taken a LOT of patience to make such perfect lines in that fine white sand! I then took a stroll along the Philosopher's Path, a paved route adjacent to the old canal. I found a couple of small temples and some really cute houses and shops as I walked under the shade of the cherry trees. I can only imagine what this place must look like in the spring when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom!
When I finished the Philosopher's path, I made my way back to the city center. On my map I saw that there was a temple on my way back to the park I wanted to explore, so I decided to check it out. What the map didn't tell me is that this temple (Heian Jingu) was ENORMOUS! So I'm just walking along casually and then an enormous torii (entrance gate to a shrine) appears out of nowhere. It was kind of fun to be surprised like that. I then did one more temple for the afternoon before taking a break to do some souvenir shopping. I finally found some kawaii (cute) baby gifts and a nice present for Kim.
It started to get hot in the afternoon so after I made it to the Imperial Palace garden (not that exciting) I had a late lunch at cute southeast asian restaurant. I soon realized that the last temple I wanted to see was closing soon so I got on a bus and then power-walked from the stop to the temple. I bought my ticket just in time and then got to experience the most relaxing place in the world: Kennin-ji temple. There wasn't anything spectacular about the building or the garden, but something about walking around barefoot on an old wooden floor, with the smell of tatami and incense all around, that completely put me at ease. It was so incredibly relaxing that I'm going to try to come back when I make my way back to Kyoto at the end of the month. There was also an amazing ceiling painting by a contemporary artist: a picture of two enormous twin dragons that took over the ceiling of one of the temple rooms.
At the end of a hot day with lots of walking, I went back to the hotel and had a draft beer while surfing the internet and researching ATMs in Japan (see below...). I took a bus towards the train station and was helped by a super nice Japanese lady who actually walked me from the bus stop to the station (I was really confused when she tried to explain what stop I needed to get off at and she wanted to make sure that I made it there!). After a brief shinkansen ride I made it back to Nagoya and took the local train back home. I got back to Okazaki around 9pm; I was absolutely exhausted from such a sightseeing-packed weekend but it was absolutely worth it :)
Back to the ATM subject: So we were told by NSF that any 7-11 convenience store had ATMs that would accept international credit cards (most ATMs in Japan don't accept non-Japanese cards). Needless to say I got a little nervous when I tried out my card for the first time at a 7-11 while shopping Kyoto and it didn't work! After reading more about it I found out that only certain 7-11 machines that have the MasterCard or Visa symbol will work, but the post offices have ATMs that accept international cards. When I got back to Okazaki I went to the post office and my card worked fine, phew! Good thing, too, because I've been doing a lot of omiyage (souvenir) shopping.
So to sum it up: Kyoto is an amazing place, worthy of the 400+ photos that I took of it, and is one of my new favorite cities (falling in line with some other great places like Barcelona, Cuernavaca, and Washington DC). I'm super excited to spend a couple more days there once my time at the lab in Okazaki is finished. I'm also going to make a day trip to Nara, the oldest city in Japan that also has some amazing temples.
Next on my agenda for this week: Finish up some in situ hybridizations, meet a karate master, and witness one of the best firework festivals in Japan! I'll also write a post in the near future about more cultural impressions of Japan. Until then....jaa ne!
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