Japan, Day 10 (Part I)

Here you go, Catherine...Another post! Sorry I've been lagging (my chem class started), and yes, Anthony Bourdain's show takes precedent over writing in my blog. Please leave comments, I don't even know if people read this anymore!!

Monday, November 20, 2006 (Part I)

On our first day in Kyoto, we slept in a bit and were embarrassingly late for our breakfast at the Ryokan. It was gigantic--soup, noodles, fish, rice, radishes, eggs, etc. We then took a cab to Katsura, one of the imperial gardens that we got tickets for in Ginza.

Unlike at the Ryokan, we were ridiculously early for our garden tour. There was a couple there from Los Angeles--it was so refreshing to speak to someone who could speak fluent English. Both of them come to Kyoto quite frequently and had all kinds of suggestions as to where we should visit. We got to know each other pretty well because they are very strict about the gardens (Zoey couldn't even see the gardens when she went since she was under 18!). We tried to get in early, but as soon as they saw what tour our tickets were for they told us we had to wait outside.

One of the cool things was the fence, made entirely out of bamboo, but it got kind of old fast for me during our 30 minutes of standing.

The tour was given in Japanese, so we were the tourists that you always see with the headphones and tape player in English. Most of the information was on certain aspects of the garden and how the gardens change depending on what time of the year you visit. Notice the beautiful Japanese maples--since it's fall they are in all different stages of their color change:

All of the tearooms and huts have really thick thatched roofs to keep the rain out:

For most of these pictures I don't have much to say...They speak mostly for themselves. Everything here was beautiful, something I thought I'd only be seeing on a postcard. Since the sky was kind of overcast, there was a fine mist surrounding the place that actually added to the beauty.

Dad said that a lot of the paths are made intentionally hard to walk on (especially when wearing Japanese clogs) so that you concentrate on walking from one location to the next. Then, at certain viewpoints, it gets easier to walk and you are able to look up and be surprised by the amazing picture in front of you.

In addition to making the walkways difficult, they also strategically placed trees and bushes so that upon arrival, one cannot see the entire garden:

During the beginning of the tour, the tape spent a long time lecturing about how we are not to "linger" in areas that are not marked, so as not to disturb the growing moss. The ponds are all filled with moss, which I at first thought would be gross, but it actually makes the ponds reflect the images above them:

There were about 3-4 tea houses on the premises. In the back of this one you can see a tiny little door. The reason it's so short is to prevent people with swords on from coming in (since you would have to bend down).

Here are some more lovely images of the garden:

Behind this tea house is an area for farming. I forget the exact significance of this, but I think it had to do something with representing the "people."

When the tour was over, I discovered one of the coolest things ever. There are vending machines all over Japan, but I never noticed that some have blue signs and some have red signs. I was going through a caffeine withdrawal (damn you Nolo!), so I bought some coffee (a red sign). The can was HOT! Not so hot that I couldn't hold it, but I swear they think of everything there.

After I finished my coffee and we said goodbye to the American couple, Dad and I proceeded to get totally lost. I think we were trying to walk to downtown Kyoto, which we later realized we were really far away from.

We seriously walked around for about an hour--the good thing was that we found a camera store that sold memory cards, which the camera desperately needed at this point. Just FYI (something I learned) 256 megabytes is not a lot of room... Dad finally gave up that we were going to find it by walking so we wandered off to a main street and caught a bus. Another FYI from the day, on Japanese buses, you enter on the back and push a button to get a card signalling when you got on. When it's time to get off, you give the driver that same card, and he tells you how much you owe. We had no idea, but thankfully the driver knew how much we owed. With one white guy and one mystery race girl they tend to notice there.

At Kyoto station, they actually have a visitor center for foreigners where they speak English pretty fluently. We were able to check our email and get all kinds of information on travelling throughout the city. Unfortunately this consumed almost all of our day, but it was worth it to find out that you can purchase subway/bus passes for 1-, 2-, or 7-days, depending on the length of your trip. Our passes combined with our JR passes seemed to save us a fair amount of money.

Finally on our way out, we decided to get some lunch at the train station. The station is nothing like Bart--for about $10 I was able to get a huge plate of tempura and soba noodles in soup plus a bowl of rice and a side of pickles.

We then tried to jet over to what I think was Nijo Castle, in Kyoto. Unfortunately we learned the hard way that the castles close pretty early, around 4:45 p.m. We showed up at 4:50 p.m. Sad. Across the street, though, was a sword shop that I got to take a look at. I discovered three things you will only see in Japan: 1) A samurai sword shop with swords sitting out in the window; 2) A samurai sword shop that is unattended with no bars on the windows; 3) An unattended sword shop that leaves ninja stars outside with an "honor system" price chart...Amazing.

The last part of our night consisted of touring the Kyoto temples at night. I have a few pictures from that night and there is a limit as to how many photos I can post per entry. Stay tuned for Part II.