Japan Part III: Kyoto, Day 2

After a very busy, but wonderful first day in Kyoto we woke up early for more sightseeing.  It just happened that one of my friends from home, who also lived in Korea this past year, was also traveling around Japan before heading back to America.  Since he was also in Kyoto, we met up with him in the morning before getting on our way. 

Our first site of the day was Kinkakuji, more commonly known as the Golden Pavilion. This is a Zen Buddhist temple, and one of the iconic sites in Kyoto.  It's a bit of a trip away from the center of the city, so we decided to get it out of the way and hit it up first thing in the morning.

The day started off a bit cloudy, but this temple was still beautiful.  Take a look:

When I look at these pictures I almost need to pinch myself.  Was I REALLY there?!

While we were walking around the temple we were stopped by some students from Tokyo who were on a school trip to Kyoto.  Their assignment was to ask some questions to foreigners in English.  I guess Doug and I were pretty obvious targets with our light skin and hair colors, because we were stopped not only once, but twice.  Of course we were happy to talk with them, and actually I wish I could have talked to them more.  I love picking the minds of students in different countries, and I would have loved to have known more about their lives and how it compares to that of Korean students.  Naturally the students were shy though, so our conversations were pretty short, but I was still happy to have the chance to speak with them at least a little bit.  Megan and I were also stopped by students in Thailand, so I'm starting to think this is something that will happen in every country I visit.  I wouldn't complain!

After we finished at the Golden Pavilion it was getting to be lunch time.  We jumped on a bus without really thinking about our strategy for the rest of the day, so we ended up going back to the downtown area that we had been in the night before.  We were all wanting to eat some sushi, so we went back to the place where we bought the sushi on the street the day before.  The little sushi stand also had a restaurant, and since it was delicious the previous day, we decided to go in and sit down.

This restaurant was really cool because the different kinds of sushi rotated around on a big conveyor belt type thing and you just grabbed any kinds of sushi you wanted to try.  We were certainly not disappointed with our lunch, and I'm pretty sure this will now be the sushi I dream about from here on out.

The sushi just goes around and around!

SO GOOD!!

Doug was much braver than Jen and I.  This is horse meat!!!

Tuna and avocado.  So good!

We ate A LOT of sushi.  Can you guess which stack of plates was Doug's?

Feeling refreshed after a great lunch, we made our way to Imperial Palace.  This was on the top of a lot of tourist guide lists, so we figured it was something we should definitely check out.  It took us a while to get there (Japan's transportation system is NOT the most straightforward!), and once we got off the bus it took us a while and a lot of walking in the hot sun to actually find the entrance to the Palace (signs in Kyoto were alarmingly scare).

Finally we did find the entrance, but there was a bit of a problem. On the sign to the palace it said:

Entrance to the Imperial Palace is by reservation only. 

This is where the lack of planning for this trip came back to haunt us.  Actually, to our credit we did read a bit about the palace before coming, but we just didn't read on any of the tourist websites that we needed to make a reservation beforehand.  Jen said she saw that you could make a reservation for a tour, but it didn't say that was the ONLY way you could enter.

Needless to say, we were disappointed that we spent so much time trying to get to the palace, only to see nothing.  Since all of the major tourist sites closed around 4:00, we wasted a lot of precious sightseeing time just getting to the palace.  At that point we didn't have a lot of time to get to another part of the city, so we just found some nearby temples on the map and headed there so at least we could see something else.

Eventually we found this shrine:

As we wandered a bit more, we stumbled across another temple.  It was about to close, but they let us in anyway.

After we finished looking around we were completely exhausted and our feet were in poor shape.  We decided to get on the bus and head back towards the downtown area since all the tourist sites were closed already.  

During our ride on the bus we noticed a street that looked cool, so we got off to explore a bit.  What we discovered was Gion, an area of Kyoto with lots of traditional wooden buildings and apparently the home of Kyoto's largest geisha district.  We didn't see any geishas, but we did see lots of people dressed in kimonos.  One thing that really surprised me about Kyoto was actually how many people were walking around in kimonos.  You seldom see people in Korea walking around in hanboks, so I expected it to be the same in Japan. The abundance of kimonos was actually a nice surprise, and I'm sad that we didn't get a chance to wear any!

Beautiful view along the river.

From there we said goodbye to Doug because he had to catch a bus to Tokyo.  Jen and I continued to wander to find something to eat because we were starting to get hungry again.  We finally just chose a random restaurant because we were tired and were sick of walking around. Dinner that night was ok, but not my favorite meal I had in Japan.

Monday night's dinner.

 After dinner we decided to indulge in some dessert because well..it had been a long day.

 At this point we were full and exhausted, so it was time to head back to the hostel.  We had an early morning ahead of us as our trip headed to Osaka!

Goodbye Kyoto!

Japan Part II: Kyoto, Day 1

We woke up nice and early on Sunday to try to squeeze in as much as we could.  Kyoto is the former capital of Japan, and therefore is FILLED with historic and cultural sites.  Kyoto is home to 17 UNSECO World Heritage sites, so we knew on our short trip we wouldn't be able to see everything, but we definitely wanted to try to see as much as possible.

Our first stop was one of Kyoto's most famous sites, the Fushimi-Inari-Tiasha Shine. Shintoism is the largest religion in Japan, and before coming to Japan I honestly didn't remember much about Shintomism, despite the fact that somewhere along the line I know I learned a little about it in school. I've been to lots of Buddhist temples during my time in Korea and Thailand, but I had never been to a Shinto shrine. Yay for new experiences!

Fushimi-Inari-Tiasha is famous because it's filled with thousands of torii--the gates that are prevalent in Shinto shrines.  Apparently the torii are always at the entrance of a shrine to represent that it is the entrance of a spiritual place.  Torii are also sometimes donated by people who have been successful as a way of thanking the spirits for their success (or this is at least what I've read. I still don't really know much about Shintoism!)

This shrine was really amazing, and quite the way to start our trip.  Although there were tons of other tourists, it didn't detract from the shrine's beauty.

At the entrance to the shrine. 

Torii

So bright...definitely not in Korea anymore!

The torii just went on and on!

After we finished at the shrine, it was lunch time so we headed back to Kyoto Station to find something to eat. Eventually we settled on this:

We were re-energized after a delicious lunch, so we then made our way to Noji Castle.  This World Heritage site was beautiful, even though some parts are under restoration, and was definitely unlike anything you'd find in Korea.

The view from the top of the garden.

By the time we finished at the castle, it was late afternoon. Since most things closed by 5, we looked at our map and decided to head to what we assumed must be the downtown area.

When we got off of the subway, we saw a bunch of guys dancing to 50s music in the middle of a park. It was quite the sight, and for a moment we questioned where exactly we were.

However, as we kept walking we found a huge shopping area.  What we found is the area known as Shijo-Dori, and is one of the busiest parts of Kyoto.  We found some absolutely delicious sushi as we were walking along the street, and had a little snack before we did some more wandering around.

Best sushi! YUM!!!

After walking around for quite a while, we decided it was time for dinner, and decided it was time for some more sushi (we were in Japan, after all).  We found a sushi restaurant, and as soon as we walked in we felt out of place.  We were the only foreigners in there and we weren't exactly sure what to do.  In this style of restaurant everyone sits around a bar and the shushi-chefs are in the middle.  We weren't exactly sure what we were supposed to say to get their attention to place our order, so it made for some hilariously awkward moments.  We managed to get our sushi along with some sake though, so overall it was a success, even if we made fools of ourselves in the process.

I'm not really a fan of sake, but when in Japan I think it's pretty much mandatory to drink sake at least once!

After dinner we were pretty tired from a long, but incredibly fantastic day, so it was back our hostel to get a good night's sleep before another day of sightseeing!