Kyoto in a day

First of all, let's say that our plan to do Kyoto in a single day was ambitious. Really, really ambitious. Probably stupidly ambitious, but we figured that we probably won't be back to this side of the world and it has been Tom's life long dream to visit Kyoto, the former capital of Japan, so we were going to make this work as best we could.

Tricky part #1: Kyoto is not near Tokyo. In fact, it is an eight hour drive west. But the world famous bullet train can make the trip in 2.5 hours, so we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and were on the train by 6:30. The bullet trains are really nice, though insanely expensive. The MBTA could learn a thing of two with regards to well run, reliable service, but if it it included such a dramatic increase in fare prices, I'd have to think a bit about that. Anyway, we arrived at Kyoto Station at 9:00, which let to tricky part #2.

Tricky part #2: Kyoto has a TERRIBLE public transit system. It is the third largest city in Japan and it pretty much just has some busses. Not even a lot of busses, just some busses. (Ok, yes there are technically a few subway lines, but they are privately owned and you have to buy separate tickets for them, so most people don't even bother.) Plus it is apparently school vacation week in Japan right now, so everyone and their elementary schooler was trying to use said busses to explore Kyoto. We stood in line for an hour before the bus we wanted even showed up and then it took another hour to actually go the tree miles to our first stop. Suffice it to say, I (Maura) was not thrilled with our first experiences of Kyoto.

Thankfully, it got a lot better from there. Our fist stop was the Golden Pavilion which is a Buddhist temple on a pond. The second and third stories are completely covered in golf leaf. It's pretty amazing to see.

Then we took another bus to the Silver Pavilion on the other side of the city. It was supposed to be covered in silver back in the day, but somehow that never happened. They still call it the Silver Pavilion, though. While it wasn't awesomely silver, it was very pretty and had some beautiful grounds we toured.

Then we followed the Philosopher's Path to the next big temple, Eikan-do. This active monastery was so peaceful. We walked through the buildings and grounds and saw several old, beautiful paintings on the walls and temples within the monastery. The architecture itself was beautiful and the grounds included a two story pagoda with an amazing view of the city.

After that, we took a cab to our final temple for the day, Kiyomizu. Our cab driver said something about congestion and taking us around and them proceeded to drop us off at an empty little road on a mountain and told us to walk 5 minutes down the path. I'm not going to lie, it seemed pretty sketchy and we weren't sure he had even brought us to the right place, but we went with it and it turns out he was a very clever guy. We entered at the top of the shrine and while everyone else had to walk up 10 flights of stairs in the blistering heat to get to where we were, we only had to walk down them. Kiyomizu had several amazing views of the surrounding mountains and the city below. It was also full of people in Kimonos. The Kusanagis had told us the day before that most people in Tokyo don't really wear them, and if they do, it must be a very special occasion. In fact, when we saw some people in kimonos, it turned out they were just tourists! Kyoto seems to be a different story, though. There were so many people, male and female, all ages, even entire families, wearing them. Kyoto seems to really value the old ways and Tom heard that certain places actually give discounts to people in kimonos as a way to encourage the tradition.     

Afterwards, we went to dinner in Gion, an older section of the city. Tom had a restaurant picked out but it wasn't exactly where we thought it would be, so we eventually went into a McDonalds to ask directions. Remember a few posts ago, when we talked about how helpful the people were in Tokyo? Well, no sooner had we asked for directions, then we had most of the staff trying to help us find it on a map and looking it up on their smart phones. After a few minutes, they handed the map back to us and said to go back out to the sidewalk. We thought they just weren't able to help us, but three of them led the way and them fanned out searching for it! The found it just around the corner. Tom thought we should call this post "McDonalds helped us have a wonderful dinner in Kyoto."

We had dinner at a really nice sushi place called Chojiro where you placed your order on an ipad. They we walked through Pontocho, a very old street with lots of shops and saw a real Maiko, a Geisha's apprentice! Maiko means "dance child" and they are paid half the wages of a full Geisha. They are pretty rare now and we were very lucky to see one! 

Overall, Kyoto had the feel of an old world city. We hopped on the bullet train back to Tokyo and we in our hotel before midnight. It was an exciting last day in Japan.