30/11/12
Today’s goal
was to see some temples. Essentially, this is why people come to Kyoto – it is
such a culturally rich place, with over one thousand temples to see. Having
seen quite a few temples on my last trip to Kyoto, I was keen to cross off one
or two that I’d really wanted to see, but didn’t get to last time. First and
foremost on that list, was the eye-burningly pretty “Kinkakuji”, or “Golden
Pavilion”.
So firstly,
I checked the guide as to how to get there. It told us to catch Bus 205. This
was the same bus that we caught yesterday to Taro’s cooking class. Easy! We
boarded the bus, and were soon on our way. Well, as quickly as one can on the
bus system in Kyoto (that is, not very). As we were driving up Kawaramachi
street, we spied the delicious Udon store we had been to a few days prior, so
we decided to get off here for some lunch.
This time,
Emma had a bowl of rice, which was definitely much better for her stomach than
her usual bowl of Udon. I went for the bukakke Udon, with about three different
tempura sides. Highly unhealthy, but for the price you pay, easily the best
Udon I’ve tasted.
After lunch,
we decided to have just a quick look around the local area. This “quick look”
soon turned into several hours of exploring downtown Kyoto. Kyoto’s block layout
system makes it very difficult to get lost, even when all the street names are
is in Japanese. Unlike New York’s block layout system, the blocks in Kyoto’s downtown
area are quite small – it takes you only about a minute to walk between each
one. As such, as long as you have a compass with you, you’re fine.
We strolled
around the laneways, where Emma ducked into plenty of smaller retailers to have
a look at their various stuff. I’d be lying if I said I could remember what she
bought, but she seemed to enjoy her browsing and purchases.
We soon
turned down one street and into a shopping arcade. I found an arcade store called
“GAME PANIC”. The name was enough engrish to draw me in to see what was inside.
It was a fairly standard Japanese arcade affair – loads of “skill tester” games
that were impossible to win anything at, and then a smaller selection of actual
videogames at the back of the arcade. There was one thing that immediately
caught my eye, though. It was a small cabinet, with a big wooden table attached
to it. I knew exactly what this was – THE TABLE FLIP GAME. Let me sum up this
game with some ASCII art:
Yes. The
purpose of the game is to flip the table with as much speed (and passionate
fury) as possible. On the screen behind the table-prop, it shows a scene of a
restaurant/family dinner/other circumstance, where people are doing
increasingly irritating things, such as talking on their phones at dinner,
chewing with their mouths open, or playing videogames at the table and whatnot.
The goal is to guess when your character’s rage is at their highest, and then
flip the table in rage. What follows is a spectacular slow motion replay as
everything that was on the digital-table counterpart goes flying, causing
damage to people and surroundings alike. It then shows a tally of the amount of
damage that you’ve caused in JPY. I managed 88,000 JPY in one flip! The replay
was hilarious as well. I pretty much destroyed the entire living room. I was
very proud. Afterwards, Emma and I had a race on “Mario Kart”, which was also
great fun. I came first, with Emma in close second.
After
walking around for a bit more, we finally found Nishiki Market – somewhere
which we wanted to see if we were in the area. Nishiki Market is nicknamed “Kyoto’s
Kitchen”. This nickname is obvious when walking through there. Everywhere you
look there are raw ingredients for all of the different elements that you see
in Japanese cuisine. Much like a foreigner eating Japanese food for the first
time, we couldn’t tell what about 70% of the things on sale were. Irregardless,
it was a fascinating walk through the culinary heart of Kyoto. We even saw a
few things that we used in the previous days cooking class.
We then
headed back to the main drag, where we went to catch bus 205 to Kinkakuji
temple. However, we soon discovered that there are multiple “205” route buses
that go to different places. Seriously, Kyoto? Why would you have multiple bus
routes with the same number? That’s just stupidly confusing! What’s more, it
was starting to get fairly late in the afternoon, and the light was fading. I
made an executive decision to give up on seeing the temple today, and we would
focus on seeing it tomorrow. Instead, we headed back into “Loft”, Emma’s
favourite homewares store. She spent a good 90 minutes in there, browsing
through the various things on sale. It was great fun.
Afterwards,
we caught the bus back to Kyoto station, where we dived into the department
store’s food court to pick up a cheap dinner of “closing time” bento boxes. Yes,
they are cheap and aren’t the best food in the world, but for the price you
pay, you’d be hard pressed to find half as much food in Australia.
Overall, not
the most productive day in the world, but it was still loads of Japanese-themed
fun.
1/12/12
Today we
were definitely going to see some damn temples. For sure. I was hellbent on
doing so. As such, we woke up early. We checked out of our hotel, and then made
a beeline for Kyoto Station. Having done some research into Kinkaku-Ji, I found
that the quickest way was a subway trip and then a bus trip when you were out of
the gridlock of the city. As time was a priority today, we decided to do this.
It’s about 250JPY cheaper just to go on the bus, but it can take up to 90
minutes to get there, as opposed to the 30 with this method.
Kinkaku-ji
was amazingly pretty. It shone brilliantly in the morning light, and the
overhead clouds added some dramatic lighting to it as well. However, as the guide
had warned us, it was rather crowded. It wasn’t shuffling along at a snail’s
pace in most places, and everyone got some good photo opportunities, but it was
still a little bit too crowded for my liking. This is really to be expected
though – it is pretty much Kyoto’s most famous tourist attraction. It is
definitely worth seeing, just don’t expect to get yourself a private moment
alone with it.
Our next
destination was Tofukuji temple. Unfortunately, this was on the completely
opposite side of town to Kinkaku-ji, which
meant a few train trips to get there. Surprisingly, it was still cheaper
to take the JR trains than the buses/subway combo that we used to get to
Kinkaku-Ji.
Contrary to
it’s name, Tofukuji temple isn’t famous for its Tofu. In fact, I didn’t see any
tofu when I was there, at all. What it is famous for though, is its autumn
colours. While I had already seen some breathtaking autumn colours in Seoul and
in Yudanaka, I was keen to see some with a temple as a backdrop. I thought that
we’d just go there and have a quiet stroll around, snapping the occasional
picture.
I was wrong,
very wrong. It turned out to be just as, if not more crowded than Kinkaku-Ji.
While there were views of the autumn colours that were truly jaw-dropping, it
was a bit of a stretch to actually be able to properly enjoy them, with each
walkway being crowded with hundreds of people jostling for the best photo
opportunity. It was all still very civilised, as everything is in Japan, but
compared to our last visit to Kyoto, where things were still busy, but not
overly crowded, made the overall experience a bit disappointing. Plus, the
weather by this time was alternating sporadically between overcast and pouring
rain, so periodically the crowd of tourists jostling for the perfect shot
became a sea of umbrellas. Quite unpleasant.
Don’t get me
wrong, I was still very glad to see these sights, but if/when I return to
Kyoto, I will try to go during a lower season next time, or at least see some
of the less famous temples. Just so I can get a few quiet moments of
self-reflection. I definitely wasn’t able to get my “zen” on this time, which
was rather disappointing.
We then
returned to the train station, and caught the train from Kyoto to Osaka. This
didn’t involve the level of epicness that we have had in the past with some of
our train travels. It was a quick 40 minute hop between the two cities, and
just on a regular urban train. However, it was jam packed for the entire 30
minute journey, which was somewhat unpleasant with our huge luggage bags in
tow. I was starting to get a bit sick of crowds by this point, so I was happy
to finally get off at Osaka station.
The journey
wasn’t over though, as we then had to switch to the subway which was also super
crowded. When we got to Namba, our local train station, we were confronted with
a super confusing map system that not only didn’t orient itself north, but in
some cases, didn’t even orient it from the perspective that the viewer was
looking at the map. It made absolutely no sense, and frustrated me to
table-flipping levels.
Thankfully,
we did eventually find our way to our hotel. We checked in, and then relaxed in
the room for a couple of hours. I did battle with my PC, trying to get it to
act as a wifi hotspot, but I eventually failed. Looks like we are stuck just
with the netbook as internet access for Osaka.
We then went
out for Yakitori at a local bar. The food was tasty, and the people were nice,
but the bill at the end was quite confusing. I think we got overcharged, but I’m
not 100% sure. As the receipt was completely in Japanese, for all I know they
could have had “tourist idiot tax” as one of the items listed. Still, the food
made up for it as it was really tasty. It was all chicken-based, too, so very Emma-friendly. Copious amounts of stickmeat were had, and all in all, a good finish to a tiring day.
Tomorrow:
MOAR SHOPPINGS
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