Sunday, April 29, 2007
April 12, one day sightseeing in Kyoto and we’re already sick of temples.
Oh, and I'm trying a different image host for these pictures so they're...um...well, they're huge.
The plan for today was to walk through ‘eastern Kyoto’, a place as jam-packed with cultural properties and epic thousand-year-old blah blah blah that it’s a little bit numbing. Okay, a lot bit numbing. I had picked out some stops along a long, meandering walk through the city and we had our plan in hand, so the first thing we did was check out of our hostel and walk to Kyoto Station, nearby. From there we took a bus to our first stop, Ginkaku-ji temple. We were on the bus at ‘morning go to school’ time and so as we drove, it began to fill up with millions and millions of schoolgirls, all wearing the same uniform and, therefore, all going to the same school. There was one stop in particular where there were probably, no exaggerating, fifty students all waiting for the bus. The doors opened and people just kept on coming in and coming in until we just couldn’t fit anyone else. I was a little worried, actually, because if our stop happened before theirs, there was a good chance we just wouldn’t be able to get off of the bus. Luckily, they all drained out a few stops before us, and we got out and walked toward the temple.
Oh, and by the way, we were on the bus for a good 15 or 20 minutes. This will become more interesting later.
We started first at the philosopher’s path. Jess decided that simply ‘standing in the picture’ was no longer interesting enough. I think she’s probably right. The philosopher’s path is one of my favorite sights from the trip. We hit the timing dead on, and all of the cherry trees along this ancient, wandering path were in full bloom. It was spectacularly gorgeous, and really nice to just put Jess on my arm and walk along.
Our first temple was called ‘Ginkaku-ji’, an old temple with a really interesting garden. Parts of it were just pattern sand, like the abbreviated cone above. The rest was very specific, simple, and elegant, with lots of little rivers and trees in a field of moss. I got a picture of a display that evidently explained (in Japanese) the different kinds of moss to be found around the garden. I liked it mostly because it had three different classes of moss, and two of them were ‘VIP Moss’ and ‘Moss: The Interrupter’, which sounds like a great prime-time gardening drama.
We were joined at this stop, and on many subsequent stops, but another million schoolchildren on a field trip to see some temples along the philosophers walk. Each school group had a leader carrying a flag to keep everyone together. Jess and I made a point of setting a different pace from the school trips because otherwise we’d be swamped by schoolchildren and, no doubt, blinded by camera phones.
There was also a great view of Kyoto from the top ends of the garden. A nice place to spend a morning.
Next we continued along the philosophers walk to a temple called Honen-in. The guidebook did a good job of mixing up all the big, famous, extremely busy temples with smaller, quieter, but equally interesting ones, and this was one of the quieter ones. It was set up in the woods, seemingly away from the world, and was simple and unpretentious. We liked it a lot. Also, I’m not sure who did that rock stack, but it wasn’t me, and I was afraid to go anywhere near it in case I knocked it over.
The next stop was called Eikan-do, where we got to go up into the actual temple and look around at all the rooms. They had a statue of the Buddha ‘looking back’, and there’s a story around that that I found pretty interesting. I’m sure ‘the internet’ could tell it better than I could, though, so I’ll let you look it up on your own. No pictures, though, they don’t tend to let cameras inside of temples, which is a shame, but I liked the place a lot.
Fourth temple of the day was Nanzen-ni, a huge temple complex with a lot of interesting sights…that you had to pay to get in to. We didn’t really feel the need to pay admission for anything else that day, though, so we eschewed any of the details, though I did snap these pictures of the ‘triple gate’ entrance and a place where they burn incense. That right there? That is a whole lot of ash. I was impressed.
We walked through this garden called Muran-in hoping we could kick back here and rest for a while, but it was a pretty small garden, though quite pretty, and we didn’t really want to just lounge in the middle of it because there was really only one path through. So instead we skipped the next ancient, epic, crazy temple and decided to rest for a while. At this point we were feeling a little tired of temples and shrines. Sure, they’re pretty, but there is such a thing as too many temples, it seems.
So instead, Maruyama Koen (park), a good place to rest your feet. It was a pretty big park with lots of shops selling ice cream and various munchy foods. Also, tons and tons of schoolchildren grouped together like honeycombs. Jess took a nap while I walked around and checked out food. I ended up getting some fried octopus balls and some strange, but tasty, desert…things…on a stick. That’s what Jess is eating. We also got some nice soft-serve ice cream and just hung around letting our legs recharge.
After that, we walked out of the park through a shrine complex. Lots of shrines of all sizes, very neat.
And then on the way out, we walked through Gion, the old geisha district. Pretty neat place, but I’m sure it lights up a lot more at night when all the rich businessmen come to be very traditionally entertained. We saw a few geisha walking around, too. Well, geisha or meiko, trainee geisha. One of them wears shorter sleeves, but I can’t quite remember which. Serious footwear, too. That’s got to take some practice to walk around in.
We stopped at a place that sold quality Japanese crafts and did some shopping for gifts, though nothing really caught my eye for myself. Neat stuff, though. We also strolled through a shopping arcade and saw a lot of pachinko parlors, a lot of clothing stores, and a place that sold croissant-wrapped hot dogs. Jessie liked.
Then we took a subway a mere two stops back to Kyoto station. That 20 minute bus ride at the beginning of the day? We walked back. We crashed early, again, got some dinner and I reconsidered my plan for the next day. Less temple-centric.
-N
Oh, and I'm trying a different image host for these pictures so they're...um...well, they're huge.
The plan for today was to walk through ‘eastern Kyoto’, a place as jam-packed with cultural properties and epic thousand-year-old blah blah blah that it’s a little bit numbing. Okay, a lot bit numbing. I had picked out some stops along a long, meandering walk through the city and we had our plan in hand, so the first thing we did was check out of our hostel and walk to Kyoto Station, nearby. From there we took a bus to our first stop, Ginkaku-ji temple. We were on the bus at ‘morning go to school’ time and so as we drove, it began to fill up with millions and millions of schoolgirls, all wearing the same uniform and, therefore, all going to the same school. There was one stop in particular where there were probably, no exaggerating, fifty students all waiting for the bus. The doors opened and people just kept on coming in and coming in until we just couldn’t fit anyone else. I was a little worried, actually, because if our stop happened before theirs, there was a good chance we just wouldn’t be able to get off of the bus. Luckily, they all drained out a few stops before us, and we got out and walked toward the temple.
Oh, and by the way, we were on the bus for a good 15 or 20 minutes. This will become more interesting later.
We started first at the philosopher’s path. Jess decided that simply ‘standing in the picture’ was no longer interesting enough. I think she’s probably right. The philosopher’s path is one of my favorite sights from the trip. We hit the timing dead on, and all of the cherry trees along this ancient, wandering path were in full bloom. It was spectacularly gorgeous, and really nice to just put Jess on my arm and walk along.
Our first temple was called ‘Ginkaku-ji’, an old temple with a really interesting garden. Parts of it were just pattern sand, like the abbreviated cone above. The rest was very specific, simple, and elegant, with lots of little rivers and trees in a field of moss. I got a picture of a display that evidently explained (in Japanese) the different kinds of moss to be found around the garden. I liked it mostly because it had three different classes of moss, and two of them were ‘VIP Moss’ and ‘Moss: The Interrupter’, which sounds like a great prime-time gardening drama.
We were joined at this stop, and on many subsequent stops, but another million schoolchildren on a field trip to see some temples along the philosophers walk. Each school group had a leader carrying a flag to keep everyone together. Jess and I made a point of setting a different pace from the school trips because otherwise we’d be swamped by schoolchildren and, no doubt, blinded by camera phones.
There was also a great view of Kyoto from the top ends of the garden. A nice place to spend a morning.
Next we continued along the philosophers walk to a temple called Honen-in. The guidebook did a good job of mixing up all the big, famous, extremely busy temples with smaller, quieter, but equally interesting ones, and this was one of the quieter ones. It was set up in the woods, seemingly away from the world, and was simple and unpretentious. We liked it a lot. Also, I’m not sure who did that rock stack, but it wasn’t me, and I was afraid to go anywhere near it in case I knocked it over.
The next stop was called Eikan-do, where we got to go up into the actual temple and look around at all the rooms. They had a statue of the Buddha ‘looking back’, and there’s a story around that that I found pretty interesting. I’m sure ‘the internet’ could tell it better than I could, though, so I’ll let you look it up on your own. No pictures, though, they don’t tend to let cameras inside of temples, which is a shame, but I liked the place a lot.
Fourth temple of the day was Nanzen-ni, a huge temple complex with a lot of interesting sights…that you had to pay to get in to. We didn’t really feel the need to pay admission for anything else that day, though, so we eschewed any of the details, though I did snap these pictures of the ‘triple gate’ entrance and a place where they burn incense. That right there? That is a whole lot of ash. I was impressed.
We walked through this garden called Muran-in hoping we could kick back here and rest for a while, but it was a pretty small garden, though quite pretty, and we didn’t really want to just lounge in the middle of it because there was really only one path through. So instead we skipped the next ancient, epic, crazy temple and decided to rest for a while. At this point we were feeling a little tired of temples and shrines. Sure, they’re pretty, but there is such a thing as too many temples, it seems.
So instead, Maruyama Koen (park), a good place to rest your feet. It was a pretty big park with lots of shops selling ice cream and various munchy foods. Also, tons and tons of schoolchildren grouped together like honeycombs. Jess took a nap while I walked around and checked out food. I ended up getting some fried octopus balls and some strange, but tasty, desert…things…on a stick. That’s what Jess is eating. We also got some nice soft-serve ice cream and just hung around letting our legs recharge.
After that, we walked out of the park through a shrine complex. Lots of shrines of all sizes, very neat.
And then on the way out, we walked through Gion, the old geisha district. Pretty neat place, but I’m sure it lights up a lot more at night when all the rich businessmen come to be very traditionally entertained. We saw a few geisha walking around, too. Well, geisha or meiko, trainee geisha. One of them wears shorter sleeves, but I can’t quite remember which. Serious footwear, too. That’s got to take some practice to walk around in.
We stopped at a place that sold quality Japanese crafts and did some shopping for gifts, though nothing really caught my eye for myself. Neat stuff, though. We also strolled through a shopping arcade and saw a lot of pachinko parlors, a lot of clothing stores, and a place that sold croissant-wrapped hot dogs. Jessie liked.
Then we took a subway a mere two stops back to Kyoto station. That 20 minute bus ride at the beginning of the day? We walked back. We crashed early, again, got some dinner and I reconsidered my plan for the next day. Less temple-centric.
-N
Labels: Food, Japan, Kyoto, Shrines, Temples
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
April 9
Further excitement! Being as we had our awesome, awesome, awesome JR pass, we took the opportunity to do a quick little side-trip out of Tokyo, to a town with some interesting sights called Nikko. Fantastic. We actually woke up at 5:30 and got to the metro rail before it opened, but only by a few minutes. Jess got some warm coffee-beverage to warm up.
We got to the JR station and bought breakfast there, I got a bento box, which is…uh…a bunch of Japanese stuff. I liked. Jess got sammich.
Our first bullet train! Those things move fast. We got on real quick-like, which was good because the train stopped for roughly 60 seconds, and then it was gone. Do not be late for your bullet train. There is no final boarding call.
Zoom! Vroom! Transfer to another train! Zoom! Nikko!
We first walked through the temples. These were some freakin’ TEMPLES! The first was this gi-gnormigous wooden structure that held some neat Buddhist (I think) artifacts. Chief among them were three huge golden statues of three different aspects of Buddha. Really pretty but, as was often the case, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. I saw them though; they were great. And the building? Huge.
The next was a shrine to Ieasu Tokugawa, the guy that ultimately finished uniting Japan. It is famous for being elaborate on top of elaborate on top of crazy. Just check out some of these pictures! Every surface was engraved or carved or gilded or all three, and the shrine just went on forever. Smaller buildings, but an infinite number of them.
This is a horse donated by the Dutch government to the Japanese to the temple as a show of goodwill (more important back when they were exclusive trading partners). They use it for some of their ceremonies.
And then engraved on the wall above the stable, three familiar monkeys. Evidently, these are the *original*, which is sort of mind-bending. It all started here, folks. Wow.
More awesomeness all over, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
We stopped for lunch at a place that served noodles (Udon) and some sort of soy-milk bi-product called Yuba. Good stuff, actually.
Next, a hundreds-of-years-old shrine. I liked seeing these little portable mini-shrines. Pretty. There was also a 400-year-old lantern there. Do you own a 400-year-old lantern? I didn’t think so.
Finally, the Taiyu-in Mausoleum, the resting place of the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu. (I’m reading out of the guidebook, here). Famous for its gates. It was drizzling at this point, so we busted out our ‘emergency ponchos’. They’re great, and they fold up small enough to fit in your back pocket. Oh, and the Mausoleum was pretty spectacular, too, we especially liked the statues housed in the gates. Check out that grimace!
Overall, the temples were amazing to the point of ridiculousness. Seriously, it was all too much to take in. Glad we went, though, those places were just wild. Jessie liked all the trees.
Next we wanted to hike to a nearby waterfall we’d heard about, one where you could hike up *behind* the falls. Yeah, wild, I know. It took some work, but eventually we figured out the bus system and then walked the 2.5 km off the main road to find this place.
Along the way, little statues. We don’t know why they put little aprons on them, but they do.
So the trail up to the waterfall ends in this big, wooden viewing platform. We hopped the railing and I stayed at the bottom while Jessie climbed up behind the waterfall. The trickiest part was actually navigating a bunch of slippery logs strewn around the base of the viewing platform. I took a whole bunch of pictures, but these are my favorites. Though, to tell the truth, I was also down there to act as a lifeguard. Luckily, I didn’t have to, because Jess was very kind to her overprotective boyfriend and did not fall to her doom.
We walked back to the main road and sat to wait for the bus back to the station. We saw a monkey. (!) I’d read that there were wild monkeys around this place, but still, crazy! Monkeys just …hangin’ around.
After that, hopped back to Tokyo, grabbing dinner at some random restaurant we found near the hostel and picking up some ice cream bars at a ‘mart’ for desert. Tasty. Then, we slept, and dreamed, presumably, of waterfalls and temples.
-N
Further excitement! Being as we had our awesome, awesome, awesome JR pass, we took the opportunity to do a quick little side-trip out of Tokyo, to a town with some interesting sights called Nikko. Fantastic. We actually woke up at 5:30 and got to the metro rail before it opened, but only by a few minutes. Jess got some warm coffee-beverage to warm up.
We got to the JR station and bought breakfast there, I got a bento box, which is…uh…a bunch of Japanese stuff. I liked. Jess got sammich.
Our first bullet train! Those things move fast. We got on real quick-like, which was good because the train stopped for roughly 60 seconds, and then it was gone. Do not be late for your bullet train. There is no final boarding call.
Zoom! Vroom! Transfer to another train! Zoom! Nikko!
We first walked through the temples. These were some freakin’ TEMPLES! The first was this gi-gnormigous wooden structure that held some neat Buddhist (I think) artifacts. Chief among them were three huge golden statues of three different aspects of Buddha. Really pretty but, as was often the case, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. I saw them though; they were great. And the building? Huge.
The next was a shrine to Ieasu Tokugawa, the guy that ultimately finished uniting Japan. It is famous for being elaborate on top of elaborate on top of crazy. Just check out some of these pictures! Every surface was engraved or carved or gilded or all three, and the shrine just went on forever. Smaller buildings, but an infinite number of them.
This is a horse donated by the Dutch government to the Japanese to the temple as a show of goodwill (more important back when they were exclusive trading partners). They use it for some of their ceremonies.
And then engraved on the wall above the stable, three familiar monkeys. Evidently, these are the *original*, which is sort of mind-bending. It all started here, folks. Wow.
More awesomeness all over, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
We stopped for lunch at a place that served noodles (Udon) and some sort of soy-milk bi-product called Yuba. Good stuff, actually.
Next, a hundreds-of-years-old shrine. I liked seeing these little portable mini-shrines. Pretty. There was also a 400-year-old lantern there. Do you own a 400-year-old lantern? I didn’t think so.
Finally, the Taiyu-in Mausoleum, the resting place of the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu. (I’m reading out of the guidebook, here). Famous for its gates. It was drizzling at this point, so we busted out our ‘emergency ponchos’. They’re great, and they fold up small enough to fit in your back pocket. Oh, and the Mausoleum was pretty spectacular, too, we especially liked the statues housed in the gates. Check out that grimace!
Overall, the temples were amazing to the point of ridiculousness. Seriously, it was all too much to take in. Glad we went, though, those places were just wild. Jessie liked all the trees.
Next we wanted to hike to a nearby waterfall we’d heard about, one where you could hike up *behind* the falls. Yeah, wild, I know. It took some work, but eventually we figured out the bus system and then walked the 2.5 km off the main road to find this place.
Along the way, little statues. We don’t know why they put little aprons on them, but they do.
So the trail up to the waterfall ends in this big, wooden viewing platform. We hopped the railing and I stayed at the bottom while Jessie climbed up behind the waterfall. The trickiest part was actually navigating a bunch of slippery logs strewn around the base of the viewing platform. I took a whole bunch of pictures, but these are my favorites. Though, to tell the truth, I was also down there to act as a lifeguard. Luckily, I didn’t have to, because Jess was very kind to her overprotective boyfriend and did not fall to her doom.
We walked back to the main road and sat to wait for the bus back to the station. We saw a monkey. (!) I’d read that there were wild monkeys around this place, but still, crazy! Monkeys just …hangin’ around.
After that, hopped back to Tokyo, grabbing dinner at some random restaurant we found near the hostel and picking up some ice cream bars at a ‘mart’ for desert. Tasty. Then, we slept, and dreamed, presumably, of waterfalls and temples.
-N
Labels: Japan, Nikko, Temples, Waterfalls
