Trip to Japan

So I finally have some time to sit down and try to recall all of the things we did in Japan. Let me start off by saying it was an amazing trip. I went with a co-worker and one of his friends, and they were both really good guys to travel with. They are much more experienced at traveling than me, so they did a ton of research beforehand, knew exactly what places to see, and they liked to go at a fast pace, which is exactly my style. So we ended up seeing pretty much what seemed like all of Kyoto in basically 2 days. I feel like now I could confidently give someone a pretty decent tour of Kyoto.

When we got to Japan, we took a train from Osaka to Kyoto. It wasn't one of the bullet-trains, but it definitely looked like one, and it went pretty fast as well. So that was fun. When we got there, we first found our hostel. It was called K House, and it was really great. I've never stayed in a hostel before, but the other two guys said it was one of the best they've been in. It had a really great cafe attached to it, and we got a 3 bed room so we didn't have to worry about sleeping in a dorm with a bunch of people, so that rocked too. The place was really clean, and the toliets were so futuristic. The toilets even had a flushing music option. The Simpsons weren't lying...

The people at our hostel were also so helpful in giving us great directions to sights and great tips on good places to go to. We decided first to go Fushimi Irani Shrine. I really wanted to go here because it's one of the filming locations for the film "Memoirs of a Geisha." The place didn't disappoint either. It's got just literally 100s, maybe even 1000s of orange gates/archways, that guide you along a path. In the film, you can see the main character running through the archways at one point. After that, we took about an hour long train-ride to another city in Japan called Nara. It is the oldest city in Japan now, and we went there because we heard there was a festival going on at the time. Unfortunately when we got there it was already over. But it was ok, because we just decided to walk around, and we got to see a lot of amazing temples, shrines, and parks. One of the things Nara is best known for is its massive deer population. Now originally this didn't seem that interesting to me. But then I realized that these deer aren't ordinary deer. They're basically domesticated. They would walk right up to you, you could even feed them. They were so used to people and cars, that nothing scared them. As a result they were also incredibly fat. They almost didn't even look like deer. I was literally less than a foot away from them. Here's a video to prove I'm not lying. I took a video, but it was dark at night, and not that impressive. But I found another video on youtube that shows what these deer can do. These ones are much skinnier than the ones I encountered, and they're also much more ambitious, but the principle's similar. This video was taken in Nara as well:



Here's one more video I found that shows that these deer are truly Japanese, they even bow.


Unfortunately, we were walking around Nara so late at night, that it was pitch-black at some points. At one point, I was walking along, and there was a chain on this one step, so I stepped off the the side so I didn't have to step over the chain, unaware, that there was a small aquaduct right there. I fell maybe two feet into this small moat, and couldn't get out. The two guys with me thought I fell into a well or something, because they said when I fell I literally disappeared. I had some nasting bruises the next day, and my one elbow still hurts a bit, but I was ok.

The next day, we got up bright and early for two reasons. One we wanted to get a good head-start on all the sightseeinng, and two, we wanted to eat the breakfast buffet at our hostel. One downside to my trip was that everything in Japan is very expensive, and their meals are very small, so we had to end up eating 4-5 meals a day to make up for all the energy we were using walking everywhere. But thankfully, this breakfast buffet was cheep, and big, so we stocked up every morning on it.

That morning we got a 5 dollar bus pass that got us free bus service anywhere in the Kyoto city limits, so we used the buses a lot while we were there. We started off by seeing some traditional houses on the beginning of our what seemed like a 15 mile walking tour. Then we happened upon a semetary. We weren't sure how big it was at first, then we saw that we were at the edge of it, and looking down, we were on the top of the biggest most impressive semetaries I've ever seen before. It stretched as far as the eye could see.

After that, our first major spot we went to was Kiyomizu-Dera. This place was one of the highlights for many reasons. It had many temples and shrines, and the interesting thing about many of these historical sights, is that they were built at various times, so many of them had very unique architectural designs. This was the first of many places where I saw the history of buddhism in Japanese culture. Even though most Japanese people today aren't buddhist, most of their important historical artifacts are, and many people still came to these shrines to light incense, say a prayer, toss some money into a box, and ring a bell. The shrines that were constructed for all of the buddhas were so elborate, but they always scared me a bit too. There were also wells where people would take big wooden sticks with a cup on the end, and drink out of it for some cleansing purpose I believe. It was definitely alienating being in a culture where God seemed completely absent, and even though Kyoto was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, I definitely would feel very uncomfortable living there I think. But none-the-less, from a historical, cultural, and breath-taking sightseeing point of view, all of these temples were very interesting.

After we saw the temple, we went into the market place, where they had many many many shops the by souveniers(sp?). We stumbled upon this one tofu/tea house. I don't know why, but I really had this feeling that this place would be amazing. Unfortunately each plate was 30 dollars, but the lady said she would let us all split one dish. So that's what we did. This place was seriously, perhaps the highlight of the trip for me. It was so authentically Japanese. We were in a very traditional Japanese room, with the sliding doors, Japanese floors, and we were surrounded by a small, elegant, beautiful garden. All the walls on two sides were class too, so you could see everything outside around you. They served a lot of delicious tofu, which I coming to enjoy more and more as I eat it. I felt like even though we were only in our 2nd day their, my trip was already complete after that dining experience.

Then as we headed out to the next place, we saw some Geisha walking down the street. Later on we saw some other people taking a picture of them, so I asked if I could take a picture too, and they kindly agreed.

Next we saw many many different temples and historical tourist spots including Kodaiji, Chion-in, Shoren-in, and Nanzenji. All of these places were unique in their own ways, and they all provided some great picture taking. We also went on something called the Philosopher's walk, which is basically a walk through some very peaceful, calm neighborhoods in Kyoto. That path took us to Ginkakuji, which was actually under repairs at the time, but was still really great to go to. Probably the coolest thing about this place was all the different kinds of moss that grew there. Literally, they had a little spot that had samples of all the most that was growing there, there must have been at least 50 different types. It was a beautiful place, and many of these places have something called Zen Gardens there as well. They're basically small rocks arranged in very artistic, and neat designs. I'm not sure the purpose of them, and how they're kept in such perfect order, but they look very neat. The other cool thing that I really loved about many of these places was when were able to go inside the building and houses. The rooms were always so beautiful. So many of these places reminded me of all the Japanese films I've watched over the years, and it was like I was experiencing historical Japan for myself.

As night fell, we decided to go to an Onsen. An Onsen is a Japanese spa. I've been to many spas in Korea too. Here in Korea, they're called Jimjillbangs. We asked one lady at our hostel to give us a good place to go to, and she recommended this Onsen that was a half hour train ride outside of Kyoto. It seemed a little risky, but we went for it. When we got off the train, there was no one there. It was in the middle of a foresty area, and we had no idea where this spa was. There was also no one working at the train station, so we had no one to help us with directions. Then out of the blue, a man walks into the train station, asking us if we were looking to go to this spa.
We said we were, and he told us that he had a van and would drive us there. Then he added that it would be free. It was perfect timing. It turns out that this place is hard to get to, and so they offer free shuttle service to the spa, or else no one would probably ever get there. When we got there, we were decided to go with the deluxe package, which included the indoor, and OUTDOOR spa. The outdoor spa was another one of the quintessential Japanese experiences we had. We were in the middle of a forest, at night, in a wooden spa, in probably 40 degree weather, looking up at the stars. It was awesome. They also gave us Kimono type robes to wear at the spa as well.

After the spa, we came back into Kyoto, and went to the college, hip part of the city where we ate dinner.

That was a definitely a full day, but we still had one more full day ahead of us. The next day, after filling up with energy on the breakfast buffet, we were off to one of the most popular sights in Kyoto. Kinkaku-ji, otherwise known as the "Golden Pavilion." Unfortunately, it was like a 30-40 minute bus ride to get there, but it was beautiful. The Pavilion was painted in bright gold, and it was situated in the middle of a small pond. After that we walked to Ryoan-ji because it supposedly had one of the most impressive Zen Gardens in Japan, but the place was closed for one month. So we went to Ninnaji which was right next to it, and that place was really cool. They another big indoor walking area of some very traditional houses that was really impressive. Then, we took a bus back to the center of Kyoto where we got to see Nijo Castle. This castle had the moat and everything. It was very big, with many impressive building and gardens. Unfortunately, the main building where we got to go inside, we weren't aloud to take pictures. That was one of the best parts of the trip for me, but I couldn't take any photos to show you guys unfortunately. They showed how the Shoguns at the time lived, and where they conducted all of their meetings. It was another big movie moment for me. One interesting thing about the castle was that it had something called "Nightingale floors" which squeaked loudly as you walked on them. They were built this way so that if anyone came to assassinate the Shogun, he would be heard from the second he stepped into the building.

Next we headed off to a place a little outside of Kyoto's city limits, which had a lot of amazing sights. First, we went to a place called Tenryu-Ji, which had an amazing garden in it. Then we went to the Bamboo Forest, which was amazing. On the other side of the Bamboo Forest, was a house that was built by an old silent film actor. The place was called Okochi Sanso. He had these amazing walkways, gardens, and his house overlooked the moutains and a river down below. It was an amazing place, and then, at the end, you got to go in one of the building and drink tea.

After that, we took a walk around the neighborhoods in the area, just soaking in the local scenary. Then we went to a river near where we were, and there was a moutain trail on the one side where we took a 45 minute hike along the river. Then, we headed back to the city, where we ate Sushi at one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants. It was so good. Then we went to a place called Pontochoto, which is a very narrow alley street that was kept to look very traditional Japanese. All of the restaurants and cafes were really expensive, and we were all running low on money, so we just walked around. Then we went to Gion, which was another traditional place where many Geisha walk around, but we didn't see any. It was really interesting at night to see all of the streets with traditional houses. Then we finally got back to our hostel, and it was off the to the train station the next morning to go back to the airport.

So that's basically most of what we did. It was a great trip! Here's a slideshow of some of the pictures I took (I took around 600, so I had to choose only a couple for the slideshow.) It goes in the same order as what I wrote about, so you can go back if you want and read everything again and follow along with the slideshow^_^(for those of you who are really interested:)) You might want to pause the slideshow too at times, because I wanted to make it short, so the pictures only last a second or two each. I hope you enjoy!