One thing I noticed about Japan is that if it’s in anime and it’s not obviously fictional, then it’s true. That is to say, I didn’t notice any giant robots or invading aliens while I was there, but the streets, towns, people, trains, everything is just like I’ve seen. I guess that kind of goes without saying, really – naturally you’d base the realistic bits on real life. It’s just that I don’t really recall any Australian productions in which people behave like they do in real life – unless it’s just that I’m more used to it and can spot the subtle differences.

Some advice to those also planning a trip:

• Absolute fluency in Japanese would help, but isn’t exactly vital. A lot of the guidebooks will tell you this, I guess, but we managed to get through with my slight knowledge, my phrasebook, and a willingness to point and hope when it came to restaurant menus. While we’re on that subject, buy a phrasebook.
• On a similar note, I found it extremely helpful to be able to read at least the two syllabaries – katakana and hiragana. Beyond the numbers and major place names, kanji is going to take way too long to learn, but at least learn the kana.
• Don’t be afraid to ask directions. I can’t help but wonder if we might have saved ourselves a thousand yen on the first night if we’d just asked someone what train to get to Machida.
• Buy a Japan Rail pass, especially if you’re going to be doing a lot of long-distance travel. Remember, you need to buy it before you get to Japan, as it’s only available to foreigners, not to locals. Like I’ve said before, we spent 45,100 yen on the passes, but would have spent 73,000 yen if we’d not bought them – most of that was on shinkansen trips. Not only that, but it also gives you a lot of freedom, to be able to hop on and off wherever.
• For places where you can’t use the JR pass (or if it won’t be good value for money for you) then get a Suica card, or the local equivalent (Icoca or Toica, depending on where you are). It removes all the hassle from buying tickets.
• For places where you can’t use the JR pass or the Suica card, research combo tickets or day passes before you arrive in a city. There were two occasions where we only discovered the existence of a pass after we’d left the place where we could buy one.
• Hyperdia is a superb website for train directions. Not only does it include all JR trains and private-line trains – including trams and cable-cars – it also lets you search for only JR-line results, and also allows you to exclude the Nozomi routes from results (as the Nozomi is the only JR train the JR pass can’t be used on). Only down side: it doesn’t include buses.
• Stock up on 100-yen coins. Seriously, all the coin lockers and washing machines require them. Some laundromat soap dispensers also require 10-yen coins, but we only saw them at two of the hotels we stayed at. Sometimes there’ll be a change machine nearby, but they tend to only take 1000-yen notes. For that matter, most vending machines that took notes would only take 1000-yen notes.
• On a similar note, 1-yen coins are the Japanese equivalent of our five cent coins – functionally worthless.
• To give an idea of how much cash might be needed, I brought in 90,675 yen, and now have 22,432 yen. We were there for fifteen full days, so that comes out to an average of just over 4500 yen per day. Note that this doesn’t include hotels – James paid by credit card – or the rail passes, which we paid for before we left.
• Slip-on shoes are practically essential – Japan has always had a culture of taking your shoes off when you go inside, and though most of the places we visited had adopted the Western habit of letting you leave your shoes on, many places still expected us to take them off. There’s a lot of walking involved, though, so you’re probably best avoiding sandals, unless they’re comfortable.
• Photos taken: around eight thousand between us. 4400 for me. Someday I’ll actually look through them for the good ones.

I’m sure I had more ponderments and musings than that, but nothing seems to be springing to mind. Final thoughts, then. Would I go again? Yes. Unquestionably. Would I go again in August? Nooo. To have another stab at Fuji? … Maybe.

Akihabara was like a multi block sized mix-mash of computer fair, swap meet, Jay Car, manga, games and maids. We started walking down some narrow alleys between stalls, some had new GPS units, and UHF radios, there were a wide variety of antennas and cables, lots of circuity components such as capacitors, LEDs, ICs and project boxes. I found stores selling replacement valves for amplifiers and old radios alongside big chain outlets selling everything from air conditioners, TVs to rice cookers.

In between these stores they have game plazas, these are big centres that on ground floor have lots of different games of skill to win Manga and Anime related merchandise. Things such as figurines, plush toys, towels, etc, but some even had things like pretzels. The games were mostly the 2 button crane type we are familiar with, although often using a different technique. So instead of picking something up you move a rod to push a button and slide something out.

Above these skill games are big banks of arcade style games, these are the serious sit down with a joystick and button pad type. The two main types I saw were the 1 on 1 street fighter style, and the Galaga space ship style, although I didn’t go to far in. The noise level was deafening, and most of the machines had ashtrays as smoking is allowed, so the smell was pretty bad.

I spent most of my time wondering into the different shops to see the types of cameras on display (Sony is finally releasing a MSPD / SDHC one), what souvenirs were available and other odd things were on sale. There was an interesting weapons store that sold all types of Tasers and pellet guns. Stuff you would never see in Australia (except maybe on Border Security as it is confiscated).

For lunch I tried a small store that specialised in Beef. Like our Ramen earlier in our trip at Machida you ordered by using a vending machine that gave out tickets. I ordered a combination that started with a nice bowl of salad, a bowl of corm soup and finally a hot plate that had small pieces of beef surrounding some rice. The beef was uncooked and you cooked it yourself on the sizzling plate. Very tasty and it had a nice infusion of flavours that I believe came from marinating the meat.

I did end up purchasing a Kyocera (thought they just made printers) ceramic knife here, as they are much cheaper than Aus and I’ve been wanting to try one for a while. This ended up causing me some hilarity after the long flight and we were back at the Gold Coast. We wanted to visit the Jet Star lounge we had pre-paid for but it was on the other side of security screening. We still had 2 hours until check-in opened so we still had out checked luggage with us. Not thinking about it we unloaded all our gear, took our laptops out of bags and placed on trays, walked through machines and had the internal YES when you don’t set of the metal detector. I get though ready to go on and the security guard says “Sir is this your bag?”… “It has a giant knife in it”, whoops.

Both Joel and I had all our non carry-on items in the bags (pocket knives, kitchen knives, scissors, etc), which of course are a big no-no in the security area. We had to go back, repackage our bags and wait in the main lobby until check-in opened for our flight. Luckily there was WiFi so Joel could write his post, but my laptop’s WiFi played up again.

The flight back was OK and I got some partial sleep but not enough to make up for only 5 hours the night before (a GPS tracker problem that kept taking longer then expected. I’d tagged the photos without checking, and it placed quite a few of our Tokyo photos in the East China Sea. Once again problems with GPS in cities)

Back home now and need to clean-up the rest of my photos, unpack all my bags, organise souvenirs, etc.

It has been a great trip, seeing some amazing sights and visiting interesting places.

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So, we’re on the way home. Boo. Sitting in the Gold Coast Airport concourse at the moment because we can’t get into the lounge yet – but more on that later. Yesterday, we had breakfast at the hotel (same as the day before, but with tomato soup instead of corn) and then we checked out and headed to Tokyo station. Since we’d have to catch the Narita Express from there, we stashed our luggage in a locker and booked tickets. Then we hopped onto the Yamanote loop line to Akihabara.

Akihabara is the location of Electric Town, a huge market with all sorts of electrical bits and pieces and gadgets and whatchumacallits and thingamajigs. It’s also been somewhat adopted by the otaku crowd, so it’s also full of all sorts of anime and manga shops – including whole doujinshi shops (doujinshi are self-published manga, which are quite often… adult-themed fan works based on other anime and manga series, though not always) – game shops, and maid cafes (food places where the waitresses are dressed as maids, and other costumes).

James and I browsed around for a while. James was content to browse around all day, though, but I still wanted to see a couple of sights, so we’d arranged a meeting place while at Tokyo station just for such an eventuality – I left James with clear instructions on how to get back, and headed to the train station on my own. The Yamanote loop line passes through a lot of the big areas in Tokyo that could be worth visiting – Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Shinjuku, et cetera. My guidebook advised me to pass on Ikebukuro if I was short on time, so I headed on to Shinjuku.

Shinjuku is the location of the largest collection of skyscrapers in Tokyo – one of the most recognisable is the twin-towered Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. I headed there down a long underground tunnel from the station – a shade disgruntled that the moving walkway alongside the tunnel seemed to be closed. When I got to the concourse at the foot of the towers, I discovered another dance festival going on. I didn’t watch for long – there wasn’t really much shade, and the stage had a handrail running around it right at the dancers’ face level, making it rather unphotogenic. Instead I decided to visit the observation deck at the top of one of the towers – picking the North one because it was closer. The view was quite impressive, but the floor was also quite full of souvenir shops and cafes.

My next intended location – Meiji Shrine – didn’t look too far away from the observation deck, so I decided to walk there instead of going back to the train station. On the way I passed through Shibuya Park. It was quite an impressive park. Really, the word “park” here conveys some sort of idea of a grassy expanse, maybe a swing set or exercise area. In Japan, koen (meaning “park”) is really something closer to… a nature reserve, maybe. Only with a swing set or an exercise area. There were people sitting all over the park looking way too hot – and some others in blindfolds being lead around by the hand; probably some sort of trust exercise.

I headed south. It was quite an interesting walk – knots of elevated roadways all over the place, bits of scenery – and eventually reached Meiji Shrine. It was named in honour of the Meiji Emperor (after whom the Meiji restoration is named), who died in 1912. It’s also set inside a huge park. I happened to see a traditional shinto wedding taking place (as my guidebook suggested I might) – I snapped a few photos, but I had to head on. Since the walk had taken me a little longer than I’d anticipated, I decided to catch the train to the next stop, Shibuya, rather than keep waking.

Shibuya is a big shopping neighbourhood. It contains probably the world’s most famous intersection – officially known as “Hachiko square” or “the intersection under Shibuya station”, it’s more colloquially known as The Scramble. It’s a four-way intersection, and when the pedestrian lights go green, you can cross in every direction – and everyone does. The game “The World Ends With You” (which I have for my DS) is exclusively set in the Shibuya area, so I kinda felt like I already knew my way around.

I also went to see the Hachiko statue. Hachiko was a dog owned by a man named Professor Ueno in the mid 1920s – every day, the dog would come to the station to meet him. One day in May 1925, though, the Professor suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died while at work. The dog, however, continued to come to the station every day for the next nine years, until the dog died itself. It became something of a national symbol, and now has a bronze statue in his honour. There also seem to be little community buses running around named Hachiko as well.

Anyway, I stopped for lunch at Starbucks in a nearby building, because I wanted to eat somewhere overlooking the scramble, and it’s the only place I could see from the street. I had ham and cheese on a corn roll, and a rather dry cinnamon scroll. I also had a browse through the building itself – the top floor has a huge manga shop, and even has an English section. Fun to wander through, but I didn’t buy anything.

I was running a bit short on time by this point, so I headed back to Akihabara to buy a t-shirt I’d seen with James earlier. I arrived at Akihabara station with fifteen minutes until the appointed time to meet James at Tokyo station, which I thought would be enough time, but I failed to take into account how slow crowds move. Ah well, I was only  five minutes late in the end. I got my t-shirt too. James and I wandered through the maze-like station to get our luggage from the lockers, and headed to the platform for the Narita Express. We wound up waiting for about forty-five minutes – that’s the downside of getting your tickets ahead of time, but eventually we were on the train back to the airport.

We arrived at the airport and checked in. We were both feeling a bit peckish, and weren’t sure if we’d be served dinner on the plane, so we went to a sushi train – we had sushi the other night, but we hadn’t tried a sushi train yet. I was under the impression we were just getting something to tide us over for dinner, but James kept snatching plates off the conveyor belt, even after I said I was full. So we ate first dinner at 6:30pm Tokyo time, then were served dinner again on the plane at about 9:30pm. Then we were served breakfast just seven hours later so we could fit it in before breakfast, at about 4:30 Tokyo time, or 5:30 Gold Coast time. Now it’s 9am Gold Coast time, we’re in the JetStar lounge, which has a buffet breakfast, and James is eating even more. After three meals in the last fourteen hours or so, I’m not hungry at all, but I will admit some of it looks tempting…

In any case, we landed (about half an hour ahead of schedule) and got through customs fine, though I didn’t sleep terribly well on the flight. Lovely sunrise, though – our second in as many fortnights. We tried to get into the departure area again so we could sit in the JetStar lounge, but we couldn’t check our suitcases in until two hours before the flight (an hour away) and we couldn’t take our suitcases through security because we’d carefully put our knives in them so we wouldn’t be taking them through security. It’s at this point I discovered both of the rubber earpieces from my iPod earphones were missing – which is odd because they never both fall off at the same time, and this is the first time I’d taken my iPod out of my pocket (which is what usually makes them come off) since I’d spent most of the flight wearing it. They weren’t anywhere to be seen, so I guess no iPod for me on this second flight.

Ah well. We’re waiting for our second flight now. Probably boarding in an hour. Until then I might go an investigate getting me some of those pancakes James is eating.

Final count on JR Pass: 73,850 yen, and it cost us just 45,100. James spent a shade less – 73,370 yen. Definitely value for money there.

All is good and we got through customs just fine. James spent the day in Akihabara Electric Town, but I wanted to see a few more sights, so I went my own way. Met up again on time and got to the airport without a hitch.

Sounds like the flight is about to board, so I will sign off.

Today’s photo count: a measly hundred and ten.

After our busy pace and late nights we had a nice sleep in this morning …. sort of. My phones alarm decided that the reminder that we fly home tomorrow should go off at 6am, so I had to climb out of the top bunk to turn it off. My wakeup alarm then went off a 7:30am, 9, 9:10, 9:15, 9:30, 10am; each time requiring me to climb out of bed and down the ladder to reach it. Not happy.

We had our first breakfast at the hotel, although not included in accommodation price it is only 315¥, and includes all the toast, tea, coffee and soup we want. We had several slices of toast and looked around for the soup but couldn’t find any. After asking the receptionist he came across and made some out the back before bringing it out to the coffee heater. Soup is of the powdered chicken and corn variety, but does contain some milk so we are finally getting some calcium.

After breakfast we walked the few blocks from the Hotel to the Imperial Palace gardens. This is part of the old Edo castle that has been turned into a park. So unlike other castles we visited its primary purpose has changed from a memorial to public space. It still has some of the old buildings and the amazing stone walls, but the rest is paths, gardens and playing fields. It is also attached to the part that is the imperial residence, where the emperor’s family resides, so areas are restricted and there is a higher than usual police presence.

For some reason on entry you are issued a free little plastic ticket that you then return on leaving. I’m not sure if it is to limit numbers, or keep track of everyone leaving.

Imperial Garden Pond 1

Imperial Garden Pond 2

The grounds are quite nice and the view from the top of the donjon base is amazing. I always find it incredible the juxtaposition between the moat, ancient stone walls and gardens with the skyscrapers and traffic just outside. We walked around the edge of the main field (nice and shady) before entering the garden proper. This area had some nice streams, a large pond, even a small waterfall. There were different areas that focused on different type of plants, such as 14 different type of Bamboo, summer flowers, some rice growing and even symbolic trees from each prefecture controlled by the emperor.

From the gardens we walked to the train station and caught the train to Odaiba, a man-made island. Joel wanted to see the Fuji TV station and travel on the interesting train / monorail / truck. The vehicle has large rubber wheels like a truck and moves on a concrete track above the road similar to monorail with power running along the side. There is no driver so you can see out both ends and it does a 270 loop on an incline to cross the bridge.

At Odaiba we decided to have lunch at a Mexican buffet. We both had a few freshly cooked tortillas, some salad and made our own melon floats (otherwise known as ice cream and melon Fanta). The food was great, but we both had a lot to eat, so we haven’t eaten anything since.

After lunch we walked along outside the building to try to get a good view of the Fuji TV building and discovered a miniature Statue of Liberty, and if you took the photo at the right angle there were twin towers in the background

Temple Service 1

Back on the move we travelled towards Tokyo Tower. We went to the nearest JR line and on the way to the tower walked through a Buddhist temple. We entered just before the monk moved a barrier across gateway, so we thought we wouldn’t have much time. We wondered up to the main temple just as a big bell rang throughout the grounds. We entered the building and discovered that they were just about to start the 5pm service. We decided to stay and watch.

Temple Service 2

The monks entered in robes in a continuous line, bowing when they crossed the centre of the temple and going back and forth following the person in front. I tried to take some photos, but I deliberately did not use flash and I did so surreptitiously so as to not disturb anyone, however due to the low light all these turned out blurry (I checked and there was no warning about not taking photos). I managed to get some when everyone was stationary later in the service.
The service mainly consisted of chanting by the monks and some amazing percussion. They had a big inverted bell that when struck made a long continuous tone that seemed to reverberate for several minutes. Overall I found it quite interesting to observe.

After the service was over the monks started to close the doors of the temple so we headed out and on to Tokyo Tower. We bought our ticket and quickly made it up the tower in a lift jammed with many others; it had transparent panels on the sides so we could see out after it left the base building. When we arrived at the top the sun was still setting, so we could still see the city in the light and also observe most of the sunset. We wondered around taking pictures, and I discovered the low light setting on my camera works too well. It lightens all the sunset shots so they nearly look like daylight, even the night time shots often seemed to still have a lit sky. We stayed up the tower for around 90min taking pictures as it got darker, often with motion blur or the lights reflected from inside the tower.

Tower from Base

By this stage my feet were getting a bit sore, as I was wearing sandals today, they are great for short distances especially in this hot weather, but do not have the arch support for the long walks we were doing.

We headed back towards the JR line to head back to the hotel. Unfortunately Joel mixed up Ochanomizu with Okachimachi, so when we got off the train we were at the wrong station and then started walking in the wrong direction. After we reached the Yushima subway line Joel double checked the map and realised we would have to walk back to the JR station to get back to the right train. We made it to the correct station then had another long walk to actually make it back to the hotel. I am planning on more strongly suggesting using subways in the future, it may cost us more than using our JR Pass, but it saves us walking much longer distance.

On a side note, one peculiarity with using a GPS in the city is it often gets incorrect data. A GPS calculates your location based on the differences in time between the signals it receives from satellites in different locations. When the signal has bounced off a few buildings before been received it can be a bit out of whack. Today it showed we had travelled 1219 kM, reached a speed of 400 kM while walking on foot and went to altitudes of 65m, -13m and 3093m. I try to clean up some of the crazy points before posting, but I imagine the tracks from today will look a bit weird. This also affects our photos that use these tracks for Geotagging.

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Today, we travelled around Tokyo. We decided to sleep in this morning and have a late breakfast, because we didn’t really have any definite plans for things to see, and we thought we needed the sleep. Also, breakfast runs until 11. It’s toast with margarine and jam, and soup, but as much of them as you wanted. Tea and coffee too. We got down there at ten. We made some plans over breakfast – we’d go visit the Imperial Palace first, because it’s within walking distance of the hotel, then go visit Odaiba, then be at Tokyo Tower for sunset. It was noon by the time we left the hotel – talk about a late start.

It was quite warm walking through the streets in the morning. We passed a few schools, and a whole network of elevated expressways, before arriving at the Imperial Palace. Since the Palace itself is actually in use at the moment, we can’t actually access it – it’s the residence of the Emperor and his family, after all – but the Eastern gardens are free to enter pretty much the entire year. They’ve got some of the fortifications of the original Edo Castle (on which the Imperial Palace was built) and a few of the original buildings still standing. Plus they’ve got an actual garden – James thought it was somewhat reminiscent of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney.

With that done, we walked over to Tokyo Station (hah, you see what we did? We walked from our hotel to Tokyo Station, whicch took us two trains last night) to catch the train to Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island located in Tokyo Bay. There were some thing worth seeing over there, including the Fuji TV Station, and a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The way to get there is the Yurikamome line, a sort of automated rail-guided bus… not really sure how to describe it. It’s sort of like a monorail, but it’s not a monorail because it runs on wheels; the rail just does the steering. The track does this huge two-seventy degree loop to gain altitude, then runs along under the Rainbow Bridge (a pretty well-known landmark) to Odaiba.

Once there, it became rapidly clear to me that just as Tempozan was Osaka’s equivalent of Darling Harbour, Odaiba is Tokyo’s. It even used to be a big shipping port. Getting off the bus-train-monorail thing, we encountered a big sort of shopping arcade thing, and a big sign promoting an indoor fun park called Joypolis, owned by Sega… rather like the old Sega thing at Darling Harbour. We wandered around there for a bit looking for lunch, and wound up at a sort of all-you-can eat tortilla-and-salad bar thing… with Japanese bits too. It was quite tasty, and not too shabby for just a thousand yen.

We wandered down the foreshore and grabbed a few photos, then hopped back on the train-thing to get to Tokyo Tower. The route from the nearest JR station passed Zojoji Temple, so we decided to visit there on the way – a sort of trip from old to new. We managed to squeeze in right before the gates shut, and entered the main temple just in time to see a ceremony start. It was about half an hour of chanting assisted by assorted musical instruments, including this big cup-shaped gong thing that just resonated. It was quite something to watch, and their pitch was impeccable.

After that, we headed on to Tokyo Tower. we entered at about 5:40 – our plan was to enter before sunset (which we managed, just) and stay there until it got dark, so we could see both the city in daylight and in full glow under its own power. It was a pretty impressive view – we only went to the first observation deck, at 150 metres above sea level and a cost of 820 yen (the second observation deck, at 250 metres, cost another 600 yen and involved a 45-minute wait). Trouble is, it was quite full, and contained large numbers of small and noisy children. There were windows in the floor of the lower level you could see right down the tower, but it was always covered with children either crawling all over it, or attempting to smash it by jumping on it.

Anyway, we hung around there until about 7:30, then decided to head home, once it got too dark for us to get any good photos of city lights without the aid of a tripod. Also, we were getting tired of standing. Rather than get pay for a private line train back to Jinbocho, we decided to walk home from Ochanomizu, the nearest JR station to the hotel. It’d let us have a bit of a look around, too – just as Jinbocho and Kanda is a big booksellers area, Ochanomizu is a big place for musical instruments. So we headed back to the station we’d gotten off at earlier. We passed through the nearby Shiba park, which is quite thickly wooded, and quite well-lit at light – and also quite thick with cicadas. On the way, a Japanese tourist asked us in English how to find Tokyo Tower.

We headed off to the loop line platform, which we’d been using all day, and checked the route map. Yep, it went to Okachimachi Station, curiously after passing through Akihabara Station – this confused me a shade, as I didn’t think our route took us there. The astute amongst you will notice that I just said a different station’s name. I didn’t notice this. Not for some time, no. We got off at the Okachimachi station, and turned left to go south. I was a bit confused, because I didn’t see any musical instrument shops, and had been told this was an instrument mecca. When I started seeing road signs pointing to unfamiliar destinations, I was getting a little more concerned, but it wasn’t until we hit the Yushima subway station that I started to get a bit worried, as it’s meant to be to the north of the station I thought we’d gotten off at, and I was certain we were heading south. I decided to head back to the station and start over. It wasn’t until I saw a sign pointing to Ueno JR station – 930 metres that-a-way – that things finally twigged. I’d taken us to the wrong stop – the stop we wanted is one stop back south and one stop west.

Getting off at Ochanomizu the second time around, I was much relieved to be surrounded by musical instrument shops, which gradually turned into bookshops as we neared the hotel. We didn’t really need dinner, as we’d had so much lunch.

Still, only one navigation error in two whole weeks ain’t too bad. The confusion on our first night wasn’t my fault, honest.

Tomorrow’s our last day, aww. Tonight we’re going to pack for the plane – making sure our Swiss Army knives and things are in the right back. Tomorrow we’re going to stick our luggage in a locker in Tokyo Station, then visit places around the loop line. Then it’s back to Tokyo Station in the late afternoon to grab our luggage and hop onto the Narita Express for the airport.

Today’s photo count: Two hundred and eighty-three.

Today, we packed up and moved out of our hotel in Kyoto, and headed to the train station to find a locker to stash our luggage in. We caught a bus to the station – we’d remembered to buy tickets yesterday. Unlike in Hiroshima and Miyajima, where it was convenient to leave our luggage at the hotel and come back later, in this case we wouldn’t be passing anywhere near the hotel on the way to the station, so this time we took it with us. We wanted to see one last temple and shrine in Kyoto before we headed back to Tokyo in the afternoon. We managed to find a locker easily, and booked our tickets (so we wouldn’t have to do it later), though the ticket man was a little surprised we were booking it so far in the future. While we were there, we had a bit of a wander round the station. One side of the main concourse has a huge slope of stairs and escalators going up eleven storeys to a garden on the roof. There’s even an elevated walkway that goes right over the concourse to the other side, but we couldn’t work out how to get there.

Our first destination today was the Kiyomizu Temple in the Higashiyama (East Hills) area, the opposite extreme in Kyoto from the Arashiyama area we’d visited yesterday. Literally, the temple was the eastern-most building in the area we were in. The Kyoto bus map told us we could catch either the 100 or the 206 routes, but while we were lining up for the 100 bus, an old man came over and told us the 206 bus would probably be the better option. While on the bus, a local who’d been living in America for a while asked to borrow my map (she hadn’t been back long) then told us the best place to get off for the temple. Locals seem really nice in Kyoto.

We got off at the appropriate stop. I wanted to visit this temple because it has got a spectacular view over most of Kyoto, from the dance stage that juts out from the main building. It was quite a slog up the hill from the bus stop, but the view from the top really was spectacular. I have to admit I did find the building itself a shade underwhelming, but the view and surroundings were great. We looked around for a while, then headed back down the hill. The hill to and from the bus stop is lined on both sides with shops – food shops, souvenir shops, even shops that sell nothing but fans. In some places, the air-conditioning from the shops was so powerful that it was cool even in the middle of the narrow street. I bought a choco-banana Japanese-style crepe, and James decided to follow suit with a sweet-bean paste one. In Japan they basically fill half the crepe with food, fold it in half then roll it into a sort of wedge – I’ve been wanting to try one for a while. I found it quite tasty.

Crepes finished, we hopped back onto the bus for Kyoto Station. Our next destination was the Fushimi Inari shrine. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s the head shrine for some thirty thousand Inari shrines throughout Japan. Inari is a harvest god, represented by fox spirits. I mainly wanted to visit because Inari shrines typically have long lines of red tori gates, and I’d heard Fushimi had something like four kilometres of tori-lined paths. We could use a JR train to get there – a JR station (ironically called “Inari”) is positioned literally right at the shrine’s entrance.

As we headed in, the shrine building at the entryway was swathed in scaffolding and construction screens, which had us a bit worried, but it turned out it was just the building at the front. Once we were past it, the rest of the shrine complex was untouched. We just managed to catch the end of some sort of ritual in the shrine near the start, then we headed off to see the tori gate paths. They were every bit as impressive as I’d hoped – all it really needed to make it ideal was a bit less heat and humidity, and a bit more eerie misty atmosphere. We wandered through the paths for a while, until we realised we were starting to hike up a mountain. At which point we headed down and made our way back to Kyoto Station. We had lunch at a pasta place there – it was kind of interesting seeing the Japanese-style pasta sauces and toppings, but I wound up getting carbonara with a poached egg on top. Forgotten what James had.

We retrieved our luggage from the locker room and sat in the waiting room for an hour. The trouble with booking our tickets first thing was that not only did it force us to make sure we got back before a certain time, it also meant we had to kill time if we were done sooner. Whoops. Eventually the time came, and we hopped on the train. The trip all the way back to Tokyo was going to be two hours forty minutes on the shinkansen – our longest shinkansen ride so far, and most likely our last this trip. It was pretty empty when we got on, but filled up over the course of the trip. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Fuji-san – it ought to be visible from the shinkansen – but we were sitting on the wrong side of the train, and good ol’ Rayleigh scattering obscured most of the more distant mountains. Plus, the clouds rolled in at one point, I wasn’t even sure when I should be looking out the window, and how far I can expect to see it from. So, no Fuji-san sighting.

We made it to Tokyo Station, and transferred to other trains to get to our hotel. Our train-directions-finder-website suggested we change to a JR local train and go one stop down the line, then change to a private subway and go two stops up the line. We arrived at our hotel fine, but I caught sight of a map on the wall, and it looks like Tokyo Station is actually within walking distance of the hotel. Granted, it’s probably an unladen walking distance, not a walking-with-suitcases distance, but still…

We’re in the Sakura Hotel in Jinbocho – our room is up on the fifth floor. All the twin rooms here have bunk beds, but one wall of our room is slanted under the roof – makes me wonder what the sixth (and top) floor looks like. This is very much a backpackers’ hostel. There’s no internet in the room, though apparently we can pick up wireless in the lobby, so I’ll be heading down there to post this. They gave us a pack to plug in to get internet in the room, but some part of it didn’t work; we’ve no idea which. We headed out to get dinner. Jinbocho is apparently a big bookshop area. We did see a couple of bookshops while wandering to find a place to eat. Might even be worth browsing a few, if they weren’t all in Japanese. =P We wound up getting sushi for dinner, cause we haven’t had any of that yet.

Tomorrow’s plan currently stands at visiting the Imperial Palace and Tokyo Tower, but that’s just not going to fill a day. James wants to visit Akihabara (the location of Electric Town) and a few other areas look good, like Shinjuku and Shibuya, but we’re just not sure what to do to fill tomorrow and Sunday. We’re off to the airport for home on Sunday evening, aww.

In any case, I’m a bit sleepy, so off to bed. Only two more nights here…

Today’s photo count: two hundred and twenty-one.

Kyoto: Home of Astro Boy

After another nice Japanese breakfast, where Joel didn’t even eat his fish, we packed up our luggage and caught the bus to Kyoto station. We stored our bags and excess gear in a locker, and booked our Shinkansen ticket on the 3:29pm to Tokyo before catching the bus to Kiyomizu Temple.

The temple has great views over the city and you can easily see the Kyoto tower from the veranda. It has some nice fountains, but personally I didn’t find it as impressive as some of the other temples we have visited. Of interest was the long line to take a drink from a fountain that is supposed to have therapeutic properties.

Tori Gate tunnel

Tori Gates on Grave

From Kiyomizu we went by bus back to Kyoto station and then used our JR passes to catch a train to Inari to visit the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This shrine is renowned for its Tori gates, literally thousands of them. They make tunnels that go up the mountain to a shrine at the top; there are massive ones at the entrance and small ones placed on tombs in the graveyard.

When we arrived discovered the main temple was undergoing restoration, but since we came to see the Tori gates this didn’t matter so much. We also arrived towards the end of some type of blessing ceremony, with shrine maidens playing different instruments and dancing with bells. Unfortunately this performance had a special no photography sign and a guard enforcing it, as another tourist discovered.

The Tori gates were as numerous as expected, we started walking up the path and we were just surrounded by the gates. We walked about half way up the mountain, but the total walk was around 4km and we had to head back due to time constraints.

James Pasta

Joel Pasta

Back at Kyoto station we had some spaghetti for lunch. I had mine with bacon and mustard leaves, while Joel had egg with carbonara. We had given ourselves too much leeway with the time, so rested for around 40 min in the nice cool AC waiting room.

The Shinkansen trip was nice, although a bit sad as this will be our last trip on them. To get to Narita on Sunday we will take the N’EX which although similar to Shinkansen is a different system. Also the windows were a bit dirty on the outside so photos were a bit smudged.

After arriving at Tokyo we took the local line 1 stop to Yurakucho to transfer to the private Tokyo Subway line to get to Jimbocho, where our accommodation at the Sakura Hotel is located.

Our twin room at the Sakura is a bunk bed. I choose the top bunk which I quickly regretted. I am used to lower bunks being very low and hitting my head, but here the bottom bunk is quite spacious. The top bunk will require extra effort to get into, is higher thus warmer, and does not have as easy to access power. On the upside I get to use the desk as I can’t sit and type on the bed like Joel can. The room itself is quite small (this is budget accommodation) and the amenities are shared in a central area of the rooms on this floor.

There is WiFi internet in the café on the ground floor, but it doesn’t reach to us up here on 5^th. There is also supposed to be a VDSL modem to allow internet access in the room, but we could not get it to work. I tried 3 different modems, but it could also be the long phone line or the phone itself. This just means to post blog updates we will need to go down to the café, also no Skype for us.

For dinner we went to a Sushi restaurant and had a set 9 item menu. 8 pieces of sushi and a bowl of Miso soup, the pieces were quite interesting and had a nice variety of flavours. We had some egg, salmon, squid and octopus that we could identify and some other unknown types of fish.

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Today, we explored bits of Kyoto. Specifically, bits in the north-eastern quarter. Discovered at 6am that the paper panel in the ceiling of our bedroom, behind the light, is a skylight. We started with breakfast in the hotel – Japanese style. Apparently the Japanese believe that to be healthy, you need to eat thirty different things a day, even if it’s only a little bit of each. This is why the meals here are like a thousand small bowls of a little bit each. I found some of them off-putting – even nauseating for a couple, like the cold brick of tofu – but managed to get most of it down. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we’re the only two guests in the hotel at the moment. The only other people I’ve seen here are the two who work here, and there’s never any change in the number of slippers (or shoes) in the entryway. It’s quite a nice hotel, though.

Breakfast and planning done, we headed out into the city. Kyoto is literally loaded with temples and shrines – they’re literally everywhere. Having spent over a thousand years as the capital of Japan, pretty much every sect and branch of Buddhism and Shintoism have felt the need to set up shop here. We’ve decided to visit just a few of them – if we tried to visit them all, we’d require another two weeks here. Or more. Today we decided on Nijo Castle in central Kyoto, Tenryuu-ji Temple in Arashiyama to the west, and Kinkaku-ji Temple and Kitano Tenman-gu Shrine in the north-west.

Where Tokyo had JR trains, Osaka had the subway and Hiroshima had the Hiroden network, Kyoto has buses. Sure, like all the other cities, there are a few JR lines running here and there, and it does have its own subway network – it’s even still got a tram line or two still running, even if most of the trams have been sold to Hiroshima – but the buses here go literally everywhere. While researching how we’d get to places last night, we basically discovered we can either spend our day changing from private train line to private train line to private tram line, or we could use the buses. The bus map is literally a solid gridwork of buses going basically everywhere, with the exception of the bits of Kyoto south of the JR Shinkansen station.

Pricing is extremely simple too. Within a zone covering most of Kyoto, all bus fares cost 220 yen, regardless of how far you go. For the remaining very small minority of stops, it costs more depending on how far you go. Even better, we could buy a day pass for 500 yen that’d give us free travel on all buses inside the zone, and reduced tickets on buses outside the zone. The bus map even had a box on the back explaining how to use it. The one confusing aspect is this: Kyoto has two bus companies, one called “Kyoto City Bus” with green-and-white livery, which we could use the day pass for, and the other called “Kyoto Bus” with red-and-white livery, which we could not. They even share some of the same route numbers.

Unfortunately, like with the two-day pass in Hiroshima, we only discovered the existence of the pass after we were already at the hotel, and we could only buy it at Kyoto station, which we’d left behind soon after we arrived. In this case, we were even two stops away on the subway. We headed to the nearest major bus stop to see if we could buy it there, but wound up catching a bus back to Kyoto station. Wish we’d known about it when we were at Kyoto station the first time – it was a bit of a waste of 220 yen. Possibly we could have bought it in the nearest subway station, but we’re not sure. We were rushing to catch the bus that was at the stop, when the door closed while we were a few metres away. Now, on Sydney buses you can knock on the door and the driver will sometimes open it – that doesn’t work here, as here you board the bus from the back door and leave from the front. Suddenly a little old lady ran up and hit a little button next to the back door – which caused the driver to stop the bus and open the door again. We thought she was also rushing to catch the bus, but then she smiled at us and went on her merry way. We bowed and thanked her profusely, and got on the bus, having learnt something new about the kindness of random strangers, and how to catch buses in Kyoto.

In any case, we got to Kyoto Station. With our ticket bought and route map in hand, we headed off to catch a bus for Nijo Castle. (Mind you, the route map itself is pretty impressive. It’s even got directions on the back for which buses to catch in order to get from one major location to another.) While we were there, we even snapped photos of Kyoto Tower and the Kyoto Station building itself – we’d missed both of those yesterday, since we went straight from the Shikansen platform to the subway.

James is covering specifics, I think, so I’ll try to be general. I think I’ve been specific enough so far, anyway – I’m seven paragraphs in, and I’m still only as far as about 10:30am. By this point in the day it’s already unpleasantly muggy and somewhat threatening rain, though fortunately it’s not excessively hot. The buses are pleasantly air-conditioned, though. We headed off on the bus to Nijo Castle. I still prefer the train to the bus, as train stations passing are much more obvious than bus stops, but this wasn’t too bad. All the bus stops here are named – most of them after the two crossing streets nearest the bus stop, but a few after the closest major landmark. So the bus stops to the castle go Horikawa Sanjo, Horikawa Oike, then Nijojo-mae (“Nijo Castle Bus Stop”). The next stop is announced audibly on the bus, and displayed on the screen, though it’s only displayed in Japanese. Fortunately, though we got the English bus route map, major stations also have the Japanese name displayed (also, I could recognise at least one character in the names of most of the places we were going).

But anyway, I’ve talked about the buses enough. The castle was impressive, though it had no main keep like Matsumoto or Himeji – it had burnt down after being struck by lightning in 1750, and was never rebuilt. We did get to larger single-storey Ninomaru Palace, though – it’s something I was interested in visiting, to see the Nightingale Floors. The floors there are deliberately set up so that when you walk on them, the nails rub against them, causing a tuned squeaking noise. THat way if a ninja tries to sneak up on you, you can not only hear that they’re there, but even where they are. It was kinda fun to walk around squeaking wherever I went. The door screens were quite impressive too. I found the rest of the castle pretty interesting, though admittedly not overwhelmingly so.

We headed off to Arashiyama, on the west of Kyoto. This was literally the outskirts of Kyoto – not two hundred metres away, the houses stopped and the mountains started. It was our only stop outside The Zone for our tickets, but the driver just waved us off the bus without taking any money. The scenery here was spectacular. The bus stopped right on a river bank, with the famous Togetsu-kyo bridge visible. There were people fishing in the river, and a little dam not too far upstream with a little canal to divert water for a little hydroelectric generator. I just wanted to stand and take photos all day, but we had places to be. First, we had lunch: udon (soba noodles in soup). James had oyako udon (chicken and egg) and I had niku udon (beef). I was pondering oyako don (chicken and egg on rice), but I’ve already had katsudon, and James was having oyako udon, so I decided on the beef. It was tasty.

Then we headed to Tenryuu-ji temple, mostly because it was on the way to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, which was the main reason I’d wanted to come out here today. It was quite nice and serene. It’s apparently one of the main temples of the Rinzai school of Zen – the garden there dates from the fourteenth century. The temple’s name, Tenryuu, means “heaven dragon” – in case you were wondering. We decided to also see the temple itself – it costs five hundred yen to enter just the garden, and six hundred to enter both the temple and the garden. Both are visible from each other, since one surrounds the other, but entering the temple lets you have a much closer look at the buildings. We had to take our shoes off for the temple – and as I put mine down, a huge cloud of dust blew out, reminding me why we take our shoes off to go inside – and put on some too-small slippers. It was pretty nice, and once done inside we got to put our shoes back on and have a closer look at the garden.

We left through the northern exit, into the bamboo forest. It was just as lovely there as I’d hoped, though the rapidly darkening clouds and overhanging bamboo made it quite hard to take nice photos. I decided to just put the camera away and enjoy it. It was a little shorter than I’d hoped, so we wandered back to the bus stop to move on to our next location. We had a bit of a wander heading back, though, and I seriously loved all the little streets we walked down. There was bamboo growing everywhere, and little canals, and quiet little corners and bends and curves and hills. I could easily spend more time there.

We headed off to our next location, Kinkaku-ji temple. We’d need two buses to get there – one which terminated right on the edge of The Zone, and one which’d take us right to the temple. The termination was at a driver rest-stop area, and the driver on the first bus seemed impatent to get us off the bus, but not without taking money from us. We hopped onto the next bus without trouble, and got to Kinkaku-ji.

The real name of the temple is Rokuon-ji. It gets its colloquial name from the golden building that stands at its centre – Kinkaku means “Golden Pavilion”. The building is entirely covered in gold leaf – according to the guidebook, it’d glow even in clouds. It was cloudy when we were there, and it really was glowing. I was quite impressed with the effect. On the downside, it started to drizzle while we were there, and turned into a full-on shower as we were almost leaving, only to suddenly clear up right as we left, turning the already unpleasently humid day into an absolute swamp.

I mostly wanted to visit Kinkaku-ji (incidentally, completely unrelated to Ginkaku-ji, “Silver Pavilion”, in Kyoto’s east) because I’d seen it in an episode of anime. The characters in that episode also visited a nearby Shinto shrine, Kitano Tenman-gu, only a couple of blocks’ walk away, so we decided we would head there. Unfortunately, it was 5:30 by the time we arrived, so the main shrine was closing up. We did wander around the grounds a bit, though. We rubbed the nose of the cow statues, which is apparently supposed to make you smarter… couldn’t help but notice it was rubbed quite smooth already.

One interesting thing I learnt was that whenever there’s two lion-dog statues flanking a gate or tori or similar, one of them always has its mouth open, while the other always has its mouth closed. This is because one is going “ah” and the other is going “um”. I have no idea why this should be the case, but I had a chance to check it out at the places we visited today, and it was seriously always true.

With the sun setting and the time heading towards six, we decided to head home – via Kyoto station so we could buy another day pass for tomorrow. I got a lovely photo of Kyoto Tower at sunset, though it was a bit rushed as we were heading for the bus back to the hotel. In any case, we’re only planning on three bus rides tomorrow, but since three rides cost 660 yen, and the pass costs 500, we’re already saving money. Dinner was largely the same as last night’s, with a few variations. Still the same unpalatable soup, though. James liked it.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which is supposed to have spectacular views of Kyoto, and Fushimi Inari Shrine, the head shrine of all Japan’s thirty thousand Inari shrines, with long paths of red tori gates. Both are on Kyoto’s south-eastern side. Then we’re heading off back to Tokyo on the shinkansen in the afternoon. This still leaves two quarters of Kyoto completely unvisited, and the other two only barely visited – plenty more to do next time, then?

Today’s photo count: three hundred and five.

We started the day with a traditional Japanese breakfast. This included cold tofu with topping, some miso soup and an egg with some Salmon and of course a bowl of rice. I thought it was quite nice, but I think we are rapidly approaching Joel’s seafood tolerance levels.

After breakfast we began our bus adventure. After walking several blocks we arrived where we thought the interchange was on the map, but it was along the street of a major shopping road. We had planned to purchase a 500¥ all day bus pass at the bus interchange, that gives unlimited bus travel within the ‘zone’, but after wondering around for a while were unable to find where to purchase one. In the end we had to move a block and catch a bus to Kyoto station, where we were finally able to purchase the ticket.

After a short ride we got off at Kyoto castle. This castle was a more natural arrangement  were you take off your shoes off and wander inside and see rooms closer to their original design. There were some beautiful screen paintings inside, some were undergoing refurbishments and some had obviously already been repaired. As per usual no photography or sketching was allowed.

Unfortunately the main building, which was actually moved in 1890 from the imperial palace at Katsura after the previous one burnt down, was closed to the public. It is only open to the public on certain celebration days. The surrounding garden and ponds were open and were well maintained in the inner keep. The trees were all sculpted and had nice thick moss growing in circles underneath them, with grass between the trees. In the pond we saw our first heron (?) of the day, although it was so still we originally thought it was a statue.

After exploring the castle for a while we caught another bus to Arashiyama to see the Tenryuu-ji temple and the Bamboo forest behind it. On the bus after starting with a fairly empty bus it rapidly filled with elderly citizens. At one stage we commented we were easily the youngest people on the bus, with it appearing the average age was 70 – 80. Although a few got off along the way, most got off the stop before us (which we probably should have got off as well) at Arashiyama Tenryuuji-mae.

Getting off at the terminus we tried to cut through a coach parking lot that had only one exit, so ended up having to return to entrance. Joel then saw the Tōgetsu-kyō Bridge that he had previously seen in an Anime and grabbed some pics. I walked onto the bridge and noticed a dragonfly had landed on the handrail so I got some good pictures of it.

Wandering down the main street we grabbed some lunch at a Soba noodle restaurant. I had egg and chicken (Oyako Udon) and Joel had Beef (Niku Udon) soba noodles.

Group in Yukatas

We walked up the street to Tenryuu-ji temple, on the way I saw a group all dressed up in Yukatas, and asked them to pose for a picture. At the temple we paid 600¥ to get admission to both the temple and the garden (garden is 500¥ on its own). This temple didn’t have any warnings about taking photos so we were able to grab some, although it didn’t have many elaborate screens like the castle did. The path through the temple gave a higher view of the garden pond and also followed a stream between buildings.

The one downside is we had to take off our shows and wear slippers. This itself not so much a problem, although Joel finds it funny that he can take off his slip-on shoes really quickly while I always need to sit down to untie and then later retie my laces. The problem is the slippers provided are always too small for our feet, and we seem to be stepping on the back edge, while at the same time they are falling off. I worry way too much about tripping over them when going up stairs, or accidently kicking one into the bushes surrounding the path. It is much easier to just walk in socks, but then they get dirty and you stand out as everyone else is wearing the slippers.

At the end of the path is a nice temple with some screens and statues that I created a panorama of. After leaving the temple we wondered through the garden. There is a beautiful pond at the start and lovely garden beds with ancient trees and moss growing everywhere. We actually saw some gardeners apparently hand trimming the moss in one of the gardens.

At the North end of the garden we exited into the Bamboo forest. This was a road passing through towering grey bamboo stalks; it is very peaceful and quite interesting in appearance. The only problem was that it was much shorter than expected; we followed the road out, went around one bend and were at the end.

Leaving out the side we walked down the road a fair way to reach our next bus stop to take us to Kinkakuji Temple. This temple is known for its brilliant golden temple that sits on a lake, it is supposed to practically glow in any weather. We put this to the test as it was very overcast when we arrived at entrance and it started raining when we reached the first viewing area. The temple did still seem amazingly bright, even though the sky was covered in dark clouds, and rain was splashing the lake. The golden building is the main draw card but the grounds were quite nice, even if we did leap frog between dry areas.

When we left the temple the rain had cleared, but left us with even higher humidity to walk through on our way to Kitano Tenman-gu Shrine. By the time we arrived all the stores and temples were closed, but we could wander the grounds to take some pictures and rub the noses of the cow statues. I also found an interesting sight that someone had tied a Winnie the Pooh bib to one of the cows.

When we finished, rather than head directly back to Ryokan we dropped by the station to purchase an All-Day bus ticket for tomorrow. We even found a vending machine selling them, so did not need to go to the ticket office this time.

For dinner tonight we had another Japanese banquet, very similar to the one on the first night with just a few minor changes. We had some seaweed type dish in a bowl, which looked like the hair ball you pull from the shower drain, but it looked quite nice. The main was again sashimi of seafood and tempura prawns, although the meat in the sashimi looked a bit different. The soup was the same mushroom and mysterious roll as yesterday, which Joel still refuses to try because he dislikes its smell. The seafood and mushroom custard was also identical with its same odd taste and texture.

Overall we had a good day, we saw 4 different major attractions and managed to avoid getting very wet when it rained. Tomorrow we leave early to store our luggage at Kyoto station before catching the bus to South-East Kyoto for some more shrines and temples.

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