We arrived at Kyoto station and transferred to another train that took us to Yamashina station. Another quick transfer later we were at Keage station which was a short 60 second walk to our hotel. Awesome!
We checked in and then headed out to get our bearings in our part of Kyoto. We stumbled on this huge orange Tori gate and headed towards it.
We happened on Heian temple, which was the only temple we visited that did not have an entrance fee Part of the ritual before entering a temple is to cleanse your hands and mouth using a fountain located outside. We skipped the whole cleansing the mouth bit as it felt kind of weird, but we happily washed our hands.
I still habitually use Yelp to find places to eat but it is not as big in Japan as it is back home. Most restaurants only have one or two reviews, and they’re usually in Japanese. Yelp has a translation feature, but the only time I used it the reviewer kept talking about Swallows or something. So either that particular place served Swallow, or it was a mistranslation. Either way we steered clear of that place and ended up at a small Chinese restaurant.
The next day I woke up at 5am and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I decided to take Cody’s camera and explore the hotel. I ended up finding a small outdoor terrace on the 9th floor. I took a ton of photos as I watched the sunrise over the next hour. Here’s one of them:
I grabbed some breakfast from a convenience store down the street, which mostly consisted of donuts and other sweets, and headed back to the room. The plan for this day was to check out as many temples on our side of the city as possible.
The weather was not in our favor as it was forecasted to lightly rain all day. Determined to still experience some history, we grabbed an umbrella from the hotel and headed out. Our first stop was Nazenji Temple. As we were walking in, a Japanese school teacher stopped us to ask if her students could practice english with us. How cool! We were of course happy to converse in our native tongue; her oldest student asked us our names, how long we were in Japan, and what our favorite temple was.
All of the temples we visited in Kyoto are stunningly beautiful and serene. We purchased a Red Seal book for 1000 Yen (about $9). Every temple has their own unique Red Seal, which you can have drawn in your book for 300 Yen (about $2.50). The book makes a cool souvenier and we’ve collected about 9 seals so far.
The rain steadily increased as the day progressed, but we powered on and visited two more temples. We started seeing more people as we got into the afternoon which made enjoying the temples more difficult as we had to dodge big tour groups of students and adults.
After the second temple, we found a tiny lunch spot that served Okonomiyaki. This is a Japanese dish that is kind of like an omlet that is made in front of you Hibachi style. Each table has a stove top, and after you order they mix and cook everything in front of you. The meal we had was really good, albeit a smaller portion size than we were used to.
We had time for another temple, and then caught a bus back to our hotel. We rested our feet for the next few hours, I took a quick nap, and then we headed out to dinner. We ended up at another Okonomiyaki place that had bigger portions than the last. We met a fellow American from Seattle here. He was a tour director about to leave on a cruise for the next 5 days.
We also met an outgoing Japanese man. We got to chatting and after a little translation confusion, he told us that he was a lacquer expert who had traveled across the world working for different governments and museums restoring lacquer pieces. He spoke english very well so we talked for about 45 minutes about his work, why we were in Japan, and what places around Kyoto he recommended visiting. Cody told him about her photography so he suggested we go to Mt. Hiei.
We were really happy to have had the chance to talk with a local for so long, and decided to take his suggestion and visit Mt Hiei the next day.
Next up, our day trip to Mt. Hiei and our challenging mission to find a Gundam Wing manga (Japanese comic book) in an all-Japanese book store.