Today marked the fourth day of Nicole and my Chuseok adventure in Japan. We arrived on Wednesday and spent the past several days visiting Osaka, Nara, and now finally, Kyoto.
Breakfast
We started the day with coffee and buns at a nice little café around the corner from our AirBnB residence. Up until this point in Korea, I had only had commercial coffee from cafes that were franchises. This place seemed like it was transported from New York City right into Osaka. The shop was small and quaint and seemed to be filled only with regulars. Nicole and I got a bun and coffee for a few dollars and made our way over to the subway station across the street.
The Slow Train to Kyoto
Perhaps it was our outstanding record of getting on the right train every time over the past two days, perhaps it was our own hubris, but Nicole and I were becoming train experts and it was starting to go to our heads. Cue the fall. Nicole and I ended up taking the regular train to Kyoto as opposed to the express train. This meant we had to stop at every stop between Osaka and Kyoto, which greatly hindered our progress and doubled our commute time.
Kyoto like Nara, is really well laid out for travelers. The city of Kyoto provides maps of local attractions and bus routes between them in English. Nicole and I were able to easily map out our day of adventures in a matter of minutes. The two of us bought bus passes for the day that allowed us to travel everywhere for one day.
Kinkaku-ji The Golden Pavilion
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The Golden Pavilion is on the outskirts of the city and it was our most remote stop of the day, but it’s absolutely beautiful and only about $2 each. The temple is situated on a pond surrounded by lush forests and beautiful gardens. Every part of the temple grounds looked like it was straight out of ancient Japan. The pavilion itself is covered entirely with gold leaf on the top two stories.
Nijo castle
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Our next stop of the day was Nijo castle. It was a short bus ride away and centrally located right in the middle of Kyoto. It’s so strange to travel around Japan and see these ancient buildings and monuments adjacent to modern apartments and offices.
The castle was incredible. It sits on several acres in the heart of the city and its surrounded by these well manicured gardens that are incredibly peaceful. We spent several hours walking through the castle and its grounds. I kept having to remind myself that this castle was 400 years old. It was built on such a grand scale it was hard to imagine people 400 years ago constructing something as ornate and detailed as the castle.
Lunch Time
After several hours of observing ancient buildings and monuments, Nicole and I had worked up an appetite. We stopped in across the street from the castle at a little restaurant selling udon noodles. Udon noodles are like fat ramen plus delicious toppings and they’re so much tastier. Nicole and I split an order of noodles with mushrooms, green onions, and pork. The pork was so tender it was falling off my chopsticks.
The Bus to Kiyomizu-dera Temple
After lunch Nicole and I visited Kiyomizu-dera. The temple was a short distance away from Nijo Castle and our noodles. However, the bus ride there took nearly an hour due to traffic. It seemed that all the traffic in Kyoto had to pass through this one intersection that Nicole and I waited at with the rest of the bus passengers crammed in like sardines.
In Japan the concept of personal space on a bus or subway does not exist. Nicole and I were crammed into the bus literally shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. Nicole said it best “I’m touching 5 people right now”. It was like twister but vertical instead of horizontal. The most difficult part was getting on and off the bus. It would have been fine if everyone was going to the same historic temple as us, but most of the passengers were going about their daily lives and had no time for honoring their country’s illustrious past.
Chawan-zaka or Teapot Lane
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Nicole and I fought our way off the bus and walked the steep hill to Kiyomizu-dera. The walk up to the temple was really fascinating. To get to the temple you have to walk along this narrow road filled with shops and cafes. The architecture of the buildings along the road made it feel as if we were walking back in time on our way to reach the historic temple. Before reaching Kiyomizu-dera, Nicole and I stopped at Tainai-meguri, a temple to the right of Kiyomizu-dera. The temple has an underground tunnel beneath it that is pitch black. Visitors are invited to take off their shoes at the door and walk through the tunnel feeling their way along the walls. The journey beneath the temple is symbolic of entering the womb of a female Bodhisattva. The only part of the walk that was illuminated was a rock about halfway through the walk. Spinning it in either direction is meant to bring good luck to the spinner. Nicole and I both spun it; we’ll see how our wishes work out.
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Kiyomizu-dera
Ah Kiyomizu-dera, the temple I have alluded to for the past 4 paragraphs. We finally arrived after an excruciatingly slow bus ride, and passing through the womb of a female Bodhisattva…still better than flying through O’Hare am I right? All kidding aside, Kiyomizu-dera was incredible. It’s a Buddhist temple originally founded in 778. However, all the buildings that exist today were built in 1633. The temple is built on a mountainside with a large veranda protruding out over the mountain 13 m above the mountain’s slope beneath it.
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Legend has it that if someone were to jump off the veranda and survive the 13 m fall their wish would be granted. Apparently 234 people jumped off the veranda in the Edo period and more than 85% survived. However when Nicole and I visited, jumping off the veranda was not an option so we opted to just walk around. On our way out of the temple Nicole and I were stopped by a Japanese News team who interviewed us about our Japanese vacation. If anyone happens to see me on Japanese TV, please send me a link.
Geishas and Gion
Part of Nicole’s and my Kyoto goals was to see a geisha, but they are far more reclusive than one might imagine, or just as reclusive as one might imagine. Either way, we didn’t see a real one all day. I did, however, get a photo of a blurry geisha impersonator along teapot lane. This was not enough for either of us though and we decided instead to search Gion, the teahouse district, for geishas.
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The geisha district was an older part of Kyoto completely insulated from the main roads around it. There may be an easier way of finding it, but Nicole and I both stumbled upon it by walking several blocks off the main road. The streets were cobblestoned instead of paved and little bridges traversed a small canal running through the district.
Along our stroll, Nicole and I saw many tea houses, but alas no geishas. The teahouses are closed to foreigners, so we could not go in to investigate. Inside a traditional teahouse, a geisha would entertain her clientele with traditional music, singing, or dancing. In ancient times, geishas would entertain samurais. However today their clientele are more often businessmen.
Back to Osaka
Dejected after Nicole and I could not track down the elusive geishas, we returned to Osaka via another incredibly crowded bus and an equally crowded subway. Back in Osaka, Nicole and I got another round of conveyor belt sushi and returned to the AirBnB to pack and prepare for our return flight to Korea.
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