Kyoto Weekend

Well spent the weekend in Kyoto, which everyone told me was a must see. It is impressive, the city is built on a flat plain surrounded by hillsides covered in trees. Once again wherever it is flat the japanese have built but as soon as the ground starts to rise in anyway then the hillsides are covered in trees and shrubs. There was one scene where I was looking down a busy city street with high rise department stores, neon lights, cars, all teeming with people, a great neon tunnel, at the end of which was a tree covered hill. Difficult to explain how strange this looks, when you are just so used to countryside gradually creeping into a city scene.
I read the guidebook and there are pages and pages of must see temples and shrines so I spent breakfast on Saturday working out a route from thesilver pavilion temple, down the philosophers walk and onto another 5 or 6 temples. So jump into a taxi and ask to go to the temple in my best Japanese and off we go. 15 minutes later arrived at the golden pavilion temple sigh, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji are just a little bit too close, anyway not a total disaster as this was also one of the must see temples. Paid my money to get in and nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue, umm this temple visiting might not be my cup of tea. Back into a taxi and carefully pronounced GINkaku-ji and back onto my original plan.
Another nice garden, nice wooden building, nice statue, I think you are already beginning to see the pattern here I decided to carry on with the plan and walked the philosophers walk, well it does kind of suit my reflective nature...This walk was great, all along a blossom tree lined canal with cafes and houses flanking it. Part way along there was an artist sketching the path, mug that i am for this I ended up buying an original, not sure if my bargaining increased the price or not but it was fun trying out my numbers, numbers and counters in general are tough in Japanese cause there are so many ways to say the same thing and which one you use totally depends on context. Ended up at Eikan-Do, which is a another famous temple, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. Thought with this temple hunting was over for the day so took a taxi to downtown Kyoto, in particular to Nishiki Market.

Nishiki market is a long arcade, probably 0.5Km long, that is filled on both sides with food stalls. Tried octopus balls here, I am hoping thats only the shape not the content, also tried some other funny looking stuff that all I am sure about is that it wasnt meat, everything tasted great though so best not to think about it too much. Nishika is crossed several times by shopping arcades, each arcade is also about 0.5km long and there are shops for everything. I spent several hours going up and down mainly looking for Pokemon for Gian. Can you believe it the land of Pokemon and nothing. They have character shops teeming with toy figures from anime and cartoons but no pokemon, apparantly that ship has sailed. Going to have another go today at my business card department store, might even ask for directions to give one of them heart failure :-)

And so back to the hotel. The hotel itself is really impressive, the Granvia, built into the main train station building. The train station is probably the most impressive thing i have seen in Japan so far. It is 11 stories high, has 3 basement levels, it has a vast open centre and you can walk from level 1 up open steps to level 11. Its built like a segment of an ampitheatre and so the bottom of the steps is perfect for giving shows, on both days I was there there was a stage set up and various school bands came and played. Either side of this vast space are a massive department store and a huge shopping mall called the CUBE. Two floors of the CUBE are given over to restaurants, from fast food "Ramen" to high end sushi.

I decided to use one of the 9 restaurants attached directly to the hotel and so ended up at the japanese "soba" restaurant, soba is best described as pasta like. As I didnt have a reservation they were very apologetic and I had to sit at the chefs table and have the special menu. Oh woe is me, this was fantastic, 6 courses all served to my by the two chefs working 2 feet away from me, both very chatty and very very patient with my Japanese. I rolled out of here and went and had an after dinner coffee at the lobby cafe overlooking the central plaza area. If coffee here didnt cost 10USD per small cup I might have stayed longer...

Sunday was feeling lethargic, more accurately fat and bloated :-) so decided to just do the big temple near the train station, what was this like, oh you know, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. I then went off to spend an hour at the Manga museum, 5 hours later I left the place, it was fascinating. They were running workshops and constructing a new manga book, there were several artists around helping people draw, tons of kids were there making key rings and I had my portrait done, manga style, made me look about 10 so its obviously a perfect representation :-)

Decided after this to just chill out at the hotel, spent far too much money drinking coffee and eating cake at the hotel cafe and put Kyoto to bed.