Lines, tickets, shopping and the Bamboo Grove

Every day is a revelation.  And a challenge.

Kyoto Station is a place where you can arrive by train, book into a hotel, shop at supermarkets, specialty shops including those at the high end of the market, eat a variety of Japanese food, see a movie and view the city from above, all without ever leaving the station.

Asty Road, an arcade within the station precinct has a wonderful variety of shops; especially pastry shops.   The challenge is to return the next day and find the exact shop that has those irresistible pastries.  Beyond my capabilities, I quickly realised.

Lines are commonplace in busy areas such as Kyoto station and the first line today was at the rail ticket vending machines.  There is a sanity preserving red button on the machine; when pressed, this button comes up with the ticket buying process in English. With the usual couple of false starts and dark mutterings, I master the situation and after that buying a ticket is easy-peasy.

The ever-smiling man who answers all bus service questions at the bus station advised taking the train to the Inari shrine.  Good advice; the trains get there more quickly and run more frequently than the buses.  Following the crowd, one of my rules of thumb for travel in foreign cities, I soon found the shrine entrance and after sauntering around the entrance buildings I joined the long, long line of people making the pilgrimage through thousands of  torii gates.

Entrance to the Shrine                  Shrine detail






The Inari Shine is a popular place for both domestic and international tourists and I spent some time in the forecourt area before venturing off  on the walking trail.

The Worship Hall

Along the torii trail.

The day was warm and foolishly I started without any water.  I had to quit before the half way mark, a very good idea when I look at the map of the complete walking tail.  After my stopping point the trail becomes very steep and it would have been beyond my capabilities. At this point I made a mental note to buy a walking pole, to help with balance.  Especially when walking over uneven terrain surrounded by people walking in the same direction and as many coming from the opposite direction.

On the way out of the Shrine grounds I considered this somewhat irreverent idea - a shrine to Pepsi.

Back at Kyoto station I applied myself to the serious business of buying a ticket for the bullet train which will take me to Yokohama tomorrow.  Happily it is a painless process (apart from the cost!) and I didn’t have to do battle with a vending machine.  Instead a young lady from JR assists me and now I am set to take the shinkansen from Kyoto to Yokohama, just after 11 am tomorrow.

Late afternoon and I am on another train to the Bamboo Grove, after a misstep where I get off the train one stop too early I eventually find my way to the Bamboo Grove using the usual method of tagging along behind a group.  This method almost failed me as it was quite a walk to the grove and the people ahead were fast walkers.

As a result I approach the main area from the wrong direction but I discover a cemetery (below)

 and groups of girls dressed in beautiful, traditional Japanese costumes, having fun and thoroughly enjoying themselves (below). 

The Bamboo Grove is a fascinating place to visit, even when it is quite late in the day.  The sound of the rustling bamboo and the clicking of the stems as they sway in the wind is the soundscape to the walk.  The Grove is open 24 hours a day, but I do think it might be an eerie place to visit at night.

My very ordinary offering of a Bamboo Grove photo - compared with this

I also discover the scenic train and rue leaving my visit until so late in the day.  Quite by accident I see the scenic train passing by as I walk back to the Bamboo Grove proper; it seems I have missed a great opportunity to see something else by train.  There is more to the scenic train than first meets the eye, as you will discover if you click on this link.

Another good reason to spend more than four days in Kyoto.

         

Kyoto by bus and foot

Following on from yesterday’s unfortunate, unexpected and permanent camera malfunction (not the actual words I applied to the situation, let me assure you) my first task for the day was a familiarisation course. Without going into the mind-numbingly boring details, let me tell you this took time and a considerable amount of temper to get to the place where I felt I had at least a slim idea of how I might manage my ‘new’ camera.

This time loss meant the day’s schedule had to be re-set and it was later in the morning when I bought an all-day bus and underground rail ticket and set off for the bus station on the far side of Kyoto station. By some miracle I left the bus at the right stop, walked up a long incline in the hot sun, found an ice-cream stall and crowds of people and eventually the temple I had circled on my map.

All this happened more by accident than design.

The temple I had circled on my map was the Silver Pavilion and it is not silver at all.  It was the intention of the Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa to have the structure covered in silver leaf but his dream was derailed by the Onin War in the mid-fifteenth century. 

So today there is a plain, unadorned temple surrounded by moss gardens and a striking dry stone garden.  In spite of the many visitors, it was a lovely garden to walk through and the green mossed areas provided a strong contrast in colour and form to the blinding white of the dry, landscape gardens.

Dry Stone Garden

Walking through the moss gardens

Leaving the Silver Pavilion behind, I returned to the Philosopher’s Path.  It was my intention to find a place to walk in Japan, in the time available to me, and this path was the only one I could find within easy distance of Kyoto. It’s far from a hike but still provided a place to stroll along beside an inner-city stream and admire the remnant cherry blossom and other lovely early spring flowers. 

Rhododendrons

Left:  The path                   Right:  The view

Successfully finding the bus stop and returning to the inner city, I detoured to the Gyoten Gardens. These are the gardens surrounding the Imperial Palace at Kyoto.  Not gardens strictly speaking, more in line with the idea of an open parkland with large grassed areas, groupings of trees and wide gravelled paths.

These gardens cover quite an area and offered a quiet place for walking or sitting, a contrast to the rumble of traffic outside the garden walls. A place whose quiet was only disturbed by occasional loudspeaker announcements, warning persons (children) that touching the Palace walls is forbidden, never mind attempting to climb upon them!

                                     

            Palace entrance gate - note line in foreground, made through the gravel by cyclists

      Palace building detail


I walked along by the river for a while as I headed back to the hotel, using the bus at the end of the journey as my feet were starting to feel more than a little tired.

While I am wishing I could spend more time here in Kyoto, there is so much I would like to see, I am very, very pleased I made the decision to at least spend a few days here.

In spite of everything

In spite of everything I have arrived in Kyoto.

In spite of the fact that my initial plans for the journey to Japan seemed to be altered at every turn, starting with being advised in Melbourne I would not be able to take a bottle of Australian wine through Singapore, which made me very grumpy.

In spite of the total of thirteen hours flying time, a stretch of time which allowed more than enough time to remember forgotten items; not to mention the tiresome business of sleeping whilst sitting, I was seated beside two interesting fellow travellers on both flight legs and the time passed quickly enough.

In spite of the late departure from Melbourne and the inability of the crew sitting in the cockpit, who, no matter how fast they pedalled, still couldn’t make up for lost time,  the connection for the Singapore-Osaka flight was made with only 15 minutes to spare.

And last but least, the prize-winner in the ‘in spite of’ category: the officious young man in Osaka immigration who returned my passport, then directed me to a bare white laminex table behind a column in the arrivals hall to await my fate because I did not fill in the telephone number of the hotel on my entry card, I have arrived in Kyoto.

Gathering my scattered wits I negotiated the ticket buying business at Kansai station, found the train and there I was, as happy as a pig in mud, as the Haruki Express sped towards Kyoto. Totally absorbed by the passing view the time flew by: densely populated areas; tiny pockets of agricultural land tucked into any available space; Osaka, a stern grey industrial city; concrete lined waterways; backyards crammed with rusting junk and most delightful of all, an unexpected glimpse of a solitary small cherry tree in full bloom.

Artificial cherry blossom at Kansai airport, for those visitors who might miss seeing the real cherry blossom.

The Haruka Kansai- Kyoto express waits to whisk me to Kyoto.

After arrival at Kyoto station and before trekking off to find the hotel I paused to examine a mosaic work at the end of the platform.  It is the work of Hideo Nashiyama and was sited at Kyoto station in February 1977 on the occasion of the centenary of the station’s opening.

   Four views of the Nashiyama mosaic.

After tossing down my luggage burden in the rather compact room in the south wing of the hotel and resting for a short while, I returned to the labyrinthine Kyoto station, successfully negotiated my way through to the far side and set out to find the Higashi Honganji Temple. 

Temples and shrines are to be found almost at every turn in Kyoto and many of them are described, in that done-to-death phrase, as 'must-see'.  Time was short for me so I chose to take advantage of a temple within easy walking distance.

Temple details - roof and lamp

Padding around the temple entries in my socks, I was astonished by the enormous wooden sledge used to bring huge logs, needed for the construction of the temple, down from the forest. This was a hazardous business and many lives were lost in winter when the hauling of logs created avalanches  Even more astonishing was the display of an enormous woven coil of human hair; the quality of rope in those times was very poor and woven hair made for a stronger and more reliable method of fastening timber together. How such a huge quantity of hair was collected and woven into an immensely thick coil defies the imagination

This temple is considered to be the largest wooden structure in the world.

The old and the new - a building inside the temple grounds and behind it the Kyoto Tower.

Tomorrow is an out-of-Kyoto day; an early start and late finish and in between a whole world of new experiences.