Day 19 - Kyoto

October 14th, 2010

Woke up at 7:00am.  Took our time getting ready, and at 8:30 phoned Dennis to wake him up.  We went down to have breakfast at 8:45 and then grabbed our stuff from our room and met up with our guide - Toshi - at 9:30 in the lobby.

Last time Randy and I were in Kyoto, we had arranged for a volunteer guide.  Toshi was our guide, and he was very knowledgeable and helpful.  Since then, we have kept in contact with him.  Once we knew we were coming back to Kyoto, we contacted him and asked if he would show us around a couple of places we hadn't been to yet. Toshi is a great guy and really has a passion for making sure that he knows about the places, and always answers all of our sometimes silly questions.

So, we headed off to the Tofukuji Temple - taking a local JR train.  It actually was only 1 stop away from the station. This temple has a lot of Japanese maple trees, so once the leaves turn colour, apparently it is very beautiful (and popular) place.  It will still be a few weeks until the leaves turn colour, so it wasn't busy there at all.  But it was still a very peaceful and beautiful place anyway.

From Tofukuji, it was about a 15 minute walk to Fushimi Inari Shrine.  At this shrine, there are several kilometres of Tori gates that line trails up and around a hill.  Each gate has been donated by a business (or person) - to ensure prosperity.  It was quite amazing to be walking through these tunnels of Tori gates.  We only went partway through the trail, because it would take a couple of hours to walk through all of the gates.  As we were walking through, every so often you will see a small wooden stick, about the size of a paint stir stick, at the base of a Tori gate.  The stick would have some characters on it.  Toshi told me that this means there is a new sponsor for that spot.  When the Tori gate decays and needs to be removed, then a new one will be erected by that business or person.

We finished around noon, so we took the train back to the Kyoto train station, and had lunch with Toshi.  We went back to the same Udon noodle place that we had eaten at a couple days ago.  It was just as yummy the second time.  After lunch, we said goodbye to Toshi and went back to the room to drop off a few things.  Dennis was going to head to a store that sells motorcycle clothing, and we were going to head back to the Nishiki Market to do some shopping.  We agreed to meet up later for  supper.

Randy and I walked back to the train station, bought another day bus pass, and caught a bus to the Nishiki Market.  The Nishiki market spans several city blocks and intersects with another couple shopping arcades that also go for many blocks.  We spent a good couple hours just walking around the shops. 

We both were starting to get sore feet, so we finally found a Starbucks and sat down to have a drink and to get off our feet for a bit.  By this time it was 4:30pm (there was a Mont Blanc store straight across the street from the Starbucks, so we had to go there), so we went to find a bus stop to take us back to the train station.  We had to walk a ways to the bus stop and had to wait a bit for the bus, so we didn't get back to the hotel until 5:30pm.  We both relaxed and kept off our feet for about an hour, and then met up with Dennis to head out for supper.

We went over to the train station and decided to try some restaurants in the Isetan department store.  In Japan, most department stores have restaurants either in the basement, or on the top floors (or both).  We went to the top floor and didn't see anything we liked (it was very she-she-la-la - aka: fancy/expensive), so we went to a floor below that also had some restaurants.  We found another food court - so we decided to eat there, and that way we could each get whatever we wanted.

Like the food court at Disney, some of the restaurants provided their food on real plates (but some did not).  I got a pork katsu curry (which came on a dish with real cutlery), whereas Randy's noodle dish was on a plastic plate, and Dennis's burger and fries were in standard fast food containers.  In the food court was a place that sold green tea ice cream, so we decided to get some for dessert.  Randy and I shared a scoop of green tea ice cream in a cone, while Dennis got a soft-serve green tea ice cream for himself.  Dennis's cone also had some chunks of green tea jelly and some beans in the bottom as well.  The ice cream definitely tasted like tea, and it didn't seem to have much sugar (if any).  But it was interesting and refreshing anyway.

After eating, we went into the department store to check out some of the souvenirs.  I managed to find a couple of things on sale - so I bought them.   Randy found a nice calendar - so we got that as well.  The store closed at 8:00pm, so we left just as they were closing up. I think we heard the standard "we are closing, so please take your items to a cashier" type message, unfortunately we couldn't understand it when it was announced in Japanese.

We went back to the room, and since we were heading back to Tokyo in the morning, we spent some time packing up our luggage - and trying to fit everything in.  Luckily the roller bags we brought to Kyoto expand!  I worked on the journal and then headed to bed.