DAY FIVE
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2023
SPIRITUAL KYOTO
Morning view out the window from my hotel room in Hiroshima
This morning, we left Hiroshima to head to Kyoto, the ancient capital that is still the center of Japan's traditional culture. Maho gave us the plan, then we headed to the Shinkansen for the 1h 40m easy ride. It was nice that we kept getting to the train stations with plenty of time to wander the shops and pick up breakfast if needed. Definitely started to get in a rhythm with Japanese Starbucks.
We arrived in Kyoto around lunchtime. The station there is big, modern, and has a ton of shops and restaurants, so we broke off to grab lunch wherever we wanted before meeting the group again at a set time and place.
A bunch of people wanted to get sushi, so we found ourselves at a cute little sushi bar. Free seats were patchy, so some people sat at the bar area, while Helen, Allison and I got a table.
I can’t say I was super excited about the food itself, but the ordering system made the experience really fun! There were two ways to order – either through a tablet on the table, or by taking dishes off of a conveyor belt as it slowly went by. When you order through the tablet, your food comes flying over on a top track, stopping perfectly at your table. Love it!
We didn’t notice it at first, but plates are color coded by price, which is how they present the check at the end, based on what’s on your table. We ordered drinks, which came with three of those little plates, and I very dumb-Americanly used it as a dish for soy sauce, not realizing that they were just there to represent the cost of the drinks. Whoops! And it turns out they definitely don’t dip their sushi directly into soy sauce. Thankfully we were of course not the first tourists to stop in there and our waitress was very friendly and polite about the faux pas.
Photo by Helen
I got a cucumber and wasabi roll, a Japanese yam roll, and a refreshing iced green tea. The yam wasn’t what I was expecting – I’m not sure I realized that there was a difference between Japanese sweet potato and yam (and who knows what Google Translate said it was haha). It was tasty, though. More of a water chestnut / jicama texture than potato. Not sure why it was pink!
Leaving the train station, we then headed to our hotel, the Hyatt Place Kyoto. It was a nice modern place in the middle of the city, easy to access every place we were going.
We ended up taking cars in small groups to get there, and it was so nice to see that our main luggage was there waiting for us since we hadn’t had it for the last couple of days in Hiroshima.
It was just a quick stop before heading out for the day’s sightseeing.
Very nice Kyoto hotel – I’d recommend it to anyone visiting.
Our first destination in Kyoto was the Ginkaku-ji Zen Buddhist temple, aka the Silver Pavilion. (It’s not covered in silver; people think that it got that nickname to contrast with the Golden Pavilion which is a different temple in Kyoto.)
Copying from Wikipedia again, work smarter not harder:
In 1482, shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa built his retirement villa on the grounds of today's temple, modeled after Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), his grandfather's retirement villa at the base of Kyoto's northern mountains (Kitayama). The villa was converted into a Zen temple after Yoshimasa's death in 1490.
We didn’t go into the pavilion itself (I’m not sure you can?) so it was more about walking around the grounds and winding paths through the gardens, taking in the scenery and a view of the full complex and Kyoto beyond from the top of a hill.
Leaving Ginkaku-ji, we hopped into taxis and made our way across town to Fushimi Inari, one of the most famous Shinto shrines and famous for its thousands (!) of torii gates.
Thank you, internet:
Fushimi Inari is the most important of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari's messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds. Fushimi Inari Shrine has ancient origins, predating the capital's move to Kyoto in 794.
From Memoirs of a Geisha. Definitely not this empty in real life haha.
Arriving at the site, you walk through a long street of souvenir and snack shops before getting to the entrance of the shrine.
Once we got there and took the obligatory group photo, we all started along the path of the gates, stopping a few times along the way to talk about the elements of a Shinto shrine that we had become well-versed in at that point.
Photo by Helen
I wanted so badly to get the perfect Fushimi Inari photo of the gates without thousands of tourists but once we got there and saw how busy it was, I didn’t really hold out hope.
But! As you continue to walk along the path the crowds start to disperse a little bit, and I found one corner that looked promising. I waited patiently for the perfect moment when the last people had rounded the corner and got ready to snap.
At that moment Shannon was the absolute hero of the day, literally body checking a German tourist who was about to walk into the shot. Thank you for the extra few seconds, Shannon! This photo would not have happened without you. 😂
At this point we were more or less on our own. Some people decided to continue to climb to the top of the path, some wandered a little more around the area where we were, and three of us went back to the hotel with Maho to relax a little before dinner.
On the path back through the shops on the way to the main street, the four of us stopped to get some ice cream. I got the matcha flavor and it totally hit the spot.
Quickly remembered to take a photo for posterity, but not until enjoying the top half!
Getting back to the Hyatt, we settled into our rooms and got ready to join most of the group for a dinner that Maho had reserved at a local yakitori place. (There was a group of four who tended to go off and do their own thing most nights of the trip.)
It was a fun meal, as we ordered a bunch of different a la carte skewers and bites to try. I was just happy that there were plenty of non-seafood choices!
Photo by our server, I think!