Today was our final day in Kyoto, and we decided to visit two of it’s most famous sites: Fushimi Inari Shrine and Nijo Castle. I had been raving about my last visit to the shrine for years, and was very excited to share the experience with Lindsay. The shrine is immensely popular with the Japanese: It draws almost 3 million visitors over Japanese New Year’s, and has spawned over 30,000 ‘imitation’ shrines. It also inspired the ‘Gates’ exhibit by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Central Park in 2005. The shrine is the head shrine of Inari, the patron of business, closely associated with rice, and pilgrims visit the site to pray for wealth. We arrived at the shrine early on Thursday morning, and were struck by the number of elderly Japanese visitors, climbing the 4km path on their own.

Gorgeous bamboo forests

Bamboo out of focus

Linds at the foot of the gates

The fox, or Kitsune in Japanese, are closely associated with Inari

Layers upon layers of gates

We took the train to Kyoto station, which is actually worth some photos in and of itself. It was designed by the Japanese architect Hara HIroshi, and completed in 1997.

We walked to the Higashi-Honganji temple, an enormous complex in the middle of Kyoto – the highlight (for us anyway), was some of the beautiful woodwork:

We headed to our final destination before departing Kyoto. Along the way, we passed this totally baffling and somewhat frightening public service poster. This country continues to fascinate us!

Nijo Castle was built in 1601 as the Imperial residence of the Tokugawa Shoguns (though various buildings have burnt down and been replaced in subsequent years). Nanomaro Palace, on the grounds, is built almost entirely of Hinoki Cypress, and is decorated with wall paintings by artists from the Hano School. The palace contained a series of rooms, with the innermost reserved for the most important guests (the lowly guests were relegated to the outermost rooms). Here are some highlights of the grounds (photographs weren’t allowed in the castle:

And with this final visit, we departed on the Shinkansen to Tokyo – off to Hong Kong!

Today was our only full day in Kyoto (yesterday and tomorrow will be travel days), so we resolved to see as much of this culturally rich city as possible. The rain was back – which put a bit of a damper on things (no pun intended, seriously). The Kamo river, which runs through Kyoto, was raging.

We made our way to the southeast part of the city, to visit temples, shrines and the historical district of Kyoto. We began our day at the Sanjusangen Temple, where the Japanese tradition of archery competitions, generically referred to as Toh-shiya, was thought to have started. The most exciting contest was to see how many times you could hit the target in 24 hours. Incredibly, one contestant successfully fired 8,000 arrows on target (out of 13,000) during this time period. Here are some images of the temple:

Sanjusangen-do Temple (fuzzy on purpose, we’re playing around with the effects on our camera)

Fuzzy again

Woodwork

A lantern and some flowers, fuzzy style

We continued towards Kiyomizudera, a neighbouring temple, and happened upon this graveyard on the way.

Here are some shots of Kiyomizudera:

Bonsai Garden

Pagoda

Temple

For lunch (and a reprieve from the monsoon like winds and rain), Lindsay enjoyed Yaki Soba (pictured below);

And I enjoyed Octopus Balls …

The rain subsided, and we wandered the historical streets of Eastern Kyoto, which is full of gorgeous shops, teahouses, and cobblestone alleyways – it’s really pretty magical. Here are some highlights:

Sannanzaka Steps

Welcome, Welcome …

Old Kyoto Alleyway

And here are some shots from the Yasaka Shrine, our next destination:

Here are some shots from Chi-on Temple:

And Nanzenji Temple (we visited a lot of temples)

(These roots reminded me of our Knorr print ad in Canada about 8 years ago!)

A tree grows in Nanzenji

After about 8 hours of exploration, we walked home along the riverbed, peppered with granite bridges.

Kyoto Day 1 was really more like a rainy travel day. After a whirlwind five days in Tokyo, Linds and I boarded the Shinkansen, bound for Kyoto. The entire 500km (check) journey took just over 2 hours, and was so fast that I actually got a bit of motion sickness, which I haven’t had since I was about six! We arrived in Kyoto in the pouring rain … it has been raining here quite a bit, and based on some quick internet research, we learned that Japan has a rainy season. And it is now. On the bright side, it means that it’s not quite as hot, but the humidity is still doing wonderful things to my hair. We bought some convenience store umbrellas (a bargain here compared to NY … high quality clear plastic for only $4) and headed over to Nijo castle, which had come highly recommended to us by Lindsay’s Mom. We headed to what can only be described as a Japanese diner for lunch. It was awesome. After purchasing a $5 meal ticket (we are becoming experts in this capacity), we were served miso soup, salad and beef teriyaki … and an egg (we weren’t sure what to do with the egg, so added it to the beef teriyaki …). Excellent value.

Meal Selection

Japanese Diner Food

The rain became so strong that we cut our trip short and visited the Kyoto Manga Museum instead. Yes, that’s right – there’s a museum dedicated to manga. It was a bit of a misnomer really – the ‘museum’ was basically a glorified library with a small exhibit outlining the history of manga in Japan and abroad. We learned, through an interactive map, that manga came to Canada via Germany (?).

An Ad for the Manga Museum

For dinner, we decided to expand our horizons and check out the latest food craze sweeping the nation – Italian food. Seriously. A bit of history. The last time that I was here, in 2005, the country was obsessed with French food. You couldn’t walk a block without encountering a Creperie or Boulangerie. Walking around in 2010, you would never know. Trends die hard here – despite the stubborn resilience of the croissant as a breakfast food of choice, French is apparently passe. Which carved the way for the latest national food obsession – Italian. Even the hipster Japanese restaurant we ate at in Shibuya was serving Spaghetti Marinara, and the Kyoto Hyatt has an Italian restaurant inside. Our Italian dining experience was actually really good – the Japanese share the Italian obsession with high quality ingredients, and the pizza we ordered was delectable. Interestingly, the wine list had pictures of the labels on it – I had never seen that before, but it was all class. Lindsay and I are placing our bets on Spanish food (tapas in particular), as the next cuisine to seize the imagination of a nation.

We finally managed to sleep in a little, likely due to the dreary weather … unfortunately it was on the one day when we were hoping to get an early start. We planned to visit Tsujiki, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, located on Tokyo’s east side. While we did miss the 5:20 a.m. auction, we ended up avoiding a lot of the tourist rush and were still able to get to the market early enough to check out the stalls, and get a feel for the organized chaos. Here are some photos from our morning:

Tokyo was blanketed in umbrellas

Stalls in the outskirts of Tsujiki market

The scene at the market

Relaxing after a long morning

Octopus

Delicious!

Pufferfish

Following our visit to the fish market, we made our way down to a local park, Haramarikju-Teien, where we visited a teahouse at the centre of the property and enjoyed some green tea and a ‘confection’. It was a nice way to escape the rain.

The park juxtaposed against the Tokyo skyline

The teahouse

The teahouse and our mid-morning snack

We made our way to the island district of Tsukada, also on Tokyo’s east side. This laid back neighbourhood is known for it’s classic wooden structures and unique cuisine. Here are a few of the buildings, including the Sumiyoshi Shrine pictured directly below.

We enjoyed a dish called monjayaki for lunch. We were seated at a table with a grill between us, and awaited our order.

First, the server brought us a bowl of ingredients, including beef, ginger and cabbage and a savoury broth.

Then, she poured the beef, cabbage and ginger on the grill, carved out a circle in the centre of the ingredients, and poured in the broth. She mixed and chopped the ingredients and let it cook on the grill for a few minutes. We dug in (literally, using small trowel-like instruments) – it was a really tasty light lunch!

After another excellent food adventure, we headed back to Shinjuku. We visited the 51st floor of the Sumitomo Building at sunset to enjoy the view … and obviously take some awesome glamour shots!

Then, after yesterday’s quest, we ended up finding Nami, the ramen bar, for dinner. It was on the second floor of a building down a dark alley – very stealth. There was a noodle bar that seated 8 people (barely) and one chef who served everyone. The ramen was delectable, well worth the hunt.

Here are some other miscellaneous shots from the day:

After enjoying what has become our signature breakfast here, the chocolate croissant (naturally), we headed down to Shinjuku station to take the train to Yasakuni Ginga, Kitonomaru-Koen and Kokyo HIgashi Gyoen Park. Apparently, living in New York did not adequately prepare either of us for the complexity of the Toyko subway system, but luckily as we stood gawking at the subway map, we were again saved by a nice lady who helped us purchase our fare for the day.

They make it look so easy!

Our first stop of the day was Yasakuni Jinja, a shrine dedicated to the ward dead who served the Emperor of Japan from 1867-1951. It is believed that all evil acts are forgiven once enshrinement occurs, and that once one is enshrined, it is irreversible by the current clergy (it is purportedly the priesthood at the shrine who determine who is enshrined, not the government) As such, there are a number of war criminals (as determined by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) buried at the shrine. This may sound familiar – each year it becomes the centre of mild controversy when the Prime Minister makes a state visit. Controversy aside, the shrine was impressive – though unfortunately it appeared that we had just missed some sort of festival, as when we arrived, there were crews of men taking down stalls and deflating rows and rows of yellow lanterns (pictured below).

We headed over to Kitonomaru-Koen and Kokyo HIgashi Gyoen Parks, on the grounds of the Imperial palace. A huge moat surrounds the palace grounds, and recently, painstaking efforts were taken to restore many of the fortress walls, which were formidable. There was also a park that housed 7 different types of bamboo, thereby solidifying our dream of one day growing a bamboo garden ourselves.

One of the varieties: Phyllostachys heterocycla ‘Nabeshimana’ Bamboo

The huge stones that make up the fortress walls

A view of the cityscape beyond the park

We headed towards Akihabara, the electronics district. I’m not going to lie – Lindsay was much more enthused about this particular outing than I was, however, even for the tech layman, this place is worth checking out. Beyond the hardcore electronics stores, there are these amazing shops that are about 9 stories tall – you take the escalator from floor to floor, and each of the floors contain something completely different. For example: Floor 1 – fishing equipment, floor 2 – themed photo booths for women, floor 3 – music themed video arcades, floor 4 – ‘grab-it’ claw games, floor 5 – halloween costumes .. you get the picture. There are dozens of these stores, each with a slightly different twist, and each filled with throngs of Japanese teenagers, mesmerized by computer games. Unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photos in the stores themselves, but here are a couple of shots taken from the street.

Finally, we headed over to Ginza, the high-end shopping district. It looked similar to basically every other high-end shopping district I’ve seen, but some of the buildings were quite striking, and the main street was closed to become a pedestrian walkway, making window shopping more enjoyable. Here are a few of the more interesting shops:

Then, on our way home, we passed by what has to be the most evil looking building I have ever seen:

Straight from a James Bond movie. I have no idea what company is housed here, but it is not up to any good. It kind of reminded me of our class visit to Petrobras in Rio last year … similar vibe.

After a nap, LInds and I embarked on a mission to find a Ramen house called Nagi, which we had read about in the NY Times. Sadly, though we saved the map and brought it with us for guidance, after an hour, we were still unable to find the restaurant. Luckily, we have yet to encounter a bad meal here, and the soba/ramen joint that we happened upon instead was delicious! Here’s a shot of our dinner – instead of getting a bowl of noodles in broth, the noodles (these are soba, not ramen) come in a separate bowl, and you dip them into the rich broth (spicy and non-spicy, respectively, pictured below).