Day 10: Kyoto

Our day today allowed us to explore the ancient parts of Kyoto, the formal imperial capital of Japan. We only had half a day planned of activities, with a group unsupervised sightseeing trip to occur after lunch. A word of warning - the views of maple trees were plentiful today and there will be a lot of photos.

Our first stop after a spectacular breakfast was the Nijo-jo Castle. Compared to the Toyko Castles, this castle was pristine. There were a few paintings missing due to reconstruction from age related damage. The most incredible part of the building was the floor, which is known at the Nightingale Floor. This is because of metal hinges that "chirp" when the floorboards flex, making the floor sing with every step you take. This is a security measure to stop ninjas at night assassinating the Shogun. The challenge for our group was to walk without making a noise - which I did reasonably well by staying near the walls, which reduces the flex in the floorboards. Unfortunately, we were unable to take photos inside the castle, in order to protect the structure's materials and the fragile artworks.

No deer in this moat

Entrance Gate to the Castle Grounds

Details on the gate

Main building

The secret of the Nightingale Floor

The main water garden and its islands

This tree is covered up for the cold winter

Our next stop was the Golden Pavilion, perhaps one of the most famous sights in Japan. The gardens and grounds of the temple are incredible and the ticket for entry is also a good luck charm, which is nice. I did some serious shopping here - there were lots of beautiful items on sale and quite a few postcards available. They will be in the mail soon.

I warned you it was pretty today

Me in the temple gardens

Looking out over the lake to the Pavillion

Shiny.

There was a crane minding its own business

Looks just like a postcard

There were fish in the lake

Waterfall in the gardens

Our last view of the golden pavilion on our way up the hill through the gardens

Our final stop was a small shopping strip and the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. This temple is situated up in the mountains and was a reasonable uphill walk to reach it. There were a lot of beautiful shops full of kimonos, fans and chopsticks, as well as a few other bits of merchandise. One thing that has baffled us all is the pervasive love for Snoopy, more so than any other western popular culture (although we did see The Very Hungry Caterpillar clothes at a shop yesterday.) We explored the temple area, including heading to a Shinto area with two love stones. Both Steve and Josh took the challenge to walk from one to the other with their eyes shut, in order to be guaranteed to find easy love. After we came down the mountain we went shopping in the street and then met for lunch.

These school children were around all day today in their yellow hats

The view down the hill

Fresh water from the Mountain

Me next to one of the shrine items

The view from the temple

Lunch was a traditional Buddhist meal of various forms of tofu, as Buddhists are vegetarian. There was a definite lack of flavour, not much in the way of sauce to mix with the tofu to give it flavour, although I am also not a fan of the texture of tofu. After lunch we had free time as a group. We were originally going to a museum or theme park (including the option of a monkey park) but they were over an hour away and closed shortly. With only three hours of time available, we decided to walk around the city and ended up exploring one of the small shopping districts about a twenty minute walk from the hotel. I did have a look in Swarovski, but unlike other countries I have been in, the items were not that much cheaper to justify a purchase.  On the way back, we caught the subway, without Kaoru assisting us with her Japanese skills. 

As a reward, Kaoru took us out for a steak dinner - which was fantastic. We had all missed steak and it was so good to have it again. Afterwards, myself and the boys went to a toy store which was completely INCREDIBLE. I intend to go back there this Saturday to actually go shopping during my spare time. I seriously cannot wait. I have never seen so much variety in awesome toys!