View as we eat breakfast:
Traditional Japanese breakfast:
We then took the bus to Kinkakuji (by now, taking the bus is no big deal for us liao, feel very proud of that fact). As we were walking towards the temple, Liang refused to trust my directions and insisted on stopping to check the map himself. A nice old lady walked over to us and said:
her: smth smth smth ka?? (din understand again)
me: Kinkakuji??
her: smth smth smth (i din understand her directions, but I just knew we were walking in the correct direction, so i said..
me: massugu?? (=straight?)
her: hai hai. massugu desu
So Liang had no choice but to admit i'm right, muahahaha.
The Kinkakuji is a famous temple in Kyoto, renowned for its golden pavillion and its reflection in the pond.
It's freaking full of tourists even though it's so early in the morning. Think this is the first time we encountered tourists in our three days here cos the past few days I tried to avoid the popular tourist atractions, so we hurry up took the opportunity to ask people to take photos for us.
It's also a tourist trap, with many sourvenirs on sale.
[I can't help myself and bought a good luck charm for my friend, when i saw the pink, flowery 'good match' charm I tot of her immediately, cos she, like me, like pink and flowery stuff and I obviously can't buy for myself with Liang standing there mah. When I gave it to her, she asked me where to put it and I said, "err maybe can tuck into ur *cough* undergarments so that u can emit 'attractive vibes' wherever u go." hahahaha]
After that, we found our way to Chion-in temple. I actually intended to take a bus to somewhere else instead, but the lure of the air-conditioned and convenient subway made me change my itinerary. It was a wrong move tho, as we found out that Chion-in temple was a long, long walk away from subway.
It was quite an amusing walk, cos alot of the local folks got off the train tog with us and we all walked up a long slope tog, kinda like a school excursion liddat. I din realise this at first, until Liang and I stopped to take a photo, and suddenly throngs and throngs of people overtook us.
Chion-in temple is a temple for wisdom, and also has many pretty sakura blossoms.
During Gion festival, it's a popular temple for geishas to visit.
I said, "this temple is for wise people one"
Liang: "that's me!"
I suppose the steep climb symbolises the tough journey to attain wisdom.
However, we found a sideroad that's less steep, prob for the older folks to walk up. Heehee.
We then headed to our next must-see temple in kyoto, Kiyomizudera temple.
After walking 10minutes, we chanced upon Maruyama park, a popular park during cherry blossom season.
We were simply astounded by the number of people hanging around, having picnics on those ubiquitous blue mats.
Also, saw two short-haired Sandys aka dachshunds aka Ah-Te, my mother's old dog last time.
I asked someone for directions to Kiyomizudera temple and how long to get there, and the woman said, "ni-ju pun (=20min)".
Remember this 20min, dear friends, remember.
By now, total walking time is probably 1 whole hour, so we also rested for awhile in the park. Poor liang is exhausted. And i'm freaking hot from all the walking. You can see as the day progress, me slowly dismantling parts of my outfit.
And so we walked, and we walked. Along with many many many people.
Up very very steep slopes.
20minutes came and went.
Liang kept saying that maybe my lousy grasp of japanese caused me to think that lady said twenty minutes when she really meant twenty hours.
And we finally reached! At 40min!
To discover to my horror, that there is still a steep climb to reach the main temple itself
This is a badly taken photo of the entrance because i just very tiredly snap the photo from the bench i collapsed onto when i saw it.
Quite funny, there we were, trying to drink the very last drop of water we own and looking utterly exhausted, when suddenly the lady next to me started blabbling to me in Japanese, i told her I didn't understand.
And she stood up, and repeated her speech slowly, and emphasizing a few words repeatedly.
I caught the word 'ocha' (=tea) but looked very bewildered at why this lady was telling me abt tea. She then mimed the drink tea action, and i finally figured out that she's trying to tell us that just left at the top of the steep flight of stairs, there's a station where there's free tea. Free! she stressed.
She must have seen how we were so thirsty and thus tried to get this important msg across to us.
Haiyo, so embarrassing lor!
This is what all the hard work is for, the amazing hanging temple of Kiyomizudera.
The entire temple is overhanging a cliff, and supported only by wooden pillars, no nails and metal involved.
It's one of the nominees for the new 7 wonders of the world.
However, you can tell from my cheesed off face that i'm really really really very tired.
There is also this portion of the temple where there's 2 tiny stone statues placed 10m apart and if one can walk from 1 statue to the other with their eyes closed then they will find true love. I wanted to take a look, but i think it's on another steep slope, so i decided to give it a miss.
Felt a bit cheated, climb so long but din see much. But saw some incredibly beautiful sakura tho, pacified me abit.
We then took a shorter, but still long, route downhill, and immediately popped into the first (cheap) restaurant we saw.
One thing abt menus in Japanese restaurants that are catered to locals, is that the menus are all in jap. Not Romanji (where they use alphabets to spell out the jap translation) or even hiragana (which i can read abit) but katakana. I then walked out of the restaurant to look at the food samples and try to memorise their names, when the very nice manager saw me and he asked, "smth smth menyuu??" and I "hai"-ed (by then i've already learnt that hai-ing my way thru most questions get me the result i want) and he passed me a picture book menu, yay!
My tempura udon
After a nice long lunch, we considered our options and decided to go for another strenuous 45minute stroll along the Path of Philosophy, cos it sounded like a quiet peaceful stroll along the river and sakura.
Little did i know that there were tons of other people who also wanted to stroll along this path, i thought we'd be the only crazy people with this idea.
Very interesting and fun nonetheless, feel a sense of bonding to my fellow walkers, bonded by the common admiration for sakura.
Bought myself a pretty ice-cream to cheer up the stroll, very nice. Dunno what flavour, tho Liang thinks it's bubblegum.
He grumpy lar, cos i tot the ice-cream has a mix of green tea flavour (looks green on the poster) but turns out it's just vanilla.
So we walk walk walk walk walk walk, and we really walked for 40minutes lo.
Sights along the river:
haha then we jumped on the first bus we saw that brings us to Gion corner and happily took a nap on it.
Gion corner is where tourists go to capture photos of geishas, because thats where they go for their appointments.
And i really do mean capture, because only the lucky ones get to catch sight of them (for free, of cos).
While the junior geishas (maikos) are more open to the public, they dun mind strolling along the streets while we run after them and take photos like paparazzi, the true geishas are a secretive sort, they sit in their cabs right up to the door of the establishment, and then furtively run in to their appointment.
That said, Liang and I were really lucky.
I managed to take a good photo of a Maiko the moment we reach, and also would have had shot another geisha if this uncle din jump in front of me at the last min, thus resulting in me having a photo of his oily scalp.
We also saw 4 or 5 'true' geishas in their cabs and try as we might to 'snipe' them (liang's term, snipe as in sniper) we failed, and took various photos of roads, traffic cones and tires.
After the first 15min of excitement, Liang grew tired of being a sniper (he got so bored he sniped me and then moved on to sniping inanimate objects, which defeats the purpose of sniping really) as there were no more geishas in sight (one can easily imagine that you can really spend a fruitless 1hr here) and I got hungry.
We decided to walk over to Nishiki Market for dinner.
Along the way, I visited my first Japan toilet that's in a shopping centre, cos there were signs in English at the entrance of shopping centres welcoming us to use their toilets. What a welcome change to our S'pore toilets.
The toilet also deserves a small mention on its own.
When I first sat down on the toilet seat, I jumped up immediately in disgust, because it is warm and i thought that was the heat left behind by the previous occupant. shudders, but then i realised that the toilet seat is actually electronically heated, whoa, utter bliss in the cold weather.. the Amazing Toilet (it's so amazing it deserves capital letters) also has a button that provides a loud flushing sound that drowns out any embarrassing sounds that might be produced while u do ur business, and a button that produces a refreshing scent haha. Also not forgetting those that provide cleaning functions, but i gave them a miss. Needless to say, I spent quite alot of time on that seat exploring the various buttons.
Dinner was at a family restaurant, these places usually offer a staggering variety of both Japanese and Western dishes, that is of average quality but cheap price. Most importantly, they have a photo menu.
The meal costs us less than 20dollars in total!
After dinner, we were under pressure to leave asap or face the fate of spending the night at ulu town, so we had to ask for directions to the subway.
I flagged down this nerdy looking jap student, but he din understand what;s 'subway'! I tried some other jap words for 'station' but he just looked at us blankly.
Then I said, "it's okay" and sort of waved him off, and he looked damn apologetic and muttered a sincere apology and gave me a full 120 degree bow! If I weren't so stressed I would have burst out laughing.
Liang asked a middle-aged lady in English, and she mimed the 'underground' action, you know, the move hand down a slide action, and we got our directions and ran like hell to catch the train, much like the locals here. (everyone even the chiobus in their high heels run in subway stations. Amazing)
Forgot to mention, at the office next to the gates (look exactly like our control station), one guy will stand at the open window and everytime someone walks through the gates, which is like 20 every minute, the poor person has to say "arigato gozaimasu" (=thank you). What a sucky job!
We managed to catch the last bus by the skin of our teeth.
And that concludes our time in Kyoto, it's really a beautiful city brimming with culture and traditional Japan charm. I think it's my favourite city.
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