A soft morning sun would mark the beginning of my shinkansen-powered tour to Kyoto and Hiroshima.
But first, a quick and traditional Japanese breakfast at the hotel.
Tasty!
I also was suckered into watching these short 15 minute j-doromas in the morning:
I know better now, but until you are accustomed to the distances between the different train lines and the shinkansen tracks, you should almost treat your shinkansen travel like airport travel and try to get there earlier than normal. If not for some light jogging, I made it to my train with barely a minute to spare before it pulled away from the station. Sure, I could have taken a subsequent train in the non-reserved seats, but it would have been time lost. Lesson learned.
"For your safety do not rush for your train."
Another reason to show up earlier to the train station, is that a larger station like Tokyo Station will have more options for ekibens. (Eki = station, ben = bento or lunch box). I settled for buying one from the lunch cart, which wasn't too bad, but far simpler.
Finally, I arrived at Kyoto Station, and it is a pretty large complex itself.
Fond of high ceilings are you?
Kyoto Tower, paling in comparison to Tokyo Tower:
Now my package directions mentioned that you could take a cab to the hotel, but didn't really offer the train as an option. I had figured that perhaps the train ride wasn't as convenient as just walking. So I started walking north, expecting a short and brisk walk north. (It was brisk, but not short.)
I found myself at one of the larger temples I had been to, to date.
It always leaves me in a sense of awe when I stand before large ancient structures. Without the aid of modern machinery, anything of this scale either involved a large amount of time or a large amount of manpower, or both. We take for granted that most of our larger structures take no more than a year or two, with a fraction of the manpower.
Most actively maintained temples and shrines will have a water basin to wash your hands and your mouth before you approach the main area.
Shoes off to walk around in the main temple area here:
(Plastic bags to carry your shoes in, and a receptacle to place the bags back in when you're done.)
Did I ever tell you what I was doing with all that hair of yours that I was collecting?
Nice wood work:
After exploring the temple, I took a longer than expected walk, but finally made it to the hotel and my room with its odd choices in wall paper.
Quickly dropping off my stuff, it was time to hit up some more places before they closed before sundown. First up, Nijo Castle.
Pretty large complex. Note the moat within a complex with a moat.
An older fellow who dresses up and shows up at tourist places to let his picture get taken, encounters a group of women wearing kimonos.
The women were just a group of friends who decided to wear kimonos while sightseeing:
Intricate artistry:
A lot of wonderful gardens on the compound. Why even leave?
Interesting works being done with bamboo:
And if there are going to be a certain amount of tourists, you better believe that they'll have vendor stalls set up.
A mochi variant with sweet sauce:
On the way out from the castle, I ran across two friends wearing kimonos. I decided to unleash my broken Japanese on them, and ask for a picture. Each of them was nice enough to take a picture with me.
I liked the color of her kimono:
Whereas the overall combination with the overcoat looked really nice for her:
It might seem that I didn't spend a lot of time at the castle. Why you ask? Well, I was dying to to get
here:
A former elementary school, it now serves as one of the larger repositories for manga and also conducts manga research as well.
For the price of admission, you'll have full access to any of their public collection. An enormous collection of manga spanning multiple decades, with entire series available. There were smaller collections in different languages such as English available as well. With this is mind, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that people would be here from open to close.
It was a lot of fun to see so much manga all under one roof. I went hunting for some of my favorite series as well. There were a couple of exhibits available as well which were informative. There were some sketch artists on site, but I already missed the cut off to get my sketch done before closing. Maybe next time.
To be continued...
