Kyoto: Take My Hand And We'll Make It I Swear

Kyoto was hard work. We got lost every time we set foot outside our hostel. True to form, we also got lost before we'd even made it in. A pair of concerned locals spent twenty minutes examining our map before pointing a doubtful finger up the road. When the locals don't recognise the name of a street a whole five minutes walk away, you know you're in for a fun ride. 

Navigationally crippled, we made the most of our small triumphs - like successfully eating salad with chopsticks, nutting out the bus network, and shaking off camera-wielding school kids. These cheeky buggers seem willing to do almost anything to trick their way into a photo with a foreigner. But as long as it stayed school kids, it was okay. As for the older gentleman on the street... Britney Spears, pass the umbrella?

Working out the bus routes was an essential step for two little tourists in a big city. Kyoto is massive. It's also not that attractive. Outside of its parks and shrines, Kyoto is as concrete and grey as your next city. But those parks and shrines aren't bad at all, as Maddy and I discovered in Gion. You could tell it was prime geisha territory by the number of tourists posing for photos in hired costumes. We fortified ourselves with lunch in Maruyama Park near the first of a million iconic white stone bridges. Note autumn leaf overlay. Note ducks in placid pond. All the postcard pictures are true.

Something which should be noted by prospective tourists is that the temples in Kyoto appear to have been placed under a Muggle-repellant charm. This means that your map will shamelessly and repeatedly lie to you, and temples will disappear and reappear at will on roads you swear you've already taken. Despite this, Maddy and I managed to stumble upon Chion-In and its very lovely garden. It also sported a hugeish bell and a thousand steps so tall that we felt we'd shrunk. 

After wandering through a couple of the lantern-strung streets of Gion, we found ourselves back in the labyrinth. Up and up we went, elbows well-exercised by the swarms of fellow tourists, until at last we emerged at the foot of impressive temple number two, Kiyomizudera. I celebrated with a grey-coloured sesame and honey ice cream.

With Thursday came Nishikikoji Food Market - massive veggies, fish upon fish upon fish, placenta face cream - and Arashiyama, home of the famous bamboo walk that's featured in every guidebook. I was pretty underwhelmed on first entering the path until suddenly the light dimmed, the air cooled, the sound died, and all around were giant shoots of bamboo. It was like an alien forest, or the giant green head of a toothbrush. I'd never thought much on the existence of bamboo leaves until I saw the high-reaching foliage clusters overhead. 

We then bought tickets to enter the garden of a silent film era celebrity (a rip off, frankly) and saw a couple of temples before heading back into the city. Not sure Arashiyama is worthy of a visit unless you've got a bit of time to spare in Kyoto, or if you're massively into bamboo. 

On Friday we caught a train to Nara, a town described by Lonely Planet as being one of the most rewarding destinations in Japan. While I enjoyed the beautiful park in all its orange, red and yellow-leaved finery, it didn't overwhelm me with reward so much as deer. The clear highlight of Nara was the giant Buddha we found in Todaji Temple. The temple itself is the biggest wooden structure in the world, yet presently stands at two thirds of its original size. Most ancient temples in Japan seem to have been burned to the ground at one point or other, and rebuilt in the 17th century. Anyway, the Great Buddha was humongous and undoubtedly deserving of his 1200 sacred deer prowling the perimeters of the park. 

How we laughed at the signs warning of deer attacks. Deer may bite, kick, butt or knock you down, they said. Do not feed the deer, they said. There were as many stalls selling deer biscuits as there were signs. We watched one school boy feed a biscuit to a deer from his mouth. We watched another deer inhale some poor woman's map rather than the biscuit in her other hand. Stupid tourists, we said. 

Shaking our heads, we retired to a park bench and got stuck into lunch until I looked up and saw a single deer approach. This deer was joined by a second, and then another, and in the space of fifteen seconds we were surrounded. Two of the deer started butting the others away and snorting fiercely. One approached us from behind. Hitchcock's birds had nothing on this. We fled, for real, bags swinging and food held high in the air. 

Saturday was declared a deer-free day. Kinkaku-ji temple was our first order of business, being the renowned Golden Pavilion of Kyoto. I'd pictured something much gaudier than what we found. Kinkaku-ji is beautiful, a whole lot of gold foil put to good use, and the reflected sheen on the surrounding lake is really something to see. 

A little further down the road we hit upon Ryoan-ji, temple of extensive autumn garden and hugely famous rock garden: lots of raked pebbles studded with a rock every now and then. The other tourists really seemed to get into it. 

And then we found the highlight of Kyoto: Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine. We had to take the train a couple of stops out of the city to get close and personal with Mount Inari. Alighting from the train, we walked through a big red torii gate as per usual. And then we walked through another. And suddenly torii gates exploded out of everywhere like the self-replicating cards at the end of Solitaire. We must have walked through hundreds on hundreds of torii as we climbed the stairs up the mountain. There's about a half-day's hike worth of the gates up and around that mountain, but the fading light and Maddy's feet suggested we should leave that for a future trip to Japan. 

We rounded off our Saturday with karaoke at Jun-Kara, a chain of karaoke bars with a mad happy face logo and plastic chandeliers. We really should have planned a song list during our forty minute wait, but instead we rocked up to our private room, realized we had no idea how to use the machine, grabbed a poor unsuspecting member of staff and got the help/drinks we required. And from there it was all 'say my name, sun shines through the rain' and 'won't somebody help me chase the shadows away'.

Sunday was all about Himeji Castle. We took a train out of Kyoto and arrived in Himeji to the sight of the magnificent castle. It was sketched on the side of a giant banner covering the actual building. Hurray for renovations. Once inside the castle, things started looking a lot better. Himeji is one of the oldest and most intact of Japan's castles, and importantly bears strong resemblance to Minas Tirith. It wasn't hard to imagine Denethor flinging himself from the side of various wing-edged towers. 

We had a particularly interesting dining experience on Sunday night when we found a teppanyaki place and watched our food get cooked in front of us. We later realized that we ourselves were being watched by our neighbours. There was a lot of 'where are you from' and 'you use chopsticks wrong' and 'hold like this, like this!' And then there was the man who wanted to shake hands, but didn't seem to know what this was meant to involve. Both my hand and lower arm got a lengthy sort of squeeze out of it. But it was all right in the end; they bought us okonomiyaki. Free food!

On Monday we visited Kinkakuji's silver counterpart, Ginkakuji, which turned out not to be silver at all. Apparently there were grand silvery intentions for the building somewhere along the way, which presumably hit certain economic hurdles. It's still quite a good-looking temple for all its non-silveriness, and comes equipped with another of those lovely bridge-fountain-moss-red leafed gardens. 

Nonetheless, I felt the need to console myself with a green tea ice cream (yuck) and a pleasant stroll down the Path of Philosophy, which sprouts temples every few metres. Ryuan-ji had been recommended to us so we stopped for a brief sticky at its magical fairyland garden. It had the requisite bridge and moss and leaves and such, but added a splash of Enchanted Woods. All the goblins live there. It was the Rainbow Fish of Kyoto gardens. 

Next stop was the Imperial Park and Palace, though our plans were thwarted at the Palace door by an unfriendly permit-demanding sign. (Note to future visitors: grab your passport and head to the info centre early to get said permit and join an English tour.) The actual park was huge and leafy so we took a good long wander before making our way to Pontocho. This narrow little street is parked beside a river near the Gion district, and is lined with high calibre restaurants. We marked one out for dinner and filled time by walking along the riverbank. Dinner was an incredible tuna steak grilled with sesame, an eggplant and shrimp dish, and tempura, all of it eaten with a fabulous river view. Lovely. Right up until the moment the food poisoning hit me.

Our day trip to Osaka on Tuesday got off to a bit of a late start (curse you, tempura!) but we were go go go from the moment we leapt from the train. With a $20 day pass (all attractions plus subway) in our hands, we headed straight for Osaka Castle. It has one hell of a moat. You could keep an aquarium's worth of laser-sharks in there. Even Maddy was impressed. The castle gates contained extremely massive stones, which we later learned were only a few centimetres thick. Not so fortified then. 

The castle made a striking sight, blowing Himeji's decorative curtain out of the water, and the museum housed within was filled with interesting historical notes. Tapestries depicting brutal summer and winter sieges were explained in gory detail. Most of the people involved seemed to wind up killing themselves. Sucks to be on the losing team. 

Our next stop was Tsutenkaku, an iconic observation tower and some sort of museum of the bizarre and freakish. Maddy and I didn't understand what was going on. Was it a casino? Pocky stick world? A WWF museum? Whatever it was, all the Japanese visitors seemed to be having a great time. We admired the views, exchanged hunted glances, and then battled our way through the endless maze of gift shops to the exit. 

We thought the giant ferris wheel in Osaka's Bay Area would make a safe next stop, but we arrived to find it closed due to strong wind. This strong wind was doing its best to freeze our toes off. With a final burst of energy, we decided to hunt down the super modern Floating Garden observation deck back near the central train station. It was an extremely sci-fi sort of experience. 

After taking an elevator to the fortieth floor, we stepped into what was essentially a giant disc suspended between two silver towers, about where Sauron's eye would be. There, we wrote a wish on a star and stuck it to the side of the building as instructed, and headed up a final few floors to the outdoor level of the observatory. The ground sparkled with multicolored lights - we think this was the garden aspect - and Osaka sprawled out in all its sparkly lit-up glory around us. It was beautiful, and freezing. Maddy and I got a photo taken in a particularly romantic location which I later discovered was reserved for lovers. Suddenly the comments of 'oh you're with someone' and 'so cute!' made a lot more sense. 

Still less awkward than when the Stansted customs lady asked if Michael and I were married. Overall, a fantastic way to end our visit to Osaka and our stay in Kyoto.