Kyoto

We bought two Exchange Orders for Japan Rail (JR) Passes as the very last thing before we left the UK. With so much focus on getting into China, I'm afraid I didn't consider Japan as much as I should have.

On the morning of the 26th we went into the tunnels under Tokyo's Ikebukuro station and found the central passageway. We couldn't spot the JR Service Centre that the website had told us about, but Clare spotted an information booth and as we approached, we saw that they would swap our vouchers for the go-anywhere rail passes. This they did, with impeccable politeness and perfect English.

That done, we went into the JR ticket office, handed over my scrap of paper with the bullet train times we wanted to travel on and walked out with seat reservations.

We strolled away feeling very pleased with ourselves, but really it was like "kicking in an open door".

The following day we caught a train on the "outer loop" to Tokyo station and found the Shinkansen (bullet train) area. The only problem we had was that we'd arrived slightly too early and had to wait for the platform to be displayed.

Near the platform I spotted a snack stall and bought a lunchbox by looking at the pictures and signing the relevant number to the lady with my fingers.

The train came in to Tokyo, was turned round and went back the way it came in. I say "turned round" literally, because the cleaners went through and rotated every pair of seats to face the other way, just as we'd seen on the Narita Airport Express.

Once on the train, I unwrapped the paper round the lunchbox and found a wood-effect box (polystyrene if you looked closely enough), with a lid and divided into 12 compartments.

Some of the contents were various types of sushi or sashimi, which I love back home. However, quite a few I had no idea about, but ate them anyway.

I was just thinking that all I needed for perfection was a beer, when a trolley came through and even that was solved.

The train sped through the countryside even faster than the bullet trains in China. There are yet faster Japanese bullet trains, but our JR pass doesn't cover them.

So much of the Japanese countryside looked very much like England to me, except the buildings which resemble those in the suburbs of US cities.

Where we saw land under cultivation (I don't really feel I can call it farmland), it was in much larger parcels than we'd seen in China, reflecting (I guess) a far higher level of automation.

Clare has taken the role of hotel-finder, while I stick with transport. She'd chosen the hotel beneath the Kyoto Tower. This is right outside the station, sits on a 9-storey building and reaches up 131m.

As is our wont, we took the rest of the day at ease, venturing only as far as a convenience store and eating in the cafe next door to it. I ate something a lot like boeuf bourguignon with rice, very tasty and unctuous but I'm not sure how local. Clare stuck with noodles and veg.

Saturday the 28th started with me having a bit of a bluey. Kyoto only has two subway lines (N-S & E-W), and the guidebooks made it clear that these wouldn't get us near to many of the places we'd want to see.

That means we'd have to use buses, and in my experience they are an awful lot more work and how would I know where to get off if all the signs were only in Japanese characters?

We went to the Tourist Information Centre in Kyoto Station and asked for the maps, etc. recommended in our guide book.

The station is a sight in itself, rising from ground level in the centre to tenth floor or higher at each end up a single tall hill of escalators - quite a sight from bottom or top, all mirrored walls, and the subject of many photos that morning.

We went up to the very top, to a poorly-named Sky Garden (sky yes, garden no) to read our bumph. First we looked at the organised coach tours of the main sites, but worked out they were £88 per head so ditched those pronto.

Then I looked at a leaflet called "Bus Navi". That changed everything. The city is laid out in a grid, and this leaflet shows in a very clear and simple way which buses go along every major street, where each route goes, the name of every stop (in English/Latin letters) and hence where to change. I don't know if it's won any awards for information design, but it certainly deserves to.

I could immediately see how to get everywhere we needed to go and my mood soared.

We took the subway to the Kitaoji bus terminal in the north of the city and bought 500Y day tickets. The stops for major sights are well signed here, and we caught the bus to the Daitokuji Temple. Bus stops are mainly foot-square brown columns with their name printed in Japanese and "English". I followed the stops on the map to tell where to get off, but there are recorded announcements in English for the big tourist stops too.

Daitokuji Temple turned out to be a complex of sub-temples, only a few of which are open to visitors and charge an entrance fee. We went in one (no shoes, bags or photographs) and enjoyed the simplicity of the rooms and raked-gravel zen gardens (as did a swarm of bees).

No so impressed, we caught another bus to the Kinkakuji Temple, best known for its Golden Pavillion (covered in real gold leaf), beautifully reflected in the lake on which it stands. There was quite a scrum of people with cameras, all heading for the most photogenic vantage point, but a little patience paid off.

Next we went to the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park. My friend Harpreet had told us not to bother and he was right. It was all quite plain. We used the hole-in-the-floor public toilets and were amused to see a lighthearted instructional diagram taped to the wall near floor level (fortunately laminated).

Eventually we found a small patch with some cherry trees still in blossom and a little stream. The few weeks of blossom are a huge thing here in Kyoto, and we were very fortunate to catch the tail-end of this, here and other places (even if I did get a bit sick of Clare's mantra "they're past their best").

We headed for Nijo Castle, but Clare spotted it was shutting soon, so we headed back toward the hotel. We spotted a little canal down beside the street and enjoyed a stroll on the footpath before squeezing onto a very busy bus home.

Many or most local restaurants have models of their dishes outside or in their window, apparently extremely well-made in wax. We saw one that would do Clare grilled chicken and a bowl of noodles (which I started eating by mistake) and for me another "lunch box" of even less recognisable things - don't tell me, I can enjoy them as long as I don't know.

We began Sunday the 29th by going up the Kyoto Tower on top of our hotel - pretty good views, even if the centre of the city is a couple of kilometres north. Then we took the subway to Nijo Castle, home to the first shogun. This has two compounds, each surrounded by a moat, one inside the other. The banks inside the moats are stone-faced and steeply sloping. We were amazed by the buildings, with so many walls (both internal and external) simply paper-covered lattice screen panels.

I'd booked by email for a Twilight Walking Tour, and we left even earlier than planned to catch the bus to the start point. Unfortunately, the traffic was appalling and we got later and later, finally speed-walking up a fairly steep hill to arrive at the last possible moment. Guide Cookie said she'd expected we might be late as today was a public holiday and very busy.

Cookie taught us many interesting things over the next couple of hours, as we wandered through picturesque old streets, including answering questions we'd built up:
- What are the food models made of? Wax.
- Are they for tourists? No, they're traditional.
- Can Japanese people tell Japanese and Chinese apart by sight? No, Japan is quite a polyglot nation.
- What are the thatched-looking temple roofs made of? Maple bark, which is harvested without killing the trees and reserved for this purpose.
- Isn't it cold with paper walls? They slide solid wooden panels across at night or in case of rain, but it can still get pretty cold.
- These buildings don't look very old? Most are 100-150 years old, but have to be kept in good repair because they're made from fragile materials (one exception being the silvery glazed roof tiles, which always seem to look new).

She also explained the world of Geikos (not Geishas, which now has unfortunate connotations) and Maikos, who are apprentice Geikos but may be doing it for interest over a few late-teenage years (a bit like au pairs) rather than as a career.

At the end of the tour, we went to catch a bus home but the queue was huge, so we travelled on two separately-owned subway systems instead.

We got back to the hotel for our planned Skype session with Clare's son Robert and girlfriend Louise. The video was excellent, over our tiny wi-fi router plugged into the hotel room's Ethernet point.

For dinner we treated ourselves to delicious McDonalds meals (one of the nicest McD's I remember). Unfortunately, this set off Clare's recurring tummy problem quite badly.

On Monday 30th I went just across from our hotel to join a few-hour walking tour. Clare stayed in the hotel room for a rest. Five of us were waiting, but eventually we worked out it was a public holiday so the tour wasn't running.

Later on, Clare and I set off to do the "Philosopher's Walk". Again by subway to Kitaoji bus terminal, then a bus to Ginkakuji Temple. This had a nice enough garden but we couldn't see anything silvery about the Silver Pavillion - definitely a poor relation to the Gold one that impressed us the other day.

The Philosopher's Walk (as helpfully tipped by Harpreet, or "Path of Philosophy" on maps) is a trail by an old canal, which runs at the edge of the built-up area and below steeply wooded hills. We wandered along, very much enjoying our own pace and the few trees retaining their blossom.

Between the south end of the Path of Philosophy and the subway station we found the Nanzenji Temple. This had two features that interested us. The first was a huge gateway-cum-elevated-temple, a substantial building raised up on huge pillars and with a balcony all around.
The second was an aqueduct, brick-built in a European style and over a hundred years old. First we couldn't work out why someone had gone to so much trouble, and then why so much water was flowing toward the hills, rather than away. Out of curiosity we followed the water, only for it to disappear into a tunnel. Subsequent googling indicates that, despite the vintage, it's part of a hydro-electric scheme!

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for a thousand years, so it has quite a few things to see. Many of them are temples, and after a while they do get "samey". Anyway, I think we've given Kyoto a fair look round and can move on with a clear conscience.