Kyoto with Adrian

I haven't been able to post in a long time because I'm so busy, but I figured that I should at least post some pictures of Kyoto and Adrian since people keep asking me about them. Adrian arrived on the 21st, a couple days later than planned, which is too bad because he missed out on sleeping in a capsule hotel. hah. So that night we took a night bus to Kyoto, which was kind of a terrible experience. It's just a really long, uncomfortable bus ride where they expect you sleep, and they stop every two hours at these really weird truck stop places that are always freezing because its the middle of the night. I feel like I'm an expert on them because I've ridden three of them in the last ten days. Anyways, we got to Kyoto station really early in the morning and it was really pretty. Kyoto station is massive, the architecture of it is amazing. There are stairsin the middle of it that are so huge that from the bottom they look like they go into the sky.
We stayed at a great little hostel that was only like $30 bucks a night per person. It wasn't the cleanest, but it was really cute. The little old woman that runs it would come in every morning and give us bread that we could toast in the little kitchen and tea for us to drink in the little porch area with a breakfast area and rocking chair. This isn't a very good picture.
Kyoto is really interesting because you can see a lot of new development but at the same time you can tell that they try really hard to keep the old, small, traditional buildings. So you'll find a huge Pachinko center right next to a little Japanese store where the Ojiichan and Obaachan that run it sleep on the second floor house above it. At first it's almost like being in some kind theme park of old Japan.
The first place we went was Kiyomizu Temple. It's one of the most famous temples in Kyoto. To get there you have to walk up a hill that is of course lined with stores selling Japanese fans, and mochi, and other omiyage things. The temple is at the top and has an incredible view. It's really stunning.


I ordered hot tofu in a bucket that you scoop out with a metal spoon and we ate it on this cute roofed porch thing that was on a small cliff so it was up in the momiji leaves. Pretty much perfect.At night we went to the Kurama Fire Festival. It's a really famous festival that they have once a year in a town called Kurama that people pretty much only know of because of the festival. What they do is the men of the town carry these massive torch things in the streets around the temple. Finally, they bring all of them to the temple and it creates an amazing massive glow from all the flames. They also carry huge pole things, I don't really understand, and the older men play taiko drum. The festival is hours long and really intense. They start the boys off young getting ready for it because the torches are so huge and heavy that you have to be ridiculously strong to be able to carry them. In the beginning of the festival they have all the little boys pretend to carry smaller torches while in actuality bigger men are holding them at the back. It's really cute. I assume that when they are of age, these boys will become the men carrying the huge ones. It was pouring rain and the streets were packed with people with umbrellas. There were all these guards in bright white waterproof jumpsuits that controlled the crowd. It was a really crazy experience. 




The next day we went to Kinkakuji, the "Golden Pavilion" which is a beautiful temple built in the middle of a lake and covered in gold leaf. It's especially famous because at one point a monk burnt it down and it cost the city huge amounts of money to rebuild it, gold leaf and all.

On our last day Adrian and I went to an adorable town that's famous for its bamboo forest called Arashiyama. There, you can walk around this rural area where people make their homes into shops and sell products that they make like ceramics and crafts of that sort.

As you walk around there are also many smaller temples. We went to a really tiny one called the Gioji Temple thats famous for its gorgeous moss. I wanted to live there, and sleep on the moss, it was so beautiful. 
After that we went to the Tenyruji Temple. That one is a lot bigger and has a really beautiful lake.

Another thing that Arashiyama is famous for is the Togetsukyo bridge. So pretty. 

Arashiyama especially seems kind of like a theme park. In a way it almost is, just because Kyoto is so centered around tourism.  Because everyone makes their money from tourists, it creates an atmosphere in which everything is easily accessed and seems to exist only for your enjoyment. Of course though, it has so much more charm than an actual theme park because it retains its authenticity and natural beauty so well. 

Lastly, we went to a crazy monkey park up in the mounatins. There were monkeys. It was fun. 
That night Adrian and I took the bullet train back. We actually left the hostel late and had to get off the bus early and run with all our bags to the station through some little streets that cross between buildings and then through the huge station only to find that our train had already left. We went to the ticket office to see what we should do, and of course we got the cashier with mild down syndrome and a ridiculous speech impediment... but we figured out that we could actually just use our tickets for the next train....that was great because we didn't have to pay again, but I couldn't help being pissed that we ran so far for no reason. sigh.
Before Adrian left I took him to some of my favorite places in Tokyo. He was stoked that he found a huge ass bottle of Ramune in Shimokitazawa. We also went to Shibuya and Inokashira park where we rented a paddle boat. hehe.