Up at 1am as usual. We were actually staying 2 nights in Kyoto. Rare for me to have 2 nights in the same city. We walked back towards the main train station, past the temple complex, and caught the westbound train to the Bamboo Grove with a brief stop at a French bakery for breakfast.
Before reaching the grove we hit the Tenryu-Ji Temple
A few choice pics of bamboo. Lots of people. These things grow fast and relatively straight, making them a great predecessor to PVC.
Starving, Amy made me try this imitation crab on a stick. I should have learned my lesson about street seafood the other day. It was terrible. Amy said she remembered it to be terrible, making you wonder why she would insist on me eating it.
We then headed back to Kyoto station, and waited to board shuttle to Nara. Nara was the original capital of Japan. We have now completed the capital circuit!
Because we were pressed for time before our train to Nara we went to a noodle shop in the Kyoto station. It is a pretty cool concept throughout Japan. Instead of walking up to a fast food counter and holding up the line deciding on what you want, you make your selection and pay for meal in a sort of pop machine outside the restaurant. It prints out a ticket and you hand it to the chef inside. It is a bit intimidating as the machine has 700 combinations and hard to get a feel for what you want. I am sure they will all be replaced in a few years with touchscreen displays.
The escalators are funny in Japan. People love to line up here. The escalator has defined rules. If you are on the left you stand, and the right is for walking. People will line up for 50 feet on the left before just going up the right and standing, if that makes sense. In America people would just stand or walk wherever. I love it here. One guy on escalator was standing on the right when he should have been walking and got steamrolled. The weird thing is that when it comes to walking in an open area, like train station or on the street, there are no rules. People walk on the right, left, and middle. You are constantly dodging oncoming traffic. It just doesn’t make any sense!
We arrived at Nara and walked for a mile to the center of the action
The reason we came to Nara is for the deer. Deer are revered here. They walk the streets like kings and queens. They even bow after you feed them one of the approved snacks for sale around town.
Here is a funny sign I saw
I am sure I got Lyme Disease in the process.
We came back to Kyoto and walk around the nightlife area along the river. We loved all the back alleys with hidden places where produce was sitting out as advertisements of the night’s upcoming menu
For lunch we hit up a ramen joint. This one was unique. It had the same self-service ticket operation in the front, but you sat down at a private counter and a screen came up and you slid the ticket under. In 5 minutes it opened back up and your food appeared.
It felt like so peep show where you drop a quarter and watch 5 minutes of hedonism before it closes again.
This is what I found in the bathroom. No idea what this was all about
We stopped at a bar for a drink. The bartender made us some local concoctions with plum wine.
And another stop for do-it-yourself beef and chicken, which turned out to be our dinner
On the way back to the lodging we stopped at a casino. Japanese play some crazy game called Pachinko. It is a kind of slot machine where you get a bunch of ball bearings and they fly around this board and based on where they land you win more ball bearings. I guess you redeem them for cash but I never left with anything. I wonder if I could just opt to leave with a bucket of ball bearings instead of the cash
We hit up the Japanese bath and it was another chill night
The next day we had to head to Kanazawa. Since our lodging was open air, it was a bit weird standing in the courtyard in my robe brushing my teeth in 30 degree weather. We bid adieu to our hosts and they got on the ground and bowed to us. It was strange for Amy, but I am used to this sort of thing. They loaded us up with snacks and asked for positive reviews on tripadvisor in broken English.
At the train station we loaded up on Japanese pancakes
Kanazawa is along the West Coast of the main island. So as if fish wasn’t already a big deal in Japan, this place doubled down on fish consumption. The weather was rough when we got there. We dropped our bags of at the Ryokan and walked to the market
Japan also has vending machines all over the place. There are not Starbucks on each corner because they just grab a hot or cold coffee from the vending machines. I guess they do not put as much value on the fresh brewed late made by a bohemian barista as we do. And everything seems to be made by the same company: Suntori. They make the coffee, tea, pop and whiskey.
I love how the trees have their own support system. A lot of work is put into the maintenance of each tree
Also, this country is incredibly clean, but there are no garbage cans anywhere! I guess if there is no cans people will take it all home. That would not fly in the US. We would have no problem just dumping or dropping it anywhere, I assume.
We went back to checkin. Another nice spot, but this one was a bit dated. Looked like it was straight out of the 70s
After another bath we went to a local brewery: Oriental Brewery
It is kinda funny how they pour the beers. Apparently they like a lot of foam, as it seemed like ¼ of the draft was all head.
It was raining so a short walk around their geisha district
We hailed a cab to get back to Ryokan. I tried to show him the name of the lodging but he did not understand. I then showed him the name of street but that did not register either. I then realized that I was showing him the English translation of the names. Even though the names looked Japanese to me, it was not using their characters. I felt like an idiot. Eventually Amy just pulled up a picture of the statue near our place and he knew where that was
We walked a bit near our place and found a great spot for dinner where we could sit just over the kitchen area and pick and watch food being prepared. Our best meal of the trip
We even tried the deadly blowfish
Very salty, kinda like sardines
After dinner I returned to my leisure ware and it was a quiet night. Tomorrow we explore the city a bit further.
Until Tomorrow,
Darren
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