Kyoto

Stairway in Kyoto Station that produces images at night

Weds., March 14 -
Time to say goodbye to Fukinomori Ryokan and start the 3 1/2 hour train trip to Kyoto.  We started with two local trains to Nagoya and then onto the bullet train to Kyoto.  The local trains filled up quickly and the second train announcements were only in Japanese.  Up until now the amount of English (written and spoken) on all of the trains, buses and subways has been impressive and made the travel quite easy. 

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over 1,000 years up until the 1860's and remains the most culturally important city in Japan.  It has 1,700 Buddhist temples and 300 Shinto shrines, as well as palaces, castles, canals and gardens.  But you would never know that when you pull into Kyoto station.  The station is a large, modern, glass structure built in 1997.  It is an 11 story building and includes a hotel, shops, restaurant, access to the subway station and the bus station.  Our hotel is located about 0.7 of a mile from the station and only 1 subway stop away.  We walked to the hotel, checked our baggage and took the subway back to the station to find lunch and explore.  It is very convenient that the subway card from Tokyo also works in Kyoto as well as 8 other cities.  We still had several hundred yen of credit on our cards from Tokyo so we are using them here as well. 

One of many very old temples in Kyoto

Surprisingly large grocery stores are located on the bottom floor of department stores at the train stations.  And of course there is a large department store in the train station, so it was a lot of fun wandering around to see all the selections.

We returned again to the station for dinner and to see the "Big Stairway".  In an open-air area in the center of the building from floor 8 to floor 11 is a concrete stairway with LED lights that create changing and moving pictures.  The top of the station offers terrific views of the city from all angles.

Thursday., March 15 -
Our schedule for today included a private half-day tour of Kyoto by bike organized through the Kyoto Cycling Tour Project.

On our bike tour in front the Heian Shrine

Our guide, Hideki, spoke very good English, having spent some time at Boston University.  He took us through the back streets of Kyoto stopping at many points of interest along the way.  Our first stop was Higashi-Honganji Temple, a very large Buddhist temple.  Our second stop was a smaller Giesha area, followed by the much bigger and busier Gisha area of Gion.  Then we wondered our way over to the Heian Shrine, a Shinto shrine.  We biked to Imperial Palace along a canal, and saw our first cherry blossom tree in full bloom.  Parking our bikes we toured the Imperial Palace and gardens before returning to Kyoto station area where we started. 

Ted was worried that it would be hard to find a bike to fit him but he ended up with a Cannondale Mountain bike that was only about 2 sizes too small, but rideable with the seat extended to the limit.   He liked the kickstands on the bikes so well that after a quick and tasty lunch of Raman noodles(nothing like the packaged stuff) at one of the many restaurants in the train station  and dumplings we went to Bic Camera to purchase a bike stand to take home.

We are a little early, but there are a few Cherry trees that are starting to bloom