Kyoto Day 2

Our second day in Kyoto consisted entirely of touristy goodness. This means hiking (and I DO mean hiking...lots of hills in Kyoto...) through town to all of the famous shrines and temples (there is a difference, I've learned. Temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto). All I was missing was an overloaded fanny pack and plastic visor, neither of which, I am proud to say, I actually own. Considering I was going to be spending the bulk of my trip in Tokyo doing non-touristy things, I figured a few days of photographing Japan's national treasures and buying tacky souvenirs (Made in China, of course) wouldn't hurt.

We started our day bright and early at 4 AM! Taka started stirring around that time, which woke me up, and naturally we eventually woke up Ann (sorry! It wasn't on purpose!). None of us could fall back asleep (*shakes fist at jet lag*), so we decided that since we weren't going to be able to sleep, we might as well get out and about and start our day early. This proved to be quite successful in the entire scheme of things. Sure, we might have passed out pretty early... (ok, I passed out early. Like 7 PM early...*hangs head in shame*) but it was better than wasting time doing nothing in the hotel room.

Most public transportation starts running really early in the morning, around 5-5:30 AM, since most people get to work early. This was shocking to me as most businesses don't open to 10 AM. What people do between the time they get to work and the time they open is beyond me, but from what Taka tells me, Japanese companies WILL FIND things for their employees to do, even if it's pointless busy work. Then again, the average Japanese person could have upwards of an hour to an hour and a half commute to and from work each day, depending on how far their home is from their office.

And yes, people do sleep on the trains. I even saw some dozing while standing (not holding on to anything) and they never fell over. I firmly believe that Japanese people have some sort of super human balancing power. I, unfortunately, do not possess such a power and more than once almost took out a row of people by falling over on a train. Luckily it never actually happened. I eventually got the hang of riding the trains, but I'm never got comfortable not using some sort of handle or bar for support.






We took the subway from our hotel to Kyoto Station, which was only one stop and took all of 3 minutes. Kyoto station was DESERTED. I swear, it reminded me of something out of a zombie or apocalyptic movie. And by zombies I mean hungover business men wandering the streets in last night's suit and by apocalypse I mean learning that not all Japanese bathrooms have toilet paper (or toilets, for that matter...)

By this time it's about 6 AM and FREEZING. Thankfully, all Japanese convenience stores are open 24 hours, allowing us to pop into one at the station to get some breakfast. We weren't the only ones. There were a handful of people already browsing the morning selections before they caught their bus/train to work.

Now, breakfast in Japan is just about the exact opposite of what we consider breakfast in the western world. The traditional Japanese breakfast, which I did have the pleasure of eating once on my trip, consists usually of rice, grilled mackerel (or some other fish, but usually mackerel), and miso soup. Sometimes pickles are involved, but not always. Sounds like lunch, right? Well, it is not strange to eat what we would consider lunch or dinner foods in the early hours of the morning in Japan. In fact, some people will eat a couple of onigiri (onigiri means "ball of rice") and call it a morning. With globalization like it is, cereals and other western breakfast staples have managed to weasel their way onto Japanese plates, but the Japanese "style" breakfast still dominates, as it should.

We grabbed ourselves some bentos (bento means "boxed lunch") and extraneous items and parked it on a bench (the same bench that's not really a bench that I sat on the day before...granite is quite cold in the morning...) My bento included 3 small onigiri, tamagoyaki (which quickly ended up on the ground. My chopstick skills are apparently lacking in the morning. Too bad, as that was what I most wanted to eat!), a couple gyoza (dumplings), kara-age (fried chicken nuggets), and nikudango (lit. translation: meatball). Sorry I didn't take a picture of it. After the tamagoyaki mishap, I wasn't going to take any more risks and decided the best course of action was to shovel the rest of the food in my mouth before I managed to drop any more of it. I'm sure it was quite a spectical for those passing by. It definitely wasn't the pancakes, bacon, and eggs I was craving, but it worked.

Once we finished our breakfast, we walked over to the bus ticket booth, only to find out that even though the bus lines start running at 5 AM, the city bus ticket booth doesn't open till 7:30. So, we stood around the ticket booth, which was thankfully indoors and heated (even had a bakery!) for about 45 minutes. Taka mostly ranted about the girl who was working the booth the day before. She was rude and he reminded me multiple times that he refused to talk to her if she was working that morning. Talk about holding a grudge! The highway bus ticket booth opened at 7 AM, and even though Taka said he couldn't buy bus passes from them, I finally convinced him to ask and sure enough, I was right. We picked up our 2 day passes (unlimited rides for 2 days for ¥2000, which is about $18) Pretty good deal, and we got to keep the card as a souvenir. Worked out well as we rode the bus A LOT that day.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll stop here and make a new post about the temples, and the rest of our 2nd day.

Stay tuned!