Trip to Japan - FINAL PART I PROMISE!

It’s been too long in coming because I’ve been so busy and I promise that this is the final instalment, but here we go with the last part in the series on my trip to Japan!

I love going to places where the people are kind and polite. That’s why I liked Canada so much and New York not so much… (sorry guys). Japan is another place I love and not JUST for that reason.

The best day I had in Japan was when I met up with 5 members of AnD in Kyoto.

A week before leaving Spain I had contacted with Koko 930 and she had got in touch with Radwyn, Parismaki, Hikaru and Cocoa to see if she could arrange a get together at short notice.

Kyoto wasn’t quite what I had expected, I expected the whole city to be like a scene from a Kurasawa movie, just on a bigger scale, I hadn’t expected it to be exactly like every other city in the country, only with a couple of very small streets where the original character was conserved a bit.

If I were to sum up Kyoto in one word it would be “temples”. Kyoto is the spiritual capital of Japan; the emperor lived there from the end of the Nara period until the Meiji period, some 1100 years, and hence it was the focus of religious belief and worship. (For the exact history you’ll have to look it up – my Japanese history is sketchy, if it doesn’t involve swords, samurai or battles then I haven’t studied it much!)

You can’t move in Kyoto without encountering a temple, whether they’re the huge twin Honganji temples flanking the train station, the Fushimi-inari shrine with it’s thousands of Tori gates or simple street-side temples occupying the space a small shop would on the high streets, temples are everywhere.

So… first thing to do in Kyoto is get out a map and the travel book and then mark a few temples that you want to go to. Don’t even try to see them all! I think in 4 full days in Kyoto we saw maybe 30 or 35 temples, including the ones we just checked out while walking past in an “ooh that’s nice” kind of way. To give you an idea, Kyoto has around 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines. To top it off there’s also 3 palaces and quite a few museums.

So with all this culture in Kyoto, all these things to do and see, the first thing WE did when we got to Kyoto was leave the city with those 5 AnD members and take a train into the countryside…

With Radwyn-chan as our guide we took a couple of metros and trains to Kibune. My girlfriend and I didn’t know where we were going really so it was a very pleasant surprise to be greeted outside a restaurant by the owner and escorted inside to be served tea and a traditional lunch.

The “Hirobun” restaurant was very pleasant, with views of the river running outside and the lunch was very good despite being raw fish… After lunch I was surprised when Kayo brought out her 5 year old copy of the program for K-Ballet’s Swan Lake and ashamed when she asked me to autograph it!

After lunch we were waved off by the owner and we walked up the road where we found the Kifune shrine (apparently very sacred) where a goddess buried her boat or something – again look it up or ask one of the girls!

                Unfortunately it was only to be a running visit because we had to catch the train back to Kyoto where we had “1st Class” tickets to see the “Miyako Odori” spring dances in Gion, you know, those dances that they mis-represent in the memoirs of a geisha film… for me this was THE highlight of my trip to Japan, an hour of absolute absorption into Japanese culture with music, dance, Maiko and Geiko. I would recommend it to anyone and I don’t see why Hollywood couldn’t have left it alone for that film!

                Afterwards we went to have tea with a Maiko, a REALLY big thing because normally you have to pay big bucks for the privilege. Although we did have to share the pleasure with a hundred other people…

                To end the day we went to have dinner at a restaurant next to Kyoto station, I think called Seppourai. To really appreciate what we had to eat you’ll have to visit the blogs of the girls – they all take WAY too many photos of food! A fantastic way to end the day - good food and good company.

                Thank you to AnD for helping me to find such wonderful people and a BIG thank you to the girls for taking such great care of us and making a memorable trip even more so.

As a footnote and returning to what I said before about people being kind - the day we left Kyoto to return to Tokyo Kayo took the train from Osaka JUST to say goodbye to us at the train station! That’s not even the best part – she brought us chocolates for the journey!