Classic Kyoto on a sunny day

October 5, 2024

We caught some beautiful weather for our day of touring classic and favorite tourist spots around Kyoto today.

We started the day with our hotel breakfast as usual, this time without the drama from poorly behaving foreign guests.

Today we jumped on the train in the central train station and headed toward Arishyama, the classic location of the bamboo forest. Alice had plans that we would rent kimonos there and walk the garden and forest wearing our kimonos.. I went along with it. It was already rather hot as we reached the kimono rental place. I stayed on the first floor and Alice took her chosen kimono to the second floor where women worked on dressing her an placing decorations in the hair. I needed to wear traditional sandals and take off most of my clothes except for underwear. After 20 minutes or so we were ready and headed out onto the street with throngs of tourists. I decided not to get worked up about the crush of tourists and just go with the program. We came to the entrance to the park and waited only a short time to get our tickets and get inside. We walked about the garde, and tried to find a couple o spots to catch a photo that was not crowded with other tourists.

Then we headed into the temple where we removed our shoes and got a couple more photos.

Then we headed toward the bamboo forest that was overwhelmed with tourists. It was hard to get a clean shot here.

We walked through the forest and ran into a Malaysian woman who had a nice set up for selfies and wide angle lens.

We came upon a field/wetland with tarot plants, past the prime of flowering.

As we prepared to exit the park, we discovered that I had left my shoes somewhere in the temple. All that I would have after returning the flimsy sandles would be my bare feet. An official allowed Alice to return to the temple and she was able to find my shoes in a paper bag, and I was relived to get them back.

We headed back to the kimono rental place. Now it was quite hot in the sun. We found a cafe with great ice coffee and little treats. Refreshed we headed to the kimono place and turned in the fancy clothes and headed to the train station.

Getting onto the train we headed for the little town of Ugi, famous for its matcha, or green tea. Matcha is grean tea that has been ground into a powder by a hand grinding method.

We hoped to observe a tea ceremony there, but the place we went to did not have another ceremony for several hours. The good part of that was that the center was quite with few people. We popped into their restaurant and enjoyed a beautiful lunch, many of the items prepared with matcha. I was a little worried that everything would taste like green tea, but, no, everything had a wonderful savory flavor.

We walked back to the train station through beautiful streets in a gentle breeze. The day was warm but not oppressive.

We got back to the train station. As we waited, I enjoyed the loving interaction of a boy and his dad. I asked and he was happy to be photographed.

We dozed on the train, and soon were back to the main Kyoto station, just a few blocks from our hotel. We were glad to get back and rest a bit before dinner.

In the evening we headed out, directingourselves south of the hotel and the train station. Our experience yesterday educated us to the likelihood that many good restaurants would be booked up with reservations. They are small with very limited seating. But on our third try we found a tiny but fantastic traditional Japanese place where none of the staff spoke much of English or Mandaran. Alice did what she could since the Kanji characters in Japanese have a Chinese origin and often mean the same thing

Despite our lack of common language, we had a wonderful meal and returned back to the hotel in good sprits. Tomorrow we leave Kyoto and head to Hiroshima.