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Charlie Brown Cafe in Incheon
Airport. We love this airport! |
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The beautiful plane that took us to
beautiful Japan. |
Very early on Christmas Eve morning, we were up & about getting ready to leave. We caught a bus at 5:55am to the airport...
Fast forward 6 hours & we are in Japan!
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| Japan! |
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| Japan! |
We were very confused for a while as to how to get to Kyoto from the airport. A very nice woman who was working in another area came to help us buy our train tickets & directed us where to go.
Another hour and a half later, we were in Kyoto!
It was a beautiful day. When we arrived at Kyoto station, we got on a subway that took us to the area near our hotel. After checking in, we went up to our room & settled in a bit. We were exhausted already from the 2 1/2 hour bus, 1 1/2 flight, & 1 1/2 hour train ride. We didn't do much that evening. Around 5:00 we decided to go to the 7-11 nearby & eat dinner. After eating, John got really sleepy. He was asleep by 8:00!
The next morning we were up at 7:00, refreshed & ready to spend Christmas day exploring Kyoto. We were able to purchase a ¥500 bus ticket at the front desk of our hotel. This allowed us unlimited bus rides during the day. That was very helpful - a single bus fare use is typically ¥210.
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| Kinkakuji-Temple of the Golden Pavilion |
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| Ticket to the temple |
Our first stop was Kinkakuji - Temple of the Golden Pavillion. It was perfect. The sun was shining & the gold reflection in the water was beautiful. The pavilion is 3 floors, with the top 2 floors covered with pure gold leaf. After taking several pictures, we walked along the garden trail. We saw a nice waterfall, a few shrines, a tea house, & a place that gave fortunes. We bought one but then realized it was all in Japanese. Then we discovered the English language fortunes! So we each bought one - we were pleased. They were pretty detailed. Towards the end of the path, there were a couple of small souvenir shops. We purchased some things & were on our way to Arashiyama.
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| Kinkakuji map |
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| Yes, these are our own pictures! |
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| Roof ornament - phoenix |
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| Waterfall |
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| Old tea house |
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| Higher view |
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| Shrine (fortune boxes to the right) |
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Saw Liquor Mountain on our walk to
Arashiyama. |
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| On Togetsukyo Bridge |
We got on another bus that took us fairly close to Arashiyama. Taking the bus all the way to Arashiyama would've cost us an extra bus fare, so we decided to walk instead. We were going to Arashiyama to see the bamboo forest. We came upon the town of Arashiyama & it was very quaint with several types of Japanese shops, restaurants, & a temple. There were several rickshaws available to ride on. Togetsukyo Bridge went over a beautiful river that was surrounded by walking paths & parks. We continued to walk through the town & came upon a sign that said, "Monkey Park". We knew immediately that we had to go see it! It was quite a hike up Mount Arashiyama that neither of us expected to do that day. However, it was totally worth it. We started seeing monkeys about halfway up the mountain. Then at one point we were just following one along the trail. Once we got to the top we were surrounded by snow monkeys/Japanese macaques! It was fun to watch the babies play with each other & the older monkeys to care for each other. We even saw some monkeys get a little frisky. On top of all of the monkey joy, we got the most impeccable view of Kyoto. We were 160 meters above sea level. We spent about an hour up there & even fed some of the monkeys. After that we made our way down the mountain. We took some time playing on the playground on the way down though. Us & a group of 5 or 6 others were having a lot of fun on the huge slide, see-saws, & little zip-line. After we got back to the main area of town, we did a little shopping & caught the next bus back to our hotel.
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| Entrance to Tenryu-ji Zen Temple |
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| Monkey park map! |
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| Manga Museum exterior |
On Thursday, the 26th, our first stop was Kyoto International Manga Museum. Nicole discovered this on the bus map & it wasn't far from our hotel. John has been reading Manga since his middle school days. Their libraries were huge! Though most of it is in Japanese, there were some books in English so Nicole picked up one & read a few pages since she never has. Anyone can go in & sit & read there all day. There were fun artistic pages we could alter to make different character faces. Unfortunately we have very few pictures because we were not allowed to take any in the museum.
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| The Phoenix |
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Front of a building we passed on our
way to Nijo Castle |
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| Oops... it's closed. |
After that we headed a couple of blocks over to Nijo Castle. When we got there, we realized it wasn't open! We saw a sign that said it was closed from December 26th thru January 1st. We could've gone the day before! But, oh well. We still got a few good pictures of the exterior.
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| Nintendo Headquarters |
It was still fairly early in the day so we decided to head straight to Nintendo Headquarters from Nijo Castle. It was very far away & no buses went there so we had to take a subway. It was in a very different part of Kyoto. We were getting strange looks. It made us a little uncomfortable so we got a few pictures of the very large building & went back to our hotel.
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| Large pachinco building |
After resting for a while & eating a convenient store dinner, we decided to go explore the area around us. We saw several designer stores down our hotel's street & discovered some alley streets that had restaurants, cheaper shops, & a lot of pachincos! Pachincos are gambling games. We had a lot of fun walking around the area & discovering a little popular part of Kyoto.
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| Yummy ice cream snack we found! |
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| This is just the lower half of the map. |
Friday, the 27th, was our last full day in Kyoto. We spent our day mostly at the Fushimi Inari Taisha (shrine) on Mount Inari. It took a little while to get there but we were glad we made the effort. It was so beautiful. Most of the walking paths were lined with thousands of torii gates. Each of the torii gates are donated by individuals or companies. It was a rough hike up the mountain... so many stairs! We took our time though & went off a couple of trails to explore. We found a bamboo forest! That was fun. It was about 90 minutes from the time we got there until the time we made it to the top. On our way down, Nicole's legs started shaking... seriously, too many stairs! We made our journey back to our hotel & rested for a long while. That was an exhausting mountain.
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| Foxes are messengers for the shrine |
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| Went off the trail a bit & found a bamboo forest! |
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| They're so big! |
On Thursday, the 26th, our first stop was Kyoto International Manga Museum. Nicole discovered this on the bus map & it wasn't far from our hotel. John has been reading Manga since his middle school days. Their libraries were huge! Though most of it is in Japanese, there were some books in English so Nicole picked up one & read a few pages since she never has. Anyone can go in & sit & read there all day. There were fun artistic pages we could alter to make different character faces. Unfortunately we have very few pictures because we were not allowed to take any in the museum.
After that we headed a couple of blocks over to Nijo Castle. When we got there, we realized it wasn't open! We saw a sign that said it was closed from December 26th thru January 1st. We could've gone the day before! But, oh well. We still got a few good pictures of the exterior.
Friday, the 27th, was our last full day in Kyoto. We spent our day mostly at the Fushimi Inari Taisha (shrine) on Mount Inari. It took a little while to get there but we were glad we made the effort. It was so beautiful. Most of the walking paths were lined with thousands of torii gates. Each of the torii gates are donated by individuals or companies. It was a rough hike up the mountain... so many stairs! We took our time though & went off a couple of trails to explore. We found a bamboo forest! That was fun. It was about 90 minutes from the time we got there until the time we made it to the top. On our way down, Nicole's legs started shaking... seriously, too many stairs! We made our journey back to our hotel & rested for a long while. That was an exhausting mountain.
In the early evening, we went back to Porta (Kyoto Station). We went to a restaurant that served omelet style eggs over various types of rice, or stew. The eggs were very large & our meals delicious. Afterwards, we walked over to Kyoto tower since it is also at the station. We enjoyed walking around & got a beautiful evening view of Kyoto.
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