I closed my last post with a short mention of the train to Kyoto. I should elaborate on that. From the Hotel Wing International, we made the short walk to the Asakusa Station entrance 2 elevator, which we had discovered after we checked in at the hotel. This was a great find as we avoided having to navigate a lot of staircases with luggage.
We found the Ginza line and an Express train bound for Tokyo Station. I should mention something we learned about Japanese culture and public transportation – actually it pertains to public spaces in general. The Japanese people are very respectful of shared spaces. This is most obvious on trains and buses. No one talks loudly as that would be disrespectful to others – they may be reading or napping. No one talks on their cell phones on trains or buses although 90% of the people are staring into their phones as they read or text or maybe play a silent video game. This stems from the principle of “not causing inconvenience to others” (迷惑をかけない), an important value in Japanese society.
The Ginza Line took us to a section of Tokyo Station – I think it was the west side. Tokyo Station is a huge transit center, the largest and busiest in Japan. More than 4,000 trains arrive and depart daily and more than 500,000 people on average pass through every day.
With all of the train activity, it’s amazing how well it all functions. Trains generally arrive and depart on time. I saw sign boards in the various stations with a message “Arriving late'” when a train was a minute behind schedule! When we got off the train, we followed the flow of people until we entered a concourse area. As I said, the station is huge and daunting. The underground station is covered by a couple of districts overhead. The connecting tunnels include entrances to shopping malls and hotels as well as other train facilities.
We went up to the street level so I could get oriented with the GPS in my phone. We had to go to the Shinkansen station for the train to Kyoto, which was on the east side, about a half-mile from where we were. We stayed above ground and walked through the Ginza business district and followed sparse signage to the Shinkansen station.
Shinkansen translates as “Bullet train.” The Japan Rail website stated the Shinkansen would reach speeds of 177 mph. Sounds pretty impressive. The Green car was very comfortable, surprisingly quiet and smooth. Through the city, the speed was subdued. Once we left the city, the acceleration was barely perceptible. As we sped through the countryside, the speed was deceptive. Looking out of the window, most objects were far enough away to diminish the sensation of speed.
When we went through tunnels, the speed became obvious. The tunnels had lights at a certain interval. I can’t say how far apart they were because they became a blur making it look like a continuous beam of light, like a long flourescent tube. Occasionally we would pass an oncoming Shinkansen and the closing speed of well over 300 mph made the train go by in a flash and it was one of the few times we sensed speed and also exterior noise.
The train took us through Hamamatsu and Nagoya along with a number of smaller towns. The nearly 300-mile distance took a little over two hours.
Kyoto Station is another huge transit center. The underground passageways include numerous restaurants, a shopping mall and department store and a movie theater. Above it is a 15-story building with more shopping and government offices. We had to figure out where we were in relation to our destination hotel – the Irori Tokyo Station Higashi-Honganji.
We walked and looked for signs. I found signs directing us to a bus station – I figured that would be above ground and I could use my phone again to see where we were. Once I did that, I found we were on the south side of the station and we wanted to exit the north side. We went back through the station and discovered more stores and restaurants before we finally found the north exit. This is the Porta underground mall at Kyoto Station.
From there we walked to the hotel – about half a mile away. This took us through an area of Kyoto with high-end hotels, shopping and restaurants. We found the Irori and checked in. It was mostly an automated process – they had e-mailed me entry codes for the lobby and a key code for our room. This room was a little larger than the Wing International room in Tokyo. In fact, it had a kitchenette, small table and chairs and even a washing machine.
Once again, we were tired from travel but didn’t rest much. We cleaned up and headed out. We went back to the Porta area on foot again.
We went on to find dinner. We found a nice looking restaurant, I wish I could remember the name of it. It was sort of a teppenyaki type place. We were led to a private box-like room with tatami seating with a foot well under the table. The table had a hot plate built into the center. By the way, we had to remove our shoes and leave them in a locker at the entry area. We were seated and given menus, then the door was slid shut and we were alone in paper-walled private box.
The menu seemed a little confusing to me. We ordered a la carte. The food was delivered through a small window-like section that slid open and the server handed our plates through it.
The menu started to make more sense to us as we figured out that we were to share food as we wished and the food would stay hot. I had a Highball with the meal – Highballs are standard fare in Japanese restaurants and izakaya. An izakaya is a bar/restaurant – the Japanese kanji for the name literally means stay-drink-place.
I thought this meal would be on the expensive side, but I was surprised to find it was under 6,000 yen – under $40 total. As we walked around the Porta, Donna found a something she had heard we might find – a beer vending machine.
Back at the hotel I thumbed through a sightseeing magazine. I saw an entry for the Toji Temple Flea Market on Tuesday. The Toji Temple Flea Market was something I wanted to do. I immediately looked up how to get there and found a bus route that would get us close.
After breakfast the following morning, we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away from the Irori. Our Suica cards worked for bus fare in Kyoto and we found the right bus stop after about a twenty minute ride. We walked a few blocks and found the entry gate to the Toji Temple.
Inside we found a large courtyard and several buildings. There was a gift shop with people in it, but otherwise the place seemed fairly empty. We went to the gift shop and I found a guy that worked there and asked about the flea market. He shook his head “no,” and showed me a calendar. The flea market was last Tuesday, September 24th. This was October 1st. Bummer.
We walked around and looked at a few of the buildings. There was an entry to a garden and the Toji Temple pagoda. There was an entry fee, but I was so dejected about missing the flea market that I wasn’t interested enough to pay to enter. I regret that.
The pagoda is the tallest in Japan at 187 feet. It’s an Iconic image. We walked through the grounds and found a different exit. It was near lunch time by then, so we walked through the neighborhood and found a small restaurant with about eight tables. I ordered sushi and Donna opted for ramen. The food was delicious and the place was full of local Japanese people by the time we left and people were waiting for a table. We were the only gaijin (foreigners) there.
We rested for a little while back at the Irori then went shopping back at the area we had walked through from the train station. Did I mention how much my feet were hurting? We went into a shopping mall and we found a modern shoe store. My feet were killing me. For an American, finding shoes in Japan can be troublesome. They typically don’t carry sizes larger than about 10. I got lucky and found some Nike shoes in size 12. My feet used to be 10.5, then they became 11-11.5 and now 12! My theory is that as we age, some of us end up with weaker arches and flattened feet that require larger shoes for comfort. These shoes were among the most expensive in the store, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep walking in the shoes I brought.
When we returned home, I found a hole in my theory. The tag in the Nike shoes I bought in Japan says “US 12, UK 9.5, Eur 44.5.” The tags in my US sourced Wilson tennis shoes and Babolat tennis shoes, which both fit me comfortably say “US 11, UK 10.5, Eur 45.5.” So, apparently in Japan Nike uses a strange shoe size chart.
We walked back to the hotel – me in my new comfy Nikes. We saw a small brewery near the hotel and went for a cold one. We were a little early, they were set to open about ten minutes after we got there. The young lady inside let us in though and served us beer. Such hospitality! Donna had a porter float and I had a golden ale. The beer was good.
The bus stops we used were outside of a large walled property. This was the Higashi-Hogan-Ji Temple, a large Buddist temple. We went there to have a look around. This is an old site, but the temple had to be rebuilt several times over the centuries after fires destroyed it. The last rebuild started in 1879 and was finished in 1895.
It’s a very large wooden structure built with traditional Japanese carpentry which doesn’t include nails or adhesives. The wood structure is built with tight jointed pieces precisely cut and fitted together. To get a sense of scale, look at the people standing in front of the steps.
Before you can enter the temple, you must remove your shoes. They had plastic bags to carry your shoes if you wanted to take them with you. They also had recycling bins for the bags. We entered and found most of the flooring was traditional tatami matting.
The posts in the picture above are turned from a single log! I wish I had Donna in the picture to give a sense of scale – these posts were about two and half feet in diameter and about 20 feet tall. They are found throughout the building.
The logs were cut from forests in the mountains near Kanazawa – about 130 miles away. To transport the logs, sleds were made to pull the logs over the snowy mountain passes and down to Kyoto. Whole families made this trek, pulling the sleds with ropes. A disaster occurred when an avalanche killed several people including women and children on a mountain pass.
We had the privilege of observing a ceremony in the temple. That’s one of the things that struck about the shrines and temples in Japan – they aren’t just tourist attractions; they are used in the daily lives of Japanese people.
From the temple we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away and caught a bus to Gion – the Kyoto geisha district. Geisha are misunderstood by many tourists. Although geishas are sometimes hired as escorts, they are not in the sex trade. They are generally well-educated and are entertainers. They are mostly hired as hostesses for parties, banquets and corporate events. Some will sing and dance, others play musical instruments and some are escorts that are well-versed in literature or poetry and have conversational skills. To become a geisha takes years of study and training. There’s a sort of apprenticeship where a maiko learns the skills required of a geisha.
We saw geisha and psuedo-geishas in the Gion District. I think some of the businesses in the area pay to have geishas attract people to their stores and restaurants here. You also see people that rent geisha costumes – something that Donna and I found hard to understand. When you see a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl made up as a geisha, you have to wonder who she thinks she is fooling. On the other hand, some people rent geisha costume packages that include a photographer so they can bring home souvenir pictures of themselves in traditional clothing.
Geisha costume rentals usually include hairstyling and all clothing except underwear and cost from $35 to hundreds of dollars depending on what the renter chooses.
We had dinner at a restaurant that featured wagyu beef. The name wagyu is derived from the Japanese word Wa, which means Japanese and gyu, which means cow. This meat comes from pampered cows and has a high intramuscular fat content. It’s considered a delicacy by many. We were seated at a table that had a hot plate on a bowl in the center heated by a flame. I’m not sure of what the source of flame was, I saw the server light something under the iron plate and it heated up quickly.
The meat was cooked rare and sliced into half-inch thick pieces. We seared our meat on the hot plate and dipped it sauces. It was very rich and honestly not really my cup of tea.
The Gion District is over-run with tourists. There were more gaijin than locals. It was like walking in Disneyland. This has created some problems. Local people are tired of rude visitors that don’t respect Japanese customs. Some geishas felt threatened by foreigners stalking them for photos or touching them as they walk from their housing area to work. Parts of the Gion District are now off-limits to foreigners. We saw police at some intersections to narrow streets or alleys leading into neighborhoods. They stopped and questioned people, presumably to determine if they had good reason to enter a neighborhood.
I quickly grew tired of the crowds in Gion and parts of Kyoto in general. We rode a bus back to the area of the Irori Hotel, did some more walking and called it a day. We needed to plan our next stop on this adventure and figure out what we were going to do. That’s fodder for another post as this is too long already.
