Kyoto

Kyoto is the religious and historic heart of Japan, and is rammed with temples, shrines, palaces, gardens and cute old buildings along narrow streets. While we waited for our hotel check-in to open, we caught a subway to Kamigamo Shrine for a Sunday craft market. The shrine itself was lovely, and ought to be on one of those 'avoid the overcrowded hotspots'-type travel blogs. They had a horse in a box which you could feed for a few yen. Dan lost comprehensively at an Othello/Reversi board game to an old Japanese lady who was clearly hustling him. We then caught a bus to Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion) before it closed, and were finally confronted by just how many tourists there actually are in Kyoto. Even close to closing time it was still rammed with tour groups.

On our second day, we planned to start early and do a big tour of the main temples. Dan was fairly exhausted from a bad night's sleep, and had already done some of them on his 2019 visit, so we opted to spend the day apart (a rare luxury this year). One of the challenges this year is how little time we have to ourselves, whether to do our hobbies, to veg out watching TV, or to shave/trim nails/do all the boring personal stuff (Dan managed to finally trim his beard in Kyoto after a couple of weeks of wild growth). It feels a bit sacrilegious to just sit in a cafe all day during a 'once in a lifetime trip', but it's impossible to be wired up for a whole year straight. Especially in Japan, where the public transport is lightning quick and you don't have much 'dead time' between locations to unwind. Say what you like about 10hr coaches in Southeast Asia, but they definitely give you some break time 😴

Chelsea clocked up 30,000 steps walking around the Higashiyama temples all day, narrowly avoiding a rainstorm with a carefully timed umbrella purchase, and blending into all the Shinto gates with her orange shorts. Meanwhile, Dan holed up in a cafe for some dedicated writing time—5,000 words in two days! We're both feeling much better for these outcomes. At the end of our day apart we met back up in the Gion district, which used to be the geisha hotspot for Kyoto and is now the locus for restaurants and bars. The vibe was good, but food and drink are expensive, so we bought cheap convenience store dinner and then tried to find a bar. The first place we went to advertised ¥700 whisky, but the menu inside had nothing less than ¥900. Before we left, the bartender gave us back the trash we'd asked him to put in the bin, like 'this bin is only for paying customers'. Weird energy. Bins are strangely hard to find for such a clean country, what are people doing with all the plastic they’re having to peel off every individual banana?!

For our last day, we got up at 6:15am to hit the Fushimi Inari shrine before the crowds arrived. This is probably the most famous Instagram spot in Kyoto, with over 1,000 orange Shinto gates tightly packed around the mountain paths. There were a few people with us on the way in, but we were very smug to see huge hordes coming in the entrance as we were on our way out. Ideal timing.

Our last stop was Uji, a town outside Kyoto which is famous for being the first place to bring green tea to Japan from China in the 1300s. It was also the birthplace of 'The Tale of Genji', one of Japan's most famous classic novels of backstabbing and court intrigue. Dan was keen to read the "Japanese Game of Thrones", but has discovered that, like GoT, it has over 1,300 pages. Maybe an abridged version will suffice. In Uji we visited the stunning Byodo-in Temple and tried a traditional tea ceremony along with several other hapless visitors, none of us knowing the correct manners, and definitely insulting the proprietors in a hundred tiny ways. 10/10 cultural exchange, no notes.

Kyoto has reminded us why the Japanese complain about overtourism: it was less obvious in Tokyo, where the enormous local population dilutes the visitors, and in Hokkaido, where fewer people visit. But in Kyoto where everyone funnels to 5-6 main attractions, you can't ignore just how many 'gaijin' are in the city. This is the low season: we can only imagine how much more rammed it is during the cherry blossoms or Autumn leaves. Kyoto is a beautiful city, but this is a fly in the ointment. We're looking forward to getting further off the main route, and finding hidden gems like Uji along the way!Baca lagi