Kyoto Day 2 - Walking tour part III

The next stop of our walk was the Choin-In temple which has one of the largest temple gates in Japan. J and D enjoyed exploring the expansive grounds, especially the temple itself where we were again took our shoes off and we were allowed to take photos inside.

Past Choin was a smaller temple with beautiful painted screens and gardens. People must have been shorter when it was built since A hit his head on the doorframe. Ouch! The grounds made up for it though as we found more carp and a bamboo forest.

We were ready for a late lunch at this point and then headed back to the hotel where D got a nap. Dinner was an interesting experience as we had ramen noodles which were nothing like college ramen noodles. You picked out your meal outside of the shop and bought a ticket. You then handed the waitress the ticket and sat down to wait for your meal. Like all of our meals in Kyoto, we enjoyed it.

Day 2 - The walking tour continues - Part II

Our walk continued down some picturesque Kyoto streets with many tea shops and souvenir shops. Several geishas (or maybe maikos, apprentice geishas, who can tell) graciously made an appearance. One of the stores even had some carp swimming in a small pond just outside. We found a fairly large Buddha, but figured the view from the parking lot was fine. We decided not to pay just to be able to see his feet too.

Kyoto - Day 2 - Southern Higashiyama Walking Tour Part I

David did fine yesterday so we made our second day in Kyoto a big walking day. Our guide book recommended this 3 mile walk through Southern Higashiyama if we only had one day in Kyoto to get a sense of the city. We took a lot of pictures so this day will be divided up in to at least 3 parts. We'll see how our memory serves us. It seemed that we did a lot more walking than that especially since we were carrying a stroller up and down stairs.

We took a bus to this area and walked up a hill to our first stop - Kiyomizu-dera. Affiliated w/the Hosso school of Buddhism, this temple was first built in 763 but the present structures date from 1633. The map on the left depicts all the buildings on the grounds. This temple was much more crowded than the ones we saw yesterday. You actually had to pay an admission fee. It's here where we observed others cleansing their hands. David wanted to try too. J and D paused to take a look at one of the altars inside the temple and observed others paying their respects. Once we got to the top, there was an excellent view of Kyoto. Our hotel is in the dark gray building just to the left of the red and white Kyoto tower.

Sorry for the formatting - there are so many pictures and this blogging program isn't that user friendly.

Kyoto - Day 1 - Higashi Honganji Temple, Nishi Honganji Temple

Knowing that David wasn't a 100%, we decided to stay w/in walking distance of the hotel. It was also a little overcast and the skies were also somewhat threatening. We started out for Higashi (East) Honganji Temple which was a 5 minute walk from the hotel. In fact, within a few hundred feet of leaving the hotel, we spotted a structure which turned out to be the temple. Unfortunately, the main building was hidden under scaffolding undergoing renovations. The pictures here are the entrance to the temple. There weren't many people around when we arrived so we just wandered until we could find a way into a building. We didn't know the protocol of removing our shoes and David had fallen asleep in the stroller. Some of the groundskeepers were mortified to find us walking on the wood floors with our shoes on and the stroller on the grounds as well. Since David was asleep, we took turns looking into one of the larger halls. Pictures weren't allowed inside, but there were large altar like areas and pictures of Buddha. Honganji is a temple built for the Jodo Shin-shu school of Buddhism, competition for the Nishi (West) Honganji Temple we saw next. The temple was built in 1602, but the current shoes and structures were rebuilt in 1895 after a large fire. Before entering a temple or a shrine, you are supposed to purify yourself with water from the trough out front. You take a long handled ladle, wash out both hands and then rinse out your mouth. We didn't figure this out until the next day. The dragon fountain is the water trough for this temple.

What better to do after seeing the East temple, but to check out the West temple. We arrived after about a 10 minute walk. David fell asleep along the way, and missed the whole thing. We took turns removing our shoes, viewing the inside, and watching David while he slept in his stroller outside in the courtyard. We were able to get some pictures inside this temple. Perhaps their Buddha is less formal. This temple is the headquarters of the Hongangi branch of the Jodo Shinshu school with 12 million followers world-wide. Most of the congregation was not present. You can see the moat around the temple as well as the altar areas inside. People would just sit on the floor to pray or pay their respects.
Since David took a good nap, we had the opportunity to eat lunch at a French restaurant nearby called Le Bouchon. As far as we can determine, a "bouchon" could be the cork for a wine bottle, a traditional Lyonnaise restaurant, or a distinctively shaped chocolate. Although chicken Kiev (Russian?) at Le Bouchon (French restaurant?) in Kyoto (Japan) was one of the specials, we chose other options. One was an excellent fish with a name that means nothing to us and the other was duck in an orange sauce. Real orange wedges were involved in the sauce production, which made David's day as these are his favorite food. The owner was very gracious and spoke Japanese, French and English.

After lunch, we thought a quick stroll up to see the Imperial Palace would be a good plan. We found a small, random Shinto shrine along the way and enjoyed looking at the shops. After about a 15 minute walk, we arrived at the entrance to the Imperial Palace Park surrounding the palace. Unfortunately, this park was paved with loose gravel designed to completely impede the progress of our stroller. The park itself was more suited to playing baseball or football than sightseeing. As we were not well equipped for sports, the next plan was to walk around the park on the sidewalk until we were near the temple. After about 30 minutes of walking, we weren't even halfway. One inch on the map was much farther than expected. We did see a Japanese Episcopal Church (an interesting contrast to the Buddhist temples), and promptly took the subway home. David enjoy his subway ride and practiced his pullups.

We tried a local conveyor sushi restaurant for dinner. It was fun and the sushi was remarkably fresh. It was the easiest option with David. There were some extremely good fresh fish choices and some other much less recognizable options. We decided to leave most of those for the locals. By the way, octopus is very similar in consistency to an inner tube. We recommend taking the time to cook it.

By now, we were all tired and in much need of sleep in preparation for the next day's adventures.

Enroute to Kyoto - a day of planes, trains, and automobiles (well, a bus)

Although we didn't realize it at the time, this was a big travel day. We stayed the night before our flight in Seoul so we only had to leave at 6:30 AM instead of 5:30 AM to get to the airport. From our hotel, the Dragon Hill Lodge, we took a free bus to Incheon airport. Since, David was traveling with us, we were able to check-in in a special line and only had to wait five minutes instead of thirty. This gave us almost 2 hours in the airport to kill. Incheon is a fabulous airport. We found a little play area for David and did some Korean crafts.

We also got to board the plane early with David. Fortunately, it was only a 2 hour flight to Osaka airport. Unfortunately, we had a tired little boy on our hands who did not want to sit still plus his digestive system was a little off as well. He finally fell asleep in my arms about 20 minutes prior to landing and slept through the landing and a hand off to Daddy.

Once in Osaka, we needed to figure out which train to take to get to Kyoto. An American looking gentleman offered some assistance and the ticket office was helpful as well. We stopped for a quick lunch and then boarded the train. The "JR" on the sign stands for Japan Rail. The train arrived at Kyoto Station in about 70 minutes.

Our hotel was in Kyoto station so once we arrived, we didn't have far to go. It took us nine hours to get there. By this point, David had gone through seven diapers and half of our wipes. Thankfully, he was better the next day.