Kyoto: Day 1

This is a long one.  I'm going to do Kyoto day by day because there's just too much to do at once. Please enjoy.

Backpacking through Kyoto

So I've never actually been backpacking before.  I've been on road trips, I've travelled and I've brought a backpack, but never have I packed everything I would need into a rucksack for 5 days and just stepped out the door with everything on two feet.  There’s really an overwhelming sense of excitement literally walking into the unknown that you don’t feel driving in a car or hopping on a place.  For one, I now know it’s a much better way to get to know a place.  You really get a chance to become familiar with the streets, the people and become much more familiar with a place, faster.  There are so many places that you would just zoom by in an automobile without a second glance or even taking the time to notice.  I also kind of suck at packing light.  I had the largest backpack out of everyone (including Laura) and I really only brought the bare essentials I needed.  I’ll work on that.  I also realize one of the worst things about travelling in America is that it’s terrible for backpacking.  Going from major city to major city would take hours and using the public transportation of a major metropolitan city like LA would be useless.  I’ve talked to a lot of people who have visited LA, (tried to) use the public transportation system and hated LA for it.  I understand why.  With that said, I also strangely find myself much more patriotic here.  The mere fact that there are so few foreigners here and that I’m one of them makes me really identify more with America.  I find myself defending it, explaining our philosophies, political and domestic situations even though I barely cared before when I was in America.  I think it has something to do with me either defining myself as an Asian American who is learning Japanese as an excuse for my crappy Japanese or having no excuse at all for being a mute Japanese, so I choose American. 

Ten hour bus ride to Kyoto was surprisingly not that bad.  I lucked out and got two seats because the seat next to me was free.  The bus attendant half way through tried to explain to me that I was in the wrong seat, but if I had moved, I would have had to sit next to some guy and there would have been 2 free seats, so I just played dumb (gaijin) and he eventually gave up and I continued to sleep.  We awoke to the chilly morning air of Kyoto at 7 am.  The station is a massive hub of transportation and shopping with a gigantic open air atrium space.  The station is a made of a expansive triangulated monocoque structure that supports a glass roof and terminates at an open sky park.  All good stuff except the station was really freaking cold.  After we figured out where we were going and took a small coffee break to warm up and get ready for the day the intrepid travelers were off to our first temple, Toji Otera (Temple).  This was our first and remains in my mind as one of my favorite temples from the whole trip to Kyoto.  The temple is about a 10-15 minute walk from Kyoto Station and is shamelessly mixed right in with the rest of modern Kyoto.  Separated by a short wall, Toji Temple is an expansive ancient temple ground with two major building shrines and also has the tallest wooden (Pagoda) tower in all of Japan.  The reason it stands out in my mind is because the temple really did elicit feelings of tranquility and beauty.  Although I encountered many other beautiful temples in Kyoto, this one was not too crowded, I could really enjoy the open space, the natural landscape surrounding the structures in the temple and to top it off, it smelled just like gingerbread cookies.  I must have walked by the kitchen and gotten a whiff of lunch, but it made it all the more pleasant an experience.

Stroll Down Philosopher’s Walk

Our next destination was a riverside walk down a path awesomely named, Philosopher’s Walk.  It’s lined with Cherry Trees and numerous temples line the path.  One of the most notable temples on the path was Ginkaku-ji AKA “Temple of the Silver Pavilion”.  This was considerably more crowded the Toji Temple, but it was also a smaller temple.  There was some beautiful sand sculpture art and one mound that was kind of a gigantic sand castle.  It’s built up against the edge of a foothill and is surrounded by beautiful autumn colors of red, yellow and green.  But actually this was one of those times that I think I enjoyed the journey more than the destination.  

Night Temple

The last temple we saw before we called it quits we saw at night.  I don’t know the name of it and maybe I never will, but it was enormous.  I kept walking and there was just more and more to see.  Eventually I walked by myself passed a large (roman style) arched aqueduct and a few large empty temples and decided I better turn back cause it may never end.  We made our way back to the main center of Kyoto, walked a bit, retrieved our bag from the lockers in Kyoto Station, took the subway to where we thought our youth hostel was (key word: thought) and got lost.

Lost in Kyoto

So 95% of the time I’ve spent in Japan has gone pretty smoothly but once in a while, Japan does get a little annoying.  Case in point, Japanese people are so bound by their need to always be polite that it can be frustrating sometimes.  Let me explain how always being polite can actually be a bad thing.  When we had no idea where we were, that we had walked for half an hour in the wrong direction and that the last thing we should have done was walk towards the river, we asked for directions from people on the street.  Three times we asked various people and each time we got a different answer.  They didn’t know the answer, that much was clear.  But because they didn’t want to seem rude and tell us that they simply didn’t know, they would rather just point us in the wrong direction.  So we wandered around Kyoto, lost, tired, cold and hungry.  Everyone’s feet were pounding and eventually we somehow found the right street.  We actually walked right by the youth hostel without knowing and finally a kind old lady actually walked us to it.  And so begins our first of two nights stay in my first youth hostel in Japan.  It deserves its own article because it was such an interesting experience.

Youth Hostel

The youth hostel had character.  It didn’t have a floor in the shower, soap, solid windows or doors, more than one floorboard separating the second story from the first or insulation, but it did have character.  Masa-san somehow found us this super cheap hostel, 2,000 Yen of about 20 bucks a day.  The only problem was that we could stay there on Friday night and Sunday night but not Saturday night.  So we ended up moving everything to the hostel, from the hostel and to the hostel again.  Fail.  The hostel itself was a very old building.  The wooden beams were made of the twisting trunks of tree trunks and it made traversing the upper bunks trickier.  The shower was downstairs and could only be accessed by walking through the garage.  The floor was stone and there was a rickety old wooden board to place clothes.  And in the corner of the shower was a large rock which I was told was used to sit on and shower.  I did not sit.  The first story was for showering, and was also the main communal space and eating area with a kotatsu.  A kotatsu is a low table placed either on the ground or on a raised tatami mat usually with a blanket under the solid surface where everyone can tuck their legs under while eating and socializing.  The second floor was a large communal sleeping area with boys and girls area separated with traditional sliding paper doors.  Let me just say that whoever thought that paper doors and windows was a good idea didn’t really think it through.  You don’t get any sound or heat insulation and their ridiculously easy to break.  But I guess that makes them just as easy to repair, but still.  Cool but kind of dumb.  At night you can see some light peaking through the floor board and sometimes even the walls which was probably why it felt so cold.  But we were all equipped with a sleeping bag and 2 blankets provided by the hostel each and a meager sleeping mat which was honestly all we really needed.  We were so tired we were just glad to have a roof over our heads.  There was also a private tatami room that was separate from the second floor sleeping space, although it was on the second floor.  It had a secret access to the bathroom through a window.  It’s hard to describe the exact layout of the hostel, but Baptiste, Axel and Jacob slept in the private room on Sunday night so we played around with hopping in and out of the window a bit.  I met a lot of different people and I find that most young travelers are very friendly and very welcoming.  I met a guy (from Tokyo) who was travelling with a girl (from Seoul) in Kyoto and they had met each other while travelling separately in Tibet.  Youth hostels are just a breeding ground for awesome adventurers.  All and all, I slept just fine, I met a lot of very interesting people and actually really enjoyed my stay in the hostel.  First day of Kyoto adventure is officially a success.


Panoramic View from the Sky Garden in Kyoto Station.  And yes, that is my reflection in the glass.