Kyoto - Summary

So, in the aftermath I had a good time overall. It was interesting and I got to see so many significant historical sites.

I had fun but it was a little lonely travelling on my own for a whole week. I don't think I'll do that again. My phone bore the brunt of angsty loneliness. (and my boredom after X time at night.)

I would say go. Go, by all means. It's an experience not to be missed.

In the style of my favourite blogs please allow me to summarize because a picture says a thousand words and I'm too lazy to type anymore.


BEFORE:

TRAVELLING:

THERE:

AFTERMATH:

Kyoto - Airplane food

The food on the flight back was horrible. (No, not because it was japanese style! It was just really, really bad)

When they came around with Green Tea I was all "YES" with an edge of desperation

On the upside I successful split the chopsticks without breaking them. Go dexterity!

Kyoto - airport snacks

I thought I was getting ice-cream and mixed nuts but apparantly not.

The bottom was full of what tasted like frosties and raisins and the top was these strange dumplings. They turned out to be vanilla ice-cream covered in chewy, stretchy dough.

It was delicious and now I suddenly want another one.

Kyoto Tour - Manga Museum

Go to Kyoto and not see the Manga Museum?! NEVER!

This was a lot of fun. It shed a single crystal tear of regret for the fantasttic library I could not read and strutted off to explore the museum.

They had an enormous collection of bound graphic novels and the upper walls were shelved with issues of manga magazines from all sorts of decades.

You are encouraged to take titles off the shelf and read them as you please. The collection is impressively extensive.

The manga are seperated by Shojo, Shonen, Seinen and International. They are arranged by author.
On the ground floor, they keep a collection of foreign language manga. (Which is where I enscounced myself for a while with some Osama Tezuka.) The floors above are for strictly japanese language. (Engrish aside)

There are signs and guides in several languages to help understand the displays. It's interesting to see the fashions in manga change throughout the decades.

They break down, production, technique, character goods and (most importantly) where the money goes!
In short, the more you sell, the more money reaches the artist/writer after the publishers/editors/magazine etc have siphoned off their share.

I rather enjoyed the handy-dandy guide to target audiences above. It was interesting to see exactly who certain series are written for. (And yes, there are magazines for people over the age of 25.)


I wasn't actually meant to take pictures (Oops!) but in fairness they really should have posted clearly visible signs.

There are also casts from the hands of visiting manga-ka, a gallery of maiko illustrations and various other things.

Here, have some images of the illustrious Lord Canti

And Some Gurren Lagann.

Can't forget Diebuster now can we?



In all seriousness, they were showing a Gainax film special there but seeing as I have no real japanese I couldn't go see it. Hence the specific statues shown here. (Not that epic is ever a bad thing.)

I do think they need to expand their shop but that is a thought for another day. I did get a few pieces of Studio Ghibli but most of that was gifts.

Kyoto - Kyoto Tower

Outside the station you can see Kyoto Tower. It's a pretty useful landmark and a lot of your directions are going to start with "From Kyoto Tower...."

I went shopping in the base - bought cats.

Kyoto - Tea time

It was unbelievably hard to find somewhere reasonable to eat in Kyoto. (-especially as I was dining by my lonesome) Eveything seemed to have really long queues, enormous portions of horrific prices.

I lived on air and convenience mart for the better part of five days.

When I finally found a cafe that wouldn't bankrupt me, all I could get was tea and cake. :C
Granted it was nice tea but I could have done with something a bit hearthier.

the strainer was hooked inside the spout of the teapot which was interesting to see but my problem was how god-damn heavy the thing was. It was certainly built of durable stuff.

The cake had some sort of fruit in it, it was delicious.

Kyoto Tour - Kasuga Shrine

The Kasuga Shrine is a shinto shrine. All of the stone lanterns are donated by families. Originally they were stone, in later years they donated bronze but that is no longer the custom.

They decided that they no longer had space so when the festivals roll round, for a nominal fee, families have paper lanterns of their dedication put into the stone lanterns.

Depsite the torrential rain it was quite a striking sight. We ended up not going up to the temple. In fact, only four of us even went this far.

What ticked me off really was that we ended up not having time for hot wine at the souvenir shop before heading back to Kyoto. A day like that we could have used some!

Kyoto Tour - Todai-Ji and Nara

So when you hear of Nara, what do you think of? That's right!!

Well, Todai-ji temple is attached to Nara park with the famous deer that have not the least amount of fear. You can feed the deer with crackers but unfortunately Nara was in the grips of the Typhoon so even though thw wind was not too bad the entire day was pretty much like this.

Seriously though, we did get to see some of the deer. There are signs up warning everyone that while they are pretty amenable to a pat and some cookies they are not tame deer and have been known to bite.

The breed is Sika deer and the males I saw had their antlers removed (For which I am quite glad) They are fairly large animals and definitely of a sturdier breed than those that live in central park here in Songdo. According to Seth (Master Ball - Animal Whisperer) deer can scream. I didn't seek to test that today though.

It was interesting how these deer were not the least bit afraid of humans. They wandered right up and stuck their noses into our hands looking for treats.

This was also the site of Todai-Ji temple.

Todaiji has a colourful history of fires. In that, it has been burned to the ground at least twice and technically isn't finished because they ran out of money. There are heads of god statues awaiting the cash.

Here you can see where camera issues really got mad.

We were actually allowed to take pictures of this gargantuan buddhist temple but I have no idea as to why it's yes here but no in other places.

Before you ask, yes I was mincing and skipping through the puddles and I still got soaked through. My umbrella has holes too so it was a party all round.

I'm afraid these pictures do not do justice to the sheer scale of the building.  It was built to contain a fifty foot, 500 tonne buddha statue after all.

The temple is dank and dark and lit only by candles (Guys, let's try to avoid another fire, kay.)

The statue is made of bronze and was built in layers after being cast from a specially made clay sculpture. It was partially melted a few times but it was rebuilt each time.

It was definitely a 'wow' spectacle. It was a terrible pity about the rain, we couldn't really dally in the grounds.

Kyoto Tour- Kiyomizu Temple

I visited the famous Kiyomizu Temple the evening of the Typhoon so it was dark, dank, damp and overall oppressive. (And my camera&phone were not co-operating) I would say the thing that actually annoyed me was that the cloud cover blocked the reputably spectacular view from the stage.

Behold the ticket!!

Kiyomizu (Which translates to something like 'pure water') is built on the mountain. It's fairly steep and rather high up. When you glance off the stage you can see the streets lined with shops. (Of course, nowadays they're all Tourist traps.) The height is about 13m.

 

Now, there is a saying in Japanese that I have actually heard of: 'to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu' which essentially means 'to take the plunge'. What I did not know is that people actually did this in the Edo period (85% survival rate) because the belief was that if you survived the sharp plunge your wishes would be granted. -_- They have a book of records and no, they did not use a bungee.

Here is the view from the stage. It looks down onto a range of shops and temple outlets selling charms etc. The crowds were fierce despite the ominous weather. Who'd be desperate enough to jump from here? You'd use all your luck trying to survive.

You leave the stage by going down some very steep steps and doing so takes you under the base of the stage so you can see exactly how it's being held up.

Apparantly this was constructed on the orders of Ieyasu Tokugawa Iemistu (Yes, of that Nijo Castle Clan) and was built without the use of a single nail.

This is also the site of the famous Otowa-no-taki.

Seeing as this buddhist complex is named after the pure spring water it is unsurprising a sacred spring would be here. From the three sprouts you drink from one for either intelligence, beauty or longevity but it is bad luck to drink from all.

............................I didn't drink from any. =.= Well, for one thing I'm not a buddhist, another I can't put my fate in such things as water I'm likely to drown in. More importantly, the line was HELLA long and I did not have the time to queue up if I wanted to to hit the shops before heading for the bus.

So Kiyomizu, don't jump. If you survive you'll be fined.