KYOTO (2)

Yesterday the travel company organised a guide just  for us for the  whole day. We started with a tour (in English) of the Imperial Palace. They gave up using this in 1869 but still use it when the Emperor comes to Kyoto or when George Bush comes to stay!! This is an entrance. We only got to walk round the outside although sliding screens had been left open so that we could see inside. All very interesting. The roofs are of cedar bark and it is like the Forth Rail Bridge, they just work their way round replacing the roof. It seems like it would be uncomfortable in cold weather.

The Palace has gardens (everything has gardens in Kyoto) and they are 'landscape' gardens, that is, they imitate landscape on a small scale. No flowers.

One thing we learnt yesterday was how to deal with public transport. So we took the Metro to the Palace. We then took a bus to the Golden Pavilion which gleams in the sunshine as it really is covered with gold.. If you enlarge the photo, you can  see two herons posing, one on the island, the other on the corner of the Pavilion.

Every shrine or temple that we visited had a resident calligrapher who will write the name of temple and stamp it with a fancy stamp for you. Quite a few Japanese carry an ornate book in which the calligrapher writes directly. At the Golden Pavilion, you could buy a fortune. Ruth and I bought one and they both said 'Very Good Future' but the rest was quite different!!

The gardens at the Golden Pavilion.

We then took a taxi to Roanji Zen temple to see the Zen gardens. I had been told that going there was a waste of temple because of the press of tourists. Not so. There were maybe ten people there. We sat on the wooden steps and thought great thoughts (well maybe). I did not take any photos as it seemed difficult to do it justice. Instead I bought a batch of postcards which has the garden in various seasons and lighting conditions. 

The next mode of transport was the tram!! And we went out of the city to the bamboo forests. The bamboos are huge, we reckoned 50 to 60 foot tall and thick. This is one example of a fence. There are bamboo  fences all over Kyoto in lots of different styles.

And a complete gate made of bamboo.

We took a long walk through the bamboo forest up and down the mountains and came out on a river side where Japanese tourists were being punted up and down.

Next door to the entrance to the bamboo forest, there was a Zen temple with good gardens. Both a Zen gardens and a landscape garden. I rather liked this one which has moss in it as well as raked gravel.

By that time, it was 0330 and I had done enough walking. We had started out at 9 am. So we went home by way of the tram.

At 6 o'clock, Ruth decided she wanted to walk towards the city and in particular to a district called Gion. So we did. It was dark by this time but the
streets were very busy. This is where all the posh shops are -  Louis Vuitton, Joseph, Chanel.

After a long walk we decided we needed supper and thought a Department store might provide food. So we went up to the top (8th) floor and found a food court of sorts except that it was actually 8 or so different small restaurants. All the menus were in Japanese only although they had photos and plastic replicas. When we got to one which clearly did tempura, that was it and we went in.

We werer shown into a booth, took our shoes off and sat at a low table.  No menu in English and not much English spoken but  the photo shows the left overs. They only did tempura and very good it was too. It just seems very entertaining that one should eat at such a specialised restaurant in a department store. It was very reasonably priced too.

The thing that is expensive in Japan is drink. A glass of wine in a hotel will cost £15 upwards. Our hotel in Kyoto  does not cater for Europeans and has no bar. It does have a public baths which we must try out soem time. Today is Ikebana day. You have probably noticed there were no textiles yesterday. I don't think the guide was much interested in textiles!!