We hopped off the subway at the north west corner of the Imperial Palace and walked south through the grounds. We thought that's all we were going to do and that we wouldn't be allowed to go inside, but then we stumbled upon an open gate which appeared to be letting visitors in. We wandered in and then further realized that a free English tour started in 2 minutes so we thought, why not, and joined that as well. It was an hour long tour that took us to some of the major buildings within the palace and it was really interesting. Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 through 1869 (over a thousand years) when it moved to Tokyo, so it has a lot of history. She pointed out the Carriage Porch which is where senior nobility and high ranking courtiers entered through when they came to visit since that's where they could leave their carriages and oxen. But when former President Bush Sr visited in 1992 his motorcade was able to drive through the South Gate (Sakaimachigomon Gate). Then we were shown the waiting rooms (Shodaibu-no-ma) where visitors were allocated according to their rank. In descending order of importance: "Room of the Tigers", "Room of the Cranes", and "Room of the Cherry Trees". They are named after the paintings on the sliding doors and they also had different colors for the tatami mat edgings. We moved on to the Shishinden which is the hall for state ceremonies, such as enthronement of the emperor, up until 1928. The central staircase is flanked by a cherry tree which symbolized loyalty and a mandarin orange tree which symbolized longevity. We also got to see the emperor's private garden which was really pretty. She told us an interesting fact that although it's the emperor's garden, since he is not allowed to touch the ground people would have to roll out mats for him to walk through the garden. She also explained the unique, thick roofs we saw on many buildings at the palace and we've also seen on many temples throughout Japan. For important buildings they make the roof out of Cypress bark and bamboo nails and it's really thick because it's 7-8 layers of cypress bark. One of the reasons they use this is because the bark has a chemical in it that keeps the termites away. Also when they strip the tree of the bark the tree continues to live and it re grows the bark in about 10 years. The crazy thing is that the cypress bark roofs only last about 30 years, but to replace all of the cypress bark roofs at the palace it takes about 25 years because it takes so long to do! So pretty much right when they finish they have to start all over again.
After we left the palace we went through the Nishiki Market. Saw lots of fish and fruits and veggies, but not too much that we wanted to grab for a quick lunch. We did buy a bottle of umeshu though, which is the plum wine well-known here. We kept wandering and found a Turkish kebab place. Matt decided to get one of those and after I tried a bite I decided to get one too. We took them to a little square and ate them by the cherry blossoms, along with our umeshu (no open container laws in Japan!). Then, as we were eating we noticed that there was a hedgehog cafe right beside us. Hedgehogs are an inside joke with Matt and I, and to find a cafe right where we stumbled upon to eat lunch felt like such a huge coincidence so we decided to go check it out. It was called "Tom's Mr. Hedgie" and we got to play with our own hedgehogs for 20 minutes. They were so cute!! They really just wanted to bury their heads and sleep though.
Then we took the subway and walked to Maruyama Park, and along the way we saw a huge Buddhist temple that we briefly checked out. It had some really big stone steps that we walked all the way up and down. There seemed to be a lot of construction on the temple though so I couldn't get many pictures. The park though had a ton of beautiful cherry blossoms, so we sat there for a bit and split an ice cream cone. This time with no incidents! And we put some raspberry honey on it as well. Yum!
Then we walked through the Higashiyama district which was very popular. It was pretty packed with pedestrians, but it had a ton of shops and restuarants along there. This is when I thought I saw two real geishas (or Geikos, as they are known in Kyoto). We've seen lots of women dress in kimonos and with elaborate hair styles, but these girls had the full makeup and they seemed to be walking very gracefully and not looking around or encouraging the attention they were receiving. As soon as I saw them I turned a 180 and surreptitiously tried to follow them and take a picture of their faces. I never did quite get that picture but I got a couple of good side photos. But after doing some research I'm pretty sure they were not real geishas and were probably girls who paid to look very similar to them. A couple of telltale signs that they are not real geishas (that I've read) are that if they have a long hair ornament to their chins and have their upper lip painted (one of the girls I pictured had both), and if they have multiple colors on their collars (a true geisha or maiko would only have red, gold, or white). Also, it would be exceedingly rare to see a geisha in her full regalia out before 5pm, especially in a touristy place. So anyway, all the excitement for nothing. But here are the pictures.
Next stop was the Kiyomizu-dera which is a Buddhist temple and part of a UNESCO world heritage site. It had beatiful bright orange gates and pagodas as well. The Otowa waterfall runs beneath the main hall where three channels of water fall into the pond. If you catch and drink the water it's said to have wish-granting abilities. We didn't partake in since there was a long line. I didn't get any great pictures of the actual temple since it was under construction as well, and pictures weren't allowed inside.
Then we walked along Hanamikoji street hoping to see an actual geisha, but no such luck. We did see some more cherry blossoms though. Then we walked along Shirakawa which was a beautiful street lined with cherry blossoms and willow trees. Both of these streets were in the Gion area. Then we walked along the river and found a sunny place to sit near the Sanjo bridge to enjoy the views and some more umeshu. It was a popular spot and some chatty locals started talking to Matt about baseball; they were quite intoxicated.
Then we wandered along the Pantocho area again looking for some dinner. We settled on a ramen place (since I hadn't had real ramen in 48 hours!). And that was pretty much it for the day! We caught the subway back to our airbnb and settled in. My garmin says we did about 20k steps today so we're pretty tired.
Tomorrow we head to Hiroshima!
Update: I had decided to add some advertisements to the blog so that I could potentially earn a little bit of money from it. I added it last night and everything looked good, but unfortunately while I was sleeping it seems some malware got through instead. Upon waking up and realizing what happened I immediately removed the ads, but if you viewed the blog between the hours of 11am-7pm on Thursday April 13 and you received a scary looking pop up that said it was uploading your credit card information- please take this seriously and monitor your credit cards. I myself did have one of my credit cards hacked and it already had several fraudulent charges on it. I'm so sorry that this happened. I feel terrible that I put everyone at risk. I have contacted my advertising platform, PropellerAds, for what support they can provide. I am waiting to hear back and I will keep you all updated on that. The blog is back to being ad-free (and safe!) now and I will let you know in advance if that will change in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment