Japan Day One and Two

Day One

(Day one and two we spent walking all of Kyoto)

As noted before with over 1200 pictures taken on the trip, I will be trying to keep the picture posting here brief or nothing will ever upload. :)

 

 The first place we visited was the Kinkakuji Golden Pavilion. The top is made out of real gold with a phoenix on the top and no one was allowed inside. This was as close as you could get to it really since there was a fence in the way. It was build during three different time periods: 11th century shinden style, buke style and zenshu-butsuden. It houses relics of Buddha.

 There are lots of these stone statues all over Japan. Some of them even have aprons tied around them. You can read about jizo statues to find out why. This one had a money container (also seen all over the place) and we tried our luck at tossing in "pennies." I missed by a lot. Chris got close. 

 They were selling prayer candles here that you could burn like in the picture below. 

There was also a large burning container of incense to the right that people would stand by and pull the vapors towards themselves. 

Amanda blows an interview:

This is the spot that I got interviewed by a group of junior high students. They all took turns reading questions in English off to me, but I got confused. One time I thought they asked me what I had seen so far so I said I had only seen this, it being our first stop ever, and then they got confused. Chris told me they really asked me what I thought of Japan. Um. Oh. Sorry junior high kids! The last question they asked was, "Would you like to take a picture with us?" So we did. I noticed later on a different day how an older woman used the exact same phrase when she wanted to us to take a picture for/of her and her group, and I was thinking "Hey you learned how to say that in junior high!"

Rock Garden (Day One)

 Here is a really famous rock garden. There are fifteen rocks and you have sit near the edge and contemplate. It's impossible to see all fifteen rocks at the same time. We only counted fourteen. To get into this place we first had to take our shoes off. In Japan they always take their street shoes off outside and that held true for visiting places that had mats or wooden flooring. Since it was hot, it was nice to remove our shoes for a while. We left them in a shelf next to other shoes and walked around in our socks. 

 Directly behind the rock garden was this opened up house that we circled before heading out. I was interested in all the pictures painted on the walls and screens. 

 Here is what the full rock garden looks like. 

These are the gardens we walked through after collecting our shoes and exiting.

Ninniji Goten Palace (Day One)

 This palace is five stories high. We were given free tea when we entered which we politely drank. It tasted like warm broth actually and I thought it a little too warm given the already hot temperature. (It was 83 and above the whole two weeks we were there). 

 Beside the Goten Palace are tons of other smaller buildings. This one got our special notice because it is orange and off limits. That makes everything more exciting right?  It is actually a monk training yard made around 1640. 

We stopped across the street for lunch and had our first real Japanese meal. This was also my favorite meal the entire trip and I was disappointed that I could not find vegetable tempura anywhere else! There was only shrimp tempura, but this vegetable stuff is the best. They had some pretty good prices too. :) 

Ninjo Castle (Day One)

 Here was our first look at Japanese in traditional dress. Please note the umbrellas. Lots of people carry umbrellas around to ward off the sun so even on a warm sunny day you have to dodge those things.

 Here is the most colorful spot of the whole castle. The inside was only wood and we were not allowed to take pictures of it. Once again we had to take our shoes off. The floor boards in this place were designed to squeak so the royal family could hear intruders in the middle of the night. It was pretty squeaky and large. It had two reception rooms, two waiting rooms, four grand rooms, two living quarters, and minister offices. Surrounding the place is a network of gardens, meaning trees mostly with a few bushes. 

Japanese castles are not what I expected castles to really look like since I always picture medieval ones and these one look very similar to temples. I guess the difference is the size and the moat and who lived there. 

 

The castle has two moats. This is the inner one. The outer one reaches right next to the road. 

Due to Jet Lag by 4pm I was exhausted. 

Day Two

This day was the day we walked the most from 8am to 7pm and the next day it hurt to stand up. The day before we'd walked 9-4 and took a break before going out again for dinner.

Ginkaku-ji Temple

 To reach the temple we first went up this narrow street (yes cars drive here) that was lined with trinket shops on each side and millions of gradeschoolers.

 This was my favorite place of all of Japan. It is a zen garden. Once we let the school tour groups get ahead of us, they kept saying "Hi my name is ---", it was such a peaceful place to walk around. The air was misty and we climbed stone steps with bamboo railing around the path. It was very green and pretty.

 I assume they rake the sand every morning. We saw them in the action of it. 

Philosophers Path (Day Two)

It was already a hike to the temple and then we walked the philosophers path which was a narrow rocky thing between a canal on the left and houses on the right.

 What can I say? They got hungry. This is along the path.

 Here is an example of jizo statues with bibs/aprons and the coin collection cups. It rained early that morning so they are full of water. 

 The actual path.

 Amanda's confession:

I have tons of pictures of parked cars. Here is just one example of a parked car. I was just astounded by the Japanese ability to park cars in the most narrow of spaces. Usually these spaces were beside stone walls or roads or overhangs. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how they had even done it because in order to fit they needed their side mirrors pushed up to the side of the car, but how did they back in with no mirrors? I never did catch a car backing up to park in action which was a shame since I probably would have filmed it as discreetly as possible. 

Also along the path we saw Cat Haven. There were at least eight cats in here and more on the ground walking around. 

Nanzia-ji Temple

 If you paid extra you could walk through the top and over this bridge at this temple. It just looked like all wood inside so we passed. This was the oldest Sanmon gate in Japan.

 But we did get a phone call from Grandma Heit while we were here. It was an accidental dial, but we sat on some steps by this thing while we said hi. 

Then it was more walking. We walked past a zoo so I had to get one shot of the giraffes.

 We walked along a canal (the keage incline) to see the largest torii gate.

Heian shrine

 Here was the place that was under construction. You can see the green construction cones and they also had frog ones and yellow bunny ones that were pretty amazing. 

Shinto shrines are orange and have torii. Buddhist temples are white and brown.

 Before entering there was a large water pool where people would use the ladle to dump water on their hands to clean them. Later on we saw more of these with signs saying not to drink the water. This one did not have such a sign but it needed one. A tourist had us take a picture of him drinking from it. We didn't feel up to telling that he probably wasn't supposed to. 

 There was an additional garden we could go through at the side of this place that we walked through. It had two main paths that wrapped around a lily pad pond. Here is a bird maybe a crane that was fishing.

 This is a side building since at the main one we could not take pictures there. They were performing a prayer ceremony at the time and had a guy making sure no pictures were taken. 

Here is an example of tied up prayers.

Marayama Park

 This is a park. I kind of expected grass. Actually the playgrounds in Japan are greatly lacking. Even the smallest ones here in Wisconsin are considered super playgrounds compared to the ones I saw there. Normally I would only see one slide and one swing on top of dirt. Even the playgrounds attached to schools were like that with the exception of adding a climbing structure perhaps. Most of the recess area is just open dirt space.

 This tree helps provide needed shade. 

 This toilet is notable is that it is the first squatter potty that I ever used. You squat to use it just like it sounds. I was glad that I also had my hotel toilet to use as well which was a bidet (I had my own dislikes about it) but at least you could sit down.

This is Yasaka Shrine I believe. It was at the back of the park. 

 We found a really nifty short cut that actually took us right where we wanted to go.

  Kiyumizudera

 There was a guy walking around telling everyone his hobby was photography and asking if he could take our pictures on our cameras for us. He asked us so we said sure. It's pretty cool to get shots without other people in them. Because if you look below this is what there was around us.

It's easier to get these kinds of shots because you can hold your camera up above everyone's heads to do it. This was set on a hill. 

Gion Corner

 We got to enjoy a traditional Japanese show where we heard them play old instruments. These ones were super squeaky and I was not a real fan. There were also some "trumpet" like instruments that you blew into. The men who played them had to puff out their cheeks to get out a note and they too were a little irksome sounding.

 The show included a play where two servants get tied up so they can't get into the masters rice wine cellar while he is away. They however end up getting into it and feeding each other and it closes as the master returns and finds them drunk. 

 Chris said his favorite part of the show was this puppet play. This was of a girl who loved this boy and ended up setting a building on fire to return some missing sword to him to help him out. 

It took three guys to make the puppet move at all. 

This was the closing act of a maiko dancing. From personal experience you can't move in those clothes. Her arms are up as far as they can go. Her dance consisted of turning in circles, raising her arms in various positions and stomping her feet. It was really slow and I'll admit since it was the end of the day, I was going to fall asleep.

After all that we had to walk back to the hotel. 

Chris had planned on us eating at a fancy restaurant that over looked the water, but I was just too tired. We did walk through the restaurants though and past a music show that was happening on the "beach" by the canal.

That's it for the first two days.

Food we ate in Japan

Food Post

Here are a bunch of drinks that we tried while in Japan. Where we were in Kyoto and the surrounding area there were drink vending machines every block and in every train station. C.C Lemon was carbonated and tasted like thirty lemons, Pocari Sweat and the white one at the bottom where like electrolyte replenishing drinks, and the last one was apple, banana, pineapple. I don't think there was a drink that we tried that was gross except for perhaps a tea one here and there. They serve tea with every meal so you have to request water if you want that instead. Usually you end up with both. 

 This is a cream filled roll. It was good, but messy!

 Here is an udon noodle soup bowl. Chris tried more udon noodle things than I did. I stayed away from the soup mostly because it was so hot (83 degrees Fahrenheit and above) and hot soup didn't sound as good.

 

 This is tonkatsu- fried breaded port cutlet-with shredded cabbage, rice, two other small somethings and soup broth with greens inside.

 

 We went to McDonald's twice the entire trip and we had to try out the teriyaki burger, because you can't get that in the States. It was good. I thought it tasted a similar to a Salisbury stake but with teriyaki sauce. Chris wondered if the meat was even really made from beef or something else.

 This is a Japanese candy item that tastes squishy flour. It does not really have a taste to it even though these ones are supposed to be strawberry. There is also a similar item in Japan made from this same stuff but shaped into triangles that tastes the same; squishy flavorless flour. 

 I was excited to go to Japan to try out the variety of Kit Kat flavors that they have there. Unfortunately for me the Kit Kat store is only in Tokyo and we were not going to travel to Tokyo. Convenient stores only sell one or two flavors at a time. While we were there raspberry was the only "new" flavor for us to try. It was tasty! 

 Had to try out a watermelon ice cream because real watermelon there is super expensive. We were looking to find square watermelons but never did. We did find cantaloupe sized watermelon though selling for a rough comparison of 30-50 dollars each. We did not buy one.The seeds on this are chocolate pieces.

 This is made from chocolate and strawberry and tastes just as you would expect it to. 

Also behind it is a lemon/lime carbonated drink.

 Here are two different beef and rice bowls. One has cheese sauce and crunchy noodles on top. We don't know what the white stuff is. It was thick like a pudding but tasted more like a bland cottage cheese.

 This meal is beef on the lower left with egg topping rice in the middle and the side of shredded cabbage like coleslaw. It was good.

 We had an overnight in a monastery and this was dinner. Two different trays for the each of us and a side of white rice that sat on the floor beside the pot of tea. I had orange juice.

 I can not really tell you what everything is. The white is tofu. Below that is their version of pickles. The middle was a vegetable green bean salad. On top was breaded fried mixed vegetables. The larger upside down bowl is for rice, the smaller for the tea, and the glass for the orange juice.

There are two white packets on the edge. One is a disposable washcloth like a wet paper towel, the other is chopsticks. For some reason the Japanese don't use soap, just water and these towel things. I was grateful for my hand sanitzer that I brought. 

 This is still dinner. The top is a soup of noodles. I believe it was buckwheat noodles. Two orange slices, a noodle thing that was too smelly for me to eat and those other blobs. I ate the green bean and the yellow thing, but couldn't eat the third whatever wrapped in sea weed because it fell apart. 

I do know that it was not anything like sushi. The monks are vegetarian. 

 This was breakfast along with a side of rice and tea. At the top was a packet of dried seaweed. I managed to eat through one leaf. Below was a vegetable like cake/roll thing that was placed in liquid so it was moist. There is a small jar of white noodles and on the plate is a pickled apricot that I could not eat. I did take a bite, but it was gross! I described it as "potent" to Chris and watched him try it. It is called ume boshi.

 We tried pizza one time. The crust was good, the cheese was good, mine had sausage and zucchini, Chris just had cheese, but the sauce was something to be desired. Chris compared it to plain tomato paste. Not that I have been to Italy, but it was not Italian. You can also see orange juice and water in the picture.

Time for a fun story!

We had our second overnight stay at Miyajima Island. (This was two days after the monastery. Our normal hotel was Sakura Terrace in Kyoto. We double booked it for our other overnights so we would not have move our suitcases all over.) Anyway this story is about us turning into criminals. We stole the food in the below picture!

 If I were to turn into a criminal food stealer I would not want to ever steal this food again! Here is the back story. When we checked into the hotel the guy there pointed out the times for dinner and breakfast and check out etc. It was on a card and also posted in our room on a similar card. Our bedroom was located up two flights of stairs, the lower level being a restaurant and while Chris was not sure if we had bought a dinner included with our nights stay we decided we would head back to the place for dinner to order something. We came in and asked if we could eat and the guy led us to a table. There were two tables already completely set out with this stuff above. He and the girl (his wife maybe? She was in and out of the kitchen preparing) both directed us to sit down at the table so we did. We sat there for a moment looking at the food trying to decide if we wanted to eat it. I was wondering why we did not get to pick items from a menu. Then the woman came back out with our drink and pointed to a white piece of paper beside me on the table. She said, "Menu. All Japanese." It was written in all Japanese so I could not read it. Then she read off what it said and pointed to each item on the menu. She got about a fifth of the way through it and smiled and walked back off. 

I figured that at this place you did not get to pick items from a full menu list so Chris and I looked at each other again and started to eat. It was not my favorite meal to be sure. On the right was something smoked so maybe salmon. The rectangles are crab cakes, the green and purple glob sushi, the white on a leaf was tofu, and the on the far left was an oyster. That was the hardest one for me to eat because once you take the leaf off the top you can see it's curled up brown somethings (not legs). When I did get brave enough to eat it, more to be polite than anything else, it wasn't that bad. It did not taste fishy. It was soft maybe soft like biting into a roll. As we finished eating it, another couple came down the stairs and sat down at the table behind us. Then the woman asked to see their room key and then to see ours and when she saw ours she let out a gasp of horror and rushed off to talk with the other guy. He came back a few minutes later telling us he was so sorry but the food we had eaten was a reservation and we had to leave. 

He would not let us pay for the part we had eaten of what was five course special reservation dinner. He gave us a map of places that "should be open" and turned us out. So we went out. It was only 6pm but there was nothing open. The island looked like a deserted ghost town and we could only spot a couple other tourist people wandering the whole island. But we couldn't go back! We had to make it look like we ate something else. We bought ice cream from a vending machine after realizing that this island did not have a 7-eleven that sold packaged meals and sandwiches. There was only ice cream. We ate that and walked around for an hour.

 

 We spent a lot of time taking pictures of this famous torii gate that is out in the water. They told us that we could eat breakfast there, but we were a little slow in starting eat breakfast as well. Once again they did not ask to see our room key, but we had on the previous night been asked if we wanted a Japanese or Western breakfast and we had picked Western. I did notice how they placed us in a corner so they could not see us and our server was some other girl we had never met before. It was so bad!

This was the Japanese version of a "Western" breakfast. No pancakes.

 In the while large lipped bowl in the back was a warm custard. I thought it tasted like eggs, Chris thought it tasted like cream of chicken soup. There was a glass bowl with corn flakes on the bottom, plain yogurt on top with powdered sugar on that. A small salad. Orange juice. A container of jelly and one of butter. Two chicken nuggets, a fourth slice of corn on the cob, actual ketchup! This was the first ketchup we had seen in Japan. I was missing it at McDonald's when I had to eat dry fries without it. In the middle is a meat attached to an actual bone that tasted like sausage. Behind the white square which is a cheese slice is a round roll and before that a croissant.  To the right is this pot and blue dish.

 The pot contained an egg and a slice of bacon that got cooked over a candle they lit. 

 I normally eat scrambled eggs so I was a little unsure if I could eat this one. I had to make sure it was cooked through before I ate it. The meal rests atop wax paper perhaps and was supposed to be slid off onto the blue plate to eat. 

 It was a pretty filling breakfast!

We were glad to not be eating the soupy stuff that the other table had gotten though.

 Here is the ice cream I won from 7-eleven. We still don't know why we got to pick cards out of a hole in a box, but we did and I won this. Chris only won a discount for such wonderful items like metal detectors etc. It is vanilla ice cream wrapped in crispy waffle.

 Airplane food. Japanese Airlines has way better food quality than American Airlines.

 This is JAL dinner. There is fruit, salad, noodle salad, vegetable something, broccoli with chicken and rice and a hard chewy roll. The desert with this was ice cream we did not eat because it was coffee flavored. Out of curiosity I took a very small lick and did not care for the flavor at all!

 This one was breakfast at JAL. Yogurt, fruit, tofu squares in three different colors, and bland rice with green onions and rice. It was alright. 

In comparison AA did not have actual dishes they had to wash, plastic containers they could throw away. The food may have sounded better, but didn't really taste better. There was curry rice with shimp on top (and later curry chicken that was too spicy for me), with a side of noodle salad and a lunch meat slice. 

 

 This is what Chris ate for breakfast every day. He bought yogurt and this melon bread from 7-eleven. For your reference 7-eleven in Kyoto, and Family Mart, are the largest convenience stores. There is one on every single block and that's not a lie. That's why we tried to find one on Miyajima. We bought all of our breakfast from there and some dinners and lunches too and 7-eleven (and the post office) are the only places with atm machines that work internationally, so we used 7-eleven all the time at least once a day. 

This is an example of a dinner you can buy at 7-eleven. There is also a peach drink and a fruit drink we tested out. The workers in the store will microwave these pre-made dinners for you and they taste just like eating out at restaurants they are that good. I think here we have a spaghetti and a curry rice bowl. These rice bowls I could actually eat since the curry was not really spicy. 

Also note that in this picture we are at our Kyoto hotel. Since we were there every day of course we forgot to take pictures of our room. You can see the bed. Behind that wall is the bathroom with a bidet toilet. I did not like the fact that toilet seat warmed up, or that as soon as you sat down water would trickle into the toilet. I had trouble peeing when my toilet was already doing that. I did use the bottom washer button once just to say I did. It squirts out warm water and gets you wet. Imagine! I was excited on the day I realized you could turn the heater on the seat off. Chris said he didn't mind the warm seat, but I sure did. 

The Japanese have two toilets. Bidets like the ones on the hotel and squatter potties. You will see a picture of one later on. It is basically a urinal shape turned flat into the ground so you pee in a hole and try to not get your shoes wet or lose the stuff in your pockets. How fun!