Adventures with KG!: Kyoto

After the 4 days of training last week, the foreign visitors and I had a Mitsui global logistics meeting in Tokyo. If you've been watching the blog properly you know that after every big work event in Japan, we have a nice evening out! Here is the crew after a hard week's work.

After this dinner, 2 visitors went home, but the other 3 travelled to the well-perserved-from-ancient-times city of Kyoto with Tag and I for a little Japan history and sightseeing!

First stop: A real bamboo forest! It was so beautiful and unbelievable!!

Kerri, Jerry, & Li at tea ceremony with bamboo backdrop.

Natural beauty abounds all around!

Next stop was the Okochi-sanso Villa, which was the second home to a silent-film superstar samurai, Okochi Denjiro.

It took him over 30 years to create his beautiful garden, and it is designed to be in bloom during all 4 seasons!

Rock path... perfect for a rainy day with puddles!

Kerri in the garden which truly is vibrant green from the rain.

I was a little less cranky about the rain this time because I wised up this time and wore sandals instead of socks and soggy shoes!

Another garden called Tenryu-ji Sogenchi.

We had a great taxi driver who led us to all of these cool places and took group photos in the most beautiful spots! I thought it was excellent! Too bad the Japanese don't accept tips because this driver truly deserved a big one!

Lots of greenery. Pictures can't capture the beauty.

A different type of beauty in the garden ;)

Moving on to Myoshin-ji temple grounds, which is home to 46 smaller temples. The big attraction is a temple with a dragon painting on the ceiling. This dragon is called Unryu-zu and is the defender of Buddhism.

No pictures were allowed inside of the temple, and no English tours were available. But we went on a Japanese tour, and Tag translated as best as possible. Here's another photo of monks praying in the temple I snagged off the internet! The huge size of the ceiling reminded me of the Sistine Chapel!

Group photo in front of the Golden Pavilion (a.k.a. Kinkaku or Rokuon-ji Temple).

The taxi driver told us that you actually can enter the Golden Pavilion and see inside the 3-story building. All it takes is a 1,000,000 yen "donation" (about $10,000). What a scam--they require it to be a donation in order to avoid taxation!!

Narrow streets of Kyoto on our way to lunch (at a French restaurant).

Quick stop by Tag's alma mater, Kyoto University. He said this is the 2nd most respected college in Japan. The first is University of Tokyo.

My favorite stop of the day: 1,000 torii gates of Fushimi-Inari Shrine. So awesome!

Group inside the torii gates.

One side bears the name of the donor of each torii. I looked for "Mitsui" since that's about the only Japanese kanji word I know but never found it! It would take hours (maybe days) to read each one. Crazy!!

Here is the map of how to walk through all 1,000 gates. It takes several hours to walk it and includes some tricky terrain. We only did one quick section. We were told that each torii gate costs $3,000 to construct!

Ready to start the climb to Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

More statues wearing bibs. The Japanese claim this is just for decoration, but it's such an odd thing to decorate...

On the stage of Kiyomizu-dera. Kerri is checking to see if the rain stopped!

Pagoda & Kiyomizu-dera stage.

Kerri drinks the holy water again.

After my return, I found out that each of the 3 streams of water means something different: wisdom, health, or longevity. Legend has it that people should only drink from 2 different streams of water. If you take all 3, you are just being greedy. I drank from a different stream this time, so I wonder which two I unknowingly chose?

We didn't see any real geishas, but that didn't stop me from wanting my picture taken with one...

What are you lovely ladies looking at?!

I've been in Japan over 7 months, and people (not just locals) are constantly shocked that I've never been to the city of Kyoto. Truthfully, I've just been waiting for a Japanese friend to offer to be my tour guide, and that day has finally arrived!!

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over 11 centuries and is known as the best preserved city in Japan since it was spared by bombing during WWII. Kyoto has over 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines. It is also home to 13 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. (Remember we learned about these when I went to Europe?)

Since the city is so full of old world Japan history and culture, I wanted someone Japanese to read the signs and tell me the stories that go along with these amazing sites. A friend from work gathered up 3 more people from her English class, and we rented a "family car" for a day.

Here's our Toyota "Noah" mini-van.

The drive took about 2 hours, but we played plenty of games to pass the time. They really liked practicing their English vocabulary, so we played a lot of word games where you have to name things in English without repeating what others had already said and without taking too long. Categories included: fruits, vegetables, flowers, automobile makers, countries, world capitals, etc. When we ran out of categories, we simply switched to name any word that begins with the letter "T"! Obviously, I should have been really good at this game since English is my official language, but it was also kind of tricky to make sure I understood what they were saying with their accent so I didn't repeat it.

First stop is Nijo Castle.

Here is Ko, Kerri, Shinichi, & Eai ready to explore.

I kept looking for giant castle like Nagoya or Inuyama, but it doesn't exist. Instead, that one-story building in the background is the Ninomaru Palace built by Japanese samurai. It is 33 rooms and over 800 tatami mats (which is huge on a Japan scale). Pictures inside the Palace were strictly forbidden. My favorite part was the specially designed floors that squeak when they are walked on so your enemies could not sneak up on you!! They are called Nightingale floors because it sort of sounds like birds chirping!

Ninomaru Garden. In the center is the Island of Eternal Happiness, designed in 1626.

Oddly, no one can reach this island because it's not like you're allowed to swim across the pond.

Honmaru Palace inside the inner moat.

Stop #2 is Rokuon-ji Temple (a.k.a. Golden Pavilion or Kinkaku-ji)

As you can see, the rainy season of Japan decided to start, while I was hoping it would hold out for one more day. I bought my 5th or 6th umbrella from Japan and got on with the sightseeing.

Breathtaking view, built in the 1220's but restored with a new coating of gold in 1987.

Kyoko-chi (Mirror Pond) containing many large and small islands.

The public is not allowed inside, but it's still a great view from the outside. Even in the rain it was very shiny!!

My travel buddies say that the rainy season is the best time to visit Kyoto because all of the moss turns green. Hmm... I'm not sure how to respond to that one...

At the temple, they had English fortunes you could buy. Mine was rated "Very Good", and therefore I am supposed to take it home and hope it comes true. If it was a bad fortune, I would have tied it to a tree and hope it doesn't come true. (Remember from the New Year's shrine visit?)

Here's my fortune. (Click on the pic for a larger image.)

It's interesting that for Business it says "no loss, little gain", and for Love it says "Good. Tell your parents".

I love you, Mom & Dad!!

Stop #3 is Daitokuji Temple, which is home to 33 small temples. We went to only one: Ryongen-in Zen Temple, which is famous for its five gardens.

Constructed in 1502. Did I mention they were all rock gardens?

Kerri next to the world's smallest rock garden. Considering how small everything else in Japan is, I expected this thing to be the size of a shoebox. Imagine my surprise!

More rocks and symbols of life. Very zen, so they say, but I'm not going to on and on about it in my blog!

Dragon painted on the sliding doors, from the 16th century.

Another small temple inside the garden grounds.

I loved the stone walkway.

More "green" moss that everyone but me was so thrilled about!! LOL

Snack time! We decided to stop for Japanese sweets, which is always risky business considering they like to hide red beans in everything. Same as usual, I couldn't read the menu, and there wasn't any pictures, so I just let someone order me something. As it turns out it was very yummy ice cream! From the left the flavors are: soybean (tasted sort of like coffee), blueberry, and green tea. The other ladies ended up getting 3 other flavors of ice cream, which were terrible: egg, red bean paste, and wheat grass. (Seriously, there were blades of grass sticking out of it!). I tried them all, too, and goodness was I thankful even more for my flavors!

Last stop is Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

Here is the entrance.

It's still raining, and surprisingly, I was the only one who was cranky about it. I was sick of my soaking wet spongy shoes and socks. And I was tired of trying to find hands to hold my umbrella, take pictures & keep my camera dry, all while constantly pulling my pants up. (I finally got out the summer clothes, and surprise... they don't fit so well.)

Dragon fountain :)

I didn't really "get" what this place was all about at first. It just looked like a big forest, but eventually I figured it out.

View from the Kiyomizu-dera stage

And finally it all makes sense! Here is a view of the main hall Kiyomizu-dera, and the stage that I was on earlier. This temple is from 778, and Japan has an expression "to jump off the Kiyomizu stage". It's kind of like "taking the plunge" in English, but they used to let people jump off the stage, and legend was is if they survived the fall then all of the person's dreams would come true.