Alex and I had arranged to meet at 7:30 in the hostel but, after scarcely being ready on time myself, there was no sign of Alex. After waiting for 10 minutes I ran up to his dorm room which was fortunately unlocked and whispered “Alex” into the gloom. I wasn’t sure which bed he was in and it was still early in the morning so I didn’t want to raise my voice too high. There was no response and we’d already eaten into our contingency time so I had to leave – I just hoped that Alex had already decided to leave without me.
I bundled quickly down the road, weighed down by my full rucksack, and got the metro to Ueno. From there I jumped on the JR line which would take me to the main Tokyo station. It was the middle of rush hour so it was extremely busy and it was hard work moving through the masses with my heavy burden. Like the tube in London, Japanese people are very good at standing on one side of the escalator so that people in a rush can pass them by. Of course, the one time you actually need this to happen, the crowds hog both sides of the escalator.
I arrived at the bullet train with minutes to spare and discovered that our carriage was at the opposite end of the platform. I strode quickly down the platform and finally found our seats. There was no sign of Alex and I doubted I’d see him now. It looked like I’d be visiting Kyoto on my own – I hoped he’d at least be able to get some of his money back towards a later train. Just as the train was readying to pull out of the station, a flustered looking Alex appeared at the end of the car – he’d made it after all!
The train journey was incredibly smooth and there was no way of telling how fast we were actually going. I’d hoped that there would be a digital speedometer in the carriage telling us how fast we were going but no such luck – so I have absolutely no idea how fast we were going as the Japanese countryside hurtled past us. At one point a huge snowcapped mountain crowded the view – perhaps this was Mount Fuji – my Japanese geography is still not very good.
After a couple of hours we arrived in Kyoto station and a short metro journey later we were at the Kyoto Backpackers hostel. This had proven to be an absolute nightmare for me to book. Even though it was a sister hostel of the one in Tokyo (hence the equally inventive name) I couldn’t pay for it there and they insisted on having a credit card to guarantee the room. Since I’d lost my only debit card in Vang Vieng I didn’t have any valid cards to guarantee my reservation with. “Well Alex is coming with me. Can we use his card to guarantee my bed?” “No, it must be your card.” “Well since it’s just to guarantee the room, can I leave the money here in an envelope as a guarantee for the reservation?” “No, it’s a separate hostel.” Despite all my inventive workarounds the receptionist was complete intractable and offered no solution of her own. Then I thought of one. “Wait. Do you take Amex?” And so I handed over my American Express card as a guarantee for the room. The fact that the card had been cancelled two months beforehand and could never have been charged if they’d tried didn’t seem to matter – foolishly they did no pre-authorisation – and I managed to book okay.
I dropped off my pack at the Kyoto hostel and we asked where we should go if we only had a day to see the highlights of Kyoto. The receptionist underlined a few highlights and pointed us in the right direction for the bus and then our whistle-stop tour of Kyoto began.
I really liked Kyoto from the get-go. It is an incredibly picturesque city filled with temples, canals and traditional buildings. It is also the home of the geisha and it really brought home parts of the book and film Memoirs of a Geisha as I walked around. Parts of Kyoto are also incredibly touristy (both international and Japanese tourists) but the marauding hordes don’t take much away from its inherent charm. Our first stop of the day was Kinkaku-ji – the temple of the golden pavilion – a gorgeous shariden (containing relics of Buddha) covered in gold-leaf and set amongst beautiful Japanese gardens overlooking a mirror pond. The golden pavilion was located quite a way outside of town to the Northwest but it was mercifully small so after a quick march around there we jumped back into the bus.
The golden pavilion
Our next destination was Nijō Castle, home of the Tonkugawa shoguns from the 17th century. This was a large compound surrounded by sturdy walls, moats and ornate Japanese gardens. The centrepiece was the Ninomaru palace where the shogun received his guests in different rooms dependent on their status. The corridors were laid with “nightingale” floors which squeaked whenever you walked on them. This was to protect the feudal lords from unexpected visitors and potential assassins – Alex and I tried our best to walk along them without the tell-tale squeak and almost succeeded but it was impossible to walk on them without any noise.
Inside Nijo Castle
After exploring the grounds there for quite a while it was back on a bus (the tourist information girl didn’t quite point us in the right direction) and we headed to our last destination of the day: Kiyomizu-dera temple. The approach to the temple was up a long hilly road. Tourists thronged the path and, on either side, souvenir shops and cafes vied for attention. There were uniformed guides pulling tourists along on wheeled carriages and a lot of shop staff in traditional costumes. Nearly all the tourist shops sold ornate chopsticks: Alex should have saved his shopping mission which had taken us all across Tokyo for Kyoto instead. At the top of the hill we entered the main temple complex: inside it seemed to be like a Japanese Blackpool. Little booths along the way were selling good luck charms and prophesies and inside the complex we found the Jishu-jinja shrine which is dedicated to Okuninushino-Mikoto, the Japanese god of love and match-making. There were two “love stones” there about 20 metres apart – legend has it that if you can walk between them with your eyes closed you will find true love; Alex gave it a go and arrived safely at the second stone, although I think I was supposed to tell him before he crashed into it.
Me and Alex in front of the temple
Throughout the temple there was lots of geisha wandering around. They weren’t really working geisha – these are now a rarity in Kyoto – but rather tourists who had got dressed up as geisha for the day. Alex managed to find two particularly attractive tourists and get his photo taken with them; I think he was hoping that his true love prophecy might already come true. After the shrine we went to the Otowa waterfalls to catch and drink some of the sacred waters; supposed to give the visitor wisdom, health and longevity – although the Japanese believe that you may only choose two. We just thought they granted you a wish.
Catching the sacred waters at the entrance to the temple
We were now pretty exhausted with the whole tourist trail and had a couple of hours before Alex got his train back to Tokyo. So after some aimless wandering around through the restaurant area of town (most of them seemed to expensive for our backpacker budgets) we found an eat and drink as much as you like place where we did our best in our 90 minutes there to do just that. We ordered plate after plate of meats (not necessarily the choicest cuts) and cooked them on our little grill in the table. After dinner it was time for Alex to head back to Tokyo – this time he allowed plenty of time to catch the bullet train – and I headed back to the hostel lounge, where I chatted to a few people there before calling it a night.
