Category: Trip

The Day We Collectively Ate 10 Shaved Ices

June 14, 2013

After Nara, we all slept like stone dogs, getting 10 or more hours of sleep and barely registering our pricey hotel! The next day – the last of our whirlwind Kyoto trip – was reserved for the sights of Kyoto itself.

Now the guides say Kyoto can be appreciated in a few days, or at best a week. We had one! KLS and I had been here before 11 years ago, and I asked the concierge which sights were recommended in one day and she gave four suggestions. Soon we were on the bus to the first, Kinkakuji Temple (the golden pavilion):

Or, as it may have looked in a 1950s technicolour travelogue:

Beautiful isn’t it? The wooden structure is lacquered with gold, and sits next to a garden (the lake) which is considered one of the greatest in all Japan. To see it in person is quite a sight.

Here is a slightly different perspective:

As with all tourist sights here in Japan, Kinkakuji was mobbed with school kids. Given it was 93F, with almost no breeze and little shade, I felt sorry for them in their long pants, dresses and sleeves!

We quickly felt the heat as well, and I had a bit of a turn at the temple, succumbing to vapors that drained my life rapidly. We decided to head directly to another famous temple on the other side of Kyoto, then call it a day.

Upon arriving at the new location, we found a stall…

Selling a product called ‘potatornado’:

Which was delicious, especially with shaved ice!

Rapid consumption of such treats restored my HP quickly!

That is a pile of sand, intended to symbolize Mt Fuji, in the gardens of Ginkakuji, another famous temple in Kyoto.

As with Kinkakuji, it was built over 500 years ago when Kyoto was the Capitol, and today is one of the national treasures of Japan.

It was during exploration of the beautiful gardens on Ginkakuji that someone who shall be named only as ‘Francis’ was heard to utter: “When does this death march end?”

He was referring to the stairs, and the heat, and the two weeks of exhaustion. It was time to leave the heat and find solace in air conditioning, and that we did!

The above shows ~~Francis~~ Bernard enjoying lunch, and here he is a bit later after some mall shopping:

The tray contains the 8th, 9th and 10th shaved ices of the day, all but one of which had been lemon flavour! It would not be an exaggeration to say the ambrosial quality of the sickly sweet arctic treat had saved us from an early grave in the Kyoto heat!

Later in the day our train arrived to return us to Tokyo. Immediately after boarding we ate dinner:

And then this happened in the seats next to me:

While I chilled out and enjoyed the ride…

Deer

June 13, 2013

We fled the Tokyo rain and headed west to Kyoto, 500 km distant or 2.5 hours on the bullet train. The trip looked like this:

As soon as we arrived we 2-hit-combo’d onto a second (and very nice!) express train for the scenic city of Nara.

Here’s what we found in Nara:

They are everywhere! In front of you, behind you, even above you (if for some reason you are in a dungeon under Nara). They are Japanese Sika deer, and they have lived free in Nara for over 1000 years. Intensely fearless and curious, they swarm tourists hoping to get ‘deer biscuits’ sold by vendors:

I had just finished handing out biscuits to some deer before taking the above shot. Look closely to see the deer trying to eat the tourist guide in my pocket! I even had deer nibble on my shirt and shoelaces!

Of course Nara isn’t just about Deer… It’s also about school children on school trips:

I jest (although school kids outnumber even the deer). Nara is about sights like Todaiji temple:

Which contained this gargantuan statue:

Or the nearby shrine with 1000 stone lanterns:

Oh, a deer photobombed me.

The heat was intense today; a maximum of 95 degrees. We spent about 6 hours outdoors, and unsurprisingly this was tiring to this group of nonstop tourists. Upon eventually arriving back to our (western!) hotel in Kyoto, the sleep was bliss 🙂

Shuwatch!

June 12, 2013

After yesterday’s exhaustion, today was a rest day. Which meant over 7 hours on my feet doing 22k steps 🙂

The location was Akihabara (again!):

Bernard stayed at the ryokan for resting, so it was just KLS and I. We had no real goal, and just perused the seemingly endless amount of otaku shops.

Here’s a creative display of new manga:

An area of merchandising that was nonexistent on our first trip a dozen years ago was food. It’s quite common now to see food merchandise for most series. Here’s a selection of monster hunter snack food items:

We also went to Yodibashi camera in Akiba, pretty much the most amazing store on Earth. Here is KLS perusing a $8500 4K TV:

And a charmingly marketed men’s razor:

Lunch was Italian. I had spaghetti and KLS a mushroom pizza. As we were waiting I checked my DS for street passes. It’s very easy to get them here on the subway. I’ve obtained 51 in just two trips out with the DS.

KLS headed back early and I hit the game shops and centers and failed to win anything great. I was pretty ruined when I got back. But not too ruined to be giddy with excitement when we discovered Ultraman on TV 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to Kyoto for two days on the bullet train!

Robot Claw