We made an early start this morning, leaving Best Western and Takayama behind on an 8:00 train. A busy but peaceful ride back to Nagoya.
Then a shorter but more heaving carriage between Nagoya and Kyoto – we were with a huge group of huge Aussies with huge suitcases – just as well we got on the train quickly and grabbed our corner of the baggage rack early. That vignette will be captured in a short King Cricket piece in the fullness of time.
Postscript: “the fullness of time” turned out to be 31 March 2020, by which time most of the world was in pandemic lockdown. Still, the vignette reads very nicely on King Cricket:
Just in case anything ever goes awry with King Cricket, I have scraped that piece to here.
We looked briefly but in vain for a route up to the sky walk and sky garden in Kyoto station – strange, as we were so close to it but it is not well signposted and probably just as well because we had our bags with us. So we got a cab to the hotel where they were able to accommodate us early in an annex room – larger, near the spa but without a view.
Losing track of time, we realised that we would be meeting our guide, Moto Suzuki, very soon, so we popped downstairs to grab a quick snack ahead of our tour. There I saw, sitting quite close to our table in the lounge section, a slightly nervous looking fellow who I guessed might be Moto a few minutes early for his gig. It was him.
Moto immediately announced that we wouldn’t have time in four hours to visit all of the sites on the list that he, Moto, had faxed to us, in a note that was waiting for us on arrival. This all seemed a little odd to me as we had very little in the way of expectations from this half-day tour before he sent his note, other than, as in Tokyo, an element of orientation while seeing some highlights of the city.
Anyway, we quickly ascertained that two temples in one afternoon would be one temple too many. I also hatched my plan, in search of the elusive dish, Kakuni, to end up in the neighbourhood where the TripAdvisor punter had recommended a restaurant, Miki, for that very dish.
Public transport in Kyoto is not at all like public transport in Tokyo. Of course it is a much smaller city, but that doesn’t really explain the disjointed transportation system, for which a spaghetti mind might just help, whereas the orderly mind would surely be prone to confusion.
Even Moto seemed to struggle with some of the whys and wherefores of it, but we set off on foot, then went to a local railway line (off the two-line subway system) where he needed to pay separately, before getting us to a more regular line where he was able to buy day passes for us.
By a mixture of these methods, including buses, Moto took us to see, first, Nijo Castle, which was fascinating and steeped in history, which Moto explained patiently and very well. The real castle part of that c1600 complex was destroyed by lightening in the early 1700s, but the larger, surrounding complex of castle buildings has been preserved.
I was especially taken by the stunning ceiling work and by one carved piece, in the partition between two rooms, carved from a single ultra-thick plank of wood with ornate designs such as peacocks on one side and a totally different, slightly less ornate, carving on the other side, despite each carving including many features that are carved all the way through the piece of wood.
What sort of mind could possibly design such a complex piece? The sort of mind that would, 400 years later, be able to navigate the Kyoto transportation system perhaps. No really, the craftsmanship was exquisite.
Nice gardens at Nijo too, together with a relaxed atmosphere when walking around the site.
Next, a comfort-lite journey, mostly by bus, to another part of town to see the Golden Temple. This is really a very beautiful reconstruction of the original temple (destroyed by mad-monastic arson in the 1950s) but in its charming garden setting and the late afternoon sunlight it was an absolute delight to the eyes and to the camera lens.
Daisy and I competed feverishly to find the very best angle and capture the light in the very best way in our photographs – hence there being dozens of them in the complete photograph deck, but in the end we decided that the match ended as a high-scoring draw.
There was a small gaggle of Russian women taking photographs of each other posing like crazy. I felt loathe to encourage them by snapping at them myself, but suggested that Daisy capture that moment. She actually snapped the best looking of the gaggle, plus separately the rest of the gaggle.
As expected, we were out of time in terms of seeing the other temple and by the time we had meandered back to the subway somewhat circuitously to avoid the rush hour crowds, we didn’t have time to see Higashiyama and also track down the Miki place for our Kakuni.
Still, Moto was very happy for me to eat his brain on thoughts for what we might see and how we might get around during our copious free time in Kyoto. So in terms of orientation, the outing was a great success…
…as indeed, it proved to be in the matter of finding Kakuni, but not in the way we expected. We took a long hike from the K-line station to the west-side location where Miki (and supposedly Kakuni) were to be found. We took some nice evening photos along the way.
We also furnished Moto with a gift of Harrods biscuits in a fancy tin, which seemed to please him beyond measure – I get the impression that only a minority of visitors take gifts for their guides in this non-tipping (but gift-accepting) culture.
We hastened our step as we approached the Miki restaurant, but…it transpired that the Kakuni was off the menu at Miki’s now. Oh woe. Oh sorrow.
It was our good fortune that Moto is a bit of a Kakuni fan. His wife makes Kakuni at home and he was even able to recommend us his favourite ramen restaurant in Tokyo; the only one to his knowledge that serves Kakuni in ramen.
The bit we didn’t realise was that Kakuni is actually a regional dish, from a southern island, Kyushu, hence its scarcity, even in big cities. Moto came up trumps by tracking down a restaurant that specialises in food from that region and phoning them to confirm that they had Kakuni available and a place for us to eat.
He then insisted on taking us to the location to make absolutely sure everything would be all right for us. The location turned out to be the plaza underneath the Mitsui Building and the restaurant named Satuma Gokamon Shijo Karasuma (don’t try saying that after two or three sakes).
Unlike most of the other (many) eateries in that plaza, our one was very full and entirely populated with Japanese customers apart from us. Nevertheless, they did (sort of) have a menu in English (a more limited card) and one waiter who spoke excellent English who could help us to go “off-piste” (or rather, “on Japanese piste” menu-wise).
We had a superb meal. Portion sizes were quite small (but then so were prices per dish), so we ordered a second helping of Kakuni (having come all this way and with such difficulty). We also tried chicken nanban and satsuma-age fish cake, both of which were excellent.
It was a great fun evening, which we could bring to a tired end easily enough, as the one aspect of the transport system in Kyoto that seems to work very well, very easily and is (relative to other cities and Japanese prices generally) reasonably priced is the taxi system – most places cross-town for a tenner or less. And the taxis can move in Kyoto too. That final lesson in orientation was possibly the most useful of the lot.
All the pictures from Day Seven can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below:
