Kyoto and Nara

by Holly

While living in Malaysia this year, we have been in a good location to see a number of other places in SE Asia on long weekends. We just returned from a longer trip to Japan and Korea. The combination of cheap air tickets from Air Asia, proximity, and lack of jet lag has made these trips to places in Asia cheaper, more convenient, and more enjoyable than they would be if we were coming from the US.



We had three full days in each of three places, with a travel day in between each: Kyoto, Tokyo, and Seoul. Weather was near perfect to spend all day walking around sightseeing and to sleep comfortably with no AC or heat. We took in as much delicious food as we possibly could, and enjoyed a few activities and sights every day.

The first leg of our trip was three full days in Kyoto and surroundings. We flew into Kansai airport and arrived late and crashed at an airport hotel, eating our first meal in Japan from the convenience store at the airport. Here are Buster and Child 2 in our apart-hotel room, as mom and dad.

Next morning we got on the local train and took it through Osaka and on to Kyoto.

This was the first time we have experienced cool weather since last year, so it was a bit shocking after living in the tropics for many months. The first day we were there is was windy and 20C; the kids were freezing and we had to buy sweaters immediately.

When we changed trains in Osaka, we found a place to eat an early lunch in the train station complex.

Everyone really enjoyed the food in Japan. Of course food in Japan is different than Japanese food elsewhere in the world, and generally far more varied and better tasting. Just like any other county's cuisine when you eat it outside of its home region.

Especially Child 2 does not enjoy food with too strong a flavor, so Japanese food is a good fit for her with its focus on more subtle flavors and lack of garlic and pepper. Even if nothing else was available for her, she was very happy to eat rice and a bowl of miso soup. Buster loves noodles and also can't take much spice, so he was pretty happy to eat in Japan as well.

Another nice thing about eating in Japan is the profusion of small restaurants. Since houses are small, people eat out more often, and so there are restaurants everywhere. It is easy to walk around almost anywhere you happen to be when the need arises and find a good meal at a nearby eating establishment.

While in Kyoto, we stayed at a small traditional style house (machiya) through Airbnb. It was in a fantastic location; only a few blocks from a local train and about 10 minutes from Kyoto main station. Our house was in a tiny alley nestled among other houses, and was comfortable and quiet. Most of us slept on tatami mats with futons on top.

The house was almost next door to a river, which was a good place for the little kids to play while Child 1 slept in or did math homework in the mornings.

They made boats out of sticks and leaves and floated them down the river

The main train station in Kyoto is the second largest in Japan, and is visually appealing and impressive in scale. Here is the ceiling by the main entrance.

Down by the station we tried out the ultra fluffy Japanese pancakes Becky had read on the internets were all the rage these days. The extreme vertical fluff factor is achieved by using whipped egg whites and a very long cooking time at low heat (the server warned us when we came in that it would take 40 minutes to cook them!). They are a little more eggy than normal pancakes, but delicious.

Kyoto is a center for traditional culture in Japan, and a beautiful and peaceful city. Walking around, you can't help run into meticulously maintained shrines and picturesque little houses with beautifully maintained plants and trees. Consequently it is popular with tourists and I'm sure a large percentage of the local economy runs on visitors both local and foreign. We saw more Americans in our first day there than we have seen in Malaysia for the entire last 6 months. A common sight in the city is people walking around in rented kimonos, even on the subway:

We visited Nishiki market, but the actual market street was so crowded it was hard to move and so we didn't stay long. We spent a lot of time walking around the Gion neighborhood on a few occasions (more on that later from Child 1).

In Gion, we went to the Gion corner show, which includes a short segment from an array of traditional forms like tea ceremony, flower arranging, music, Bunraku puppet theater, etc. I actually found the tea ceremony to be surprisingly enjoyable to watch. The little kids thought the whole thing was a bit boring.

I was pulling for a stop on our last day in Nagoya to see the Toyota industrial automation museum, but everyone else thought it would be better to see a Kabuki show in Gion. I think Buster will post on that later.


Nara
One day we did a side trip to Nara, a small ancient capital city about 50 minutes away on the train. Nara is full of incredible shrines, temples, and parks.

A number of these are inside the deer park, which Buster wrote about here. We took a look at Todaiji, which is a huge temple building complex to hold a giant sized Buddha.

The building is an impressive display of timberframing principles and it was neat to walk around inside it and take note of the architectural details, materials, and joinery techniques.

In one of the 20m tall support columns, there is a hole that is supposedly the same size as the nostril of the giant Buddha statue. The story is that if you can pass through this hole, you will achieve enlightenment, or enlightenment in the next life, or maybe good luck. We agreed that the hole seems like it must be bigger than the nostril; maybe it has been reamed out by centuries of bums rubbing their way through. Child 2 and Buster stood in line with the other kids and a few adults to wiggle through. That night at dinner Child 2 spilled her miso soup though, so we'll hope for enlightenment rather than good luck.

We did some other fun things in the area which we will post more on later, and on our last day in early afternoon we bought tickets for the Nozomi express Shinkansen to Shinagawa, Tokyo. I've only ridden the Shinkansen once before about 15 years ago, and this ride was even faster and smoother than I remember. Unfortunately Mt. Fuji was not visible because of clouds, but nonetheless it was nice to see the countryside and towns whipping by on the way, with a backdrop of mist shrouded forested mountains.