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Japan – Day 12 (off to Osaka!)

I woke up already feeling a bit burnt out, so I decided today was going to be one of those “do nothing but you’re really doing something” type of days. I laid in bed for a while, then got up and strolled over to Starbucks for a mocha and chocolate chunk scone, and sat and people watched for a while. I headed back to the hotel and packed up, and my plan was to do more stuff in Kyoto but I decided I kinda would rather just get over to Osaka before the trains got too packed. So I ditched my plans and hopped on the train (which ended up being packed anyway because this is Japan!) That left me with no plans at all, so after dropping off my suitcase at the hotel I pulled up Google Maps to see what was around within walking distance. There was a local park, Ogimachi Park, just a 10 minute walk to the north, so I decided to take a walk north. The park isn’t a tourist destination, it’s for locals, so there’s a walking path and a big empty dirt/gravel area in the middle where kids were playing soccer, families were playing catch and badminton, friends were tossing Frisbees, and a high school or young college age dance troop was practicing their routines.

I parked myself in the shade under a tree (it was a gorgeous, sunny 70 degree day with a light breeze), pulled out my much neglected book, and watched the dancers practice in between chapters. There was about 40 of them, and they first started with a full routine they all knew that was loud, energetic, and really fun looking. When I say dance troop I’m not talking about jazz or ballet, this was like acrobatic dancing with flared hands, high jumps, whipping their heads back, twisting and turning, every part of their body moving into the next step…like dancing and gymnastics rolled into one. It was really cool to watch their performance and practice their new routine. When traveling, I can get so wrapped up in the GO GO GO of it all that I forget to just sit and appreciate where I am, and have gratitude for the experience I’m having. This was one of those moments where I was having more fun just sitting in the dirt watching these kids having a blast than I’ve had the past two days walking 15km+ knocking out tourist hot spots, and I really needed that moment without even realizing I needed it. After an hour or so of practicing their new routine I pulled out my camera to record because honestly they were just SO into it and it was really funny, and one of them saw me recording and called me out so a bunch of them turned to wave and did their next practice round with EXTRA energy for my benefit which was cute. It instantly put me in a great mood that lasted for the rest of the day. After sitting in the park reading and watching for a couple hours it was time to officially check into my hotel, so I walked back and got my room.

Now, back in the day I really wasn’t a fan of Osaka. There were so many people, and they were so rushed, and I found them to be really rude compared to Kyoto, and I hated the crowds, so I tried to avoid it. But there was one thing that I went there for specifically, and that was the ribs at Hard Rock Café. Man, those ribs would just fall off the bone they were so good! So that was the first thing I looked up, and I noticed they were not where they used to be and I was a bit worried that maybe they’d changed a lot over the years. Regardless, I took the train over and ordered ribs. My worries were unfounded, the meat practically fell of the bone just like I remembered and it was delicious, still some of the best ribs I’ve ever had. After eating basically noodles and rice for a week some real meat was appreciated! The good thing about their new location is they’re on a main street, which just happens to be having their Festival of Lights. It’s similar to Chicago how they put lights on all of the trees and bushes and stuff for the holiday season, except instead of just a mile stretch with all white lights they do about a 3 mile stretch with different colored lights. I only walked the mile from Hard Rock Café to Dotonbori, and the lights were a rainbow of colors in that section.

Once at Dotonbori, which could be called Food Lovers Heaven since it’s like half a mile of straight restaurants, street food, and bars, I found the Glico Man and the giant creepy moving crab again. As I was strolling through, I noticed a boat tour was about to leave so I grabbed a ticket and jumped on that because, why not? It was a short ride, but gave an interesting 360 view of the Dotonbori shopping area. It’s on my list to eat both fugu (poisonous blowfish) and crab while I’m here since that’s what this area is most known for, but after eating my weight in bbq meat a couple hours prior I wasn’t hungry at all. So I jumped on the subway back to the hotel and called it a night.

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Japan – Day 11 (Kyoto)

Today was a pretty lucky, good day. The two buses I took showed up on time and got me where I needed to be, I somehow managed to get to all of my locations in between tourist buses (and I didn’t get hit by one like yesterday), and didn’t feel rushed at all for anything. Things just worked out. I was tired after yesterday so I slept in a little and headed out around 9am. Since I didn’t finish the northeast quadrant of Kyoto a couple days ago, I decided to pick up where I left off along the Philosopher’s Path at Eikan Temple. This place was pretty jammed, and the fact they were letting mega buses into the historically pedestrian walkway was stupid. If you don’t have the parking facilities for these dumb things you need to just ban them and send them somewhere else. At $10 to enter and hundreds of people per hour, the temple is making plenty of money without the bus tourists. But, that’s not my decision, and I already ranted about that yesterday, so I went inside and wandered around.

Eikan is a temple I never really got to when I lived here, it just never really interested me and was always crowded, so I figured I’d go see it now. It’s a pretty place, the momiji were everywhere and totally gorgeous. The walk inside the buildings and the little museum they send you through is neat too, they have quite a few artifacts and scrolls and really old books you can look at. The garden is also nice, and there was a walk up to the top of a hill with a pagoda that offered a nice view of the area. I ran into yet another couple from Chicagoland, which was funny, they are the third or fourth ones. It really is a small world.

After Eikan I got back on the Philosopher’s Path and stopped at Kumano Nyakuoji Shrine, just a little thing off to the side of the road. The Philosopher’s Path is full of little temples and shrines like this, but I didn’t stop in all of them. The good thing about the Philosopher’s Path is that along the mile or so long stretch there are only really tourists on the ends where the major temples are, the middle is mostly residents. Like everything else, there were far more tourists this time than before, but it was still manageable and I moved at a stroll pace to hear the birds, watch the fish and ducks, and admire the leaves and fall flowers both still on the trees and floating gently down the canal. When I got to the end of the path at Ginkakuji it occurred to me that I forgot to stop at an ATM to get cash and I only had 500 yen left with me. I rolled the dice and walked up, and lucky again the fee to enter was 500 yen so I didn’t have to double back and walk a mile to get money.

Ginkakuji itself isn’t all that remarkable, but the gardens around it are spectacular. I spent a good hour wandering around and admiring the nature around it. This place wasn’t my favorite as a 20-something, but I appreciate it now as an older person with bad knees. After leaving Ginkakuji (and passing three separate huge tourists groups coming up on my way down!) I only had to wait a little while for the bus to take me to the 7-11 near my hotel, but where it dropped me off was a Family Mart that happened to have an international ATM, so I didn’t have to walk all the way over to 7-11 then double back to Sanjusangendo. Funny thing about Sanjusangendo, this was a place that both times I was here before, for 14ish months I kept saying I needed to go there, but then somehow for some reason I never got to go. Wash and repeat at least 20 times, when I last left in 2004 I STILL hadn’t gone to this frikkin’ place even though it looked cool. So I made it a point today to go there, finally. It was pretty cool, although I think I appreciated it more now than I probably would have back then. The 1,000 statues are amazingly detailed, each one is different: different eyes, eyebrows (one had a gigantic unibrow), jewelry, what they’re holding, facial hair, you name it. So even though they look like they’re exactly the same at first glance, when you look closer you can appreciate allll of the little details. The 28 guardian statues were super interesting to read about, and the wind and thunder god statues at the end were neat (the thunder god if you kneel to it and look up its eyes turn thi bright orange-yellow color and no matter where you move they follow you and it’s kind of creepy but neat). The back side has a lot of information and artifacts from the 850 year history of the building, the largest wood building in Japan they say, and was interesting to read. I wandered the grounds for a little bit, then stopped at McDonalds for food, then headed back to the hotel early. As is becoming my tradition here, I showered and jumped in the soaking tub, and now I’m chilling and watching sumo wrestling on NHK. I really like sumo wrestling, there’s so much strategy to it and so much ceremony and pomp. Anywho, off to Osaka tomorrow!

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Japan – Day 10 (Kyoto)

My day started off early, I was actually out the door by 7:30am and walked to Kyoto station to take a train to Arashiyama. First, I hiked over to the bamboo forest because I heard if you don’t get there early it is SWARMED with tourists taking photos. Which is funny, because before social media that place was usually empty, except for people taking engagement photos or whatever professionally. Well, once again the secret is out, and it’s packed by 8am. R.I.P. Bamboo Forest and Nanzenji aqueduct, two cool places now taken over by Instagrammers!

After the forest, I went next door to Tenryuji, a temple on the edge of the mountains with a gorgeous koi pond and autumn leaves. Then I took a walk over the river bridge to Monkey Mountain, which is now marked with lots of signs and pictures of baby monkeys. At least, that’s what we called it 15ish years ago, now it’s known as Iwatayama Park. Back then, it wasn’t advertised much, and the only way I found out about it was a local told me. Then to get there you had to get a hand drawn map, and the entrance wasn’t marked, and you had to walk 20 minutes or so uphill on these stairs that were falling apart with no railings, and finally when you got to the top there was a small shack where YOU went inside if you wanted to feed the monkeys. There were a few benches, and an open area to see the monkeys. The rest was all forest for the monkeys to go to where they wanted. Now they expanded the shack to include toilets and an office and to accommodate that they brought in electrical power lines up the mountain, they built a second path to control the crowds going in and out (because the crowds are crazy now compared to then…I saw more people there just today than I did the other dozen times I’ve been there combined!) and paved portions of it, they put in rest areas and a playground for kids, more benches for people to sit, they do a “feeding” show to lure the monkeys out, and worse they destroyed a lot of the woods behind the shack so tourists could go up closer to the monkeys. So, more tourists (particularly kids), more feeding, less forests, leads to a population explosion. The troop up there used to be about 50, now there are over 120. When I was there before, I didn’t have any concerns about the monkeys. They were happy, healthy, “friendly”, and in great shape. Today, there were several that looked like they had some sort of urinary tract infection going on, three that had back legs they wouldn’t put on the ground like they were broken or twisted, and they were constantly fighting. The keepers (now 5 instead of just 2) said it was because it was mating season, which is true I suppose; but I can barely recall infighting before when they were one troop. Now their population is so big they’ve separated into multiple troops and have less area to live in, which is likely the bigger reason why they were almost constantly fighting. It’s still a great place for photos, but it made me really uncomfortable seeing it now versus my memory of how it was before. I have to say it broke my heart a little, that mountain was one of my favorite places in Japan. I went almost once a month, weather depending, when I lived here. I have so many photos of the monkeys from 15+ years ago, I was looking at the adult monkeys to try and recognize any of them since they can live up to 30 years, but I guess I’m not that good with monkey identification, I didn’t spot anyone I knew. Anyway, I walked back down and hopped on a bus to Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion.

If I thought the crowds were bad here before they are insane now, thousands of people were in the park grounds. It wasn’t unexpected, Kinkakuji was always crowded even back then. However, this time double decker mega tour buses were coming 3 or 4 at a time and dumping hundreds of people off all at once. It was a never ending stream, and took some patience to get photos. I got it done and made my way around the grounds to exit, except they changed it. The mega buses must have been enough of a problem that they plowed a big part of the trees at the exit and turned it into a tour bus parking lot. Buses were pulling in and out of the cramped space and there wasn’t really a separate walkway for people. As I was trying to exit, I passed by where the handicap taxis were on the right and they were unloading a young girl into her wheelchair. Just as I and a couple others were about to walk past, a mega bus whipped into the lot and pulled forward so fast we all had to stop in between two handicap taxis where they were trying to unload the girl. As the bus pulled forward the driver paid so little attention what was going on anywhere but in front of him he actually side swiped the handicap taxi, pushing it into all of us waiting on the ground and almost squishing us between the two taxis where we were sandwiched. There was nowhere to go, so when the taxi he hit started being shoved sideways all we could do was jump away and fall into each other. Fortunately the dad of the handicap girl had the instinct to grab her out of the wheelchair before we all were pushed into it, and everyone grabbed each other to support one another so no one actually fell. It was the passengers on the bus yelling at the driver that actually got him to stop, and so we all walked away unharmed even though the taxi took some damage. After we all checked that everyone was okay and the bus was repositioned out of the way, I stuck around for a couple minutes just to make sure we weren’t needed for an accident report or anything, then moved along.

Up to that point I was kind of sad about the crowds, but wasn’t letting it damper my mood and actually felt like I was having a good day; once that happened though I was really sour and although my next stop was going to be Ryoanji I decided I was done with mega bus crowds and wanted to go to Nishiki Market. So I walked to the bus stop and waited almost half an hour for a bus Google Maps said I should take that kept not coming and when it finally did come and I hopped on, it wound up going in the complete opposite direction I needed to go and then ended just a few stops down. I’ve realized that unlike everywhere else modern in the world, Kyoto doesn’t sync its bus system with Google Maps…neither its routes nor timetable, so Google Maps so far has been roughly 40% accurate on getting me from point A to point B. No biggie, just FYI if you ever come here. When the bus route ended, I checked my map to figure out where the heck he brought me. Well, turns out he took me right near Ryoanji. I figured if the transportation gods really wanted me to be at a Zen temple today then I may as well go in. Since it was almost the end of the day it was pretty quiet with only a few dozen people. It was a nice, quiet stroll through the trees and rock garden. After that, I got on the CORRECT bus and made it to Nishiki Market.

It was almost closing time, so I raced through to check it out. I wound up in a cat specific store where everything was cat based. In Japan, cats are welcome and black cats are considered good luck. So there are stores with nothing but black cat merchandise, and stores like this one that only sell cat themed stuff. Of course I had to go in, and I ended up buying like $70 worth of stuff. The two shopkeepers were super friendly, and I hung out for a while just laughing and chatting with them and showing each other photos of our cats at home. By the time my orders were done, the market had definitely closed and only a few stores were left open. I did stop by a grilled crab place that was still open, got some Udon at a cheap stand up shop, and then walked down the regular shopping district for a bit.

It was almost 7pm by then and I was tired, so I headed to where Google Maps again said I should go to get a bus to my hotel. I got on the bus, and it immediately turned the opposite direction I needed to go and went over half a mile before it stopped again. Uggggghh…between waiting for and riding the wrong bus my 5 minute ride to the hotel turned into a 30 minute detour. I had to walk all the way back to where I was to begin with. I had been eyeing the Baskin Robbins there before I took the wrong bus, so this time I decided to go in. I got this mint and chocolate concoction and realized after I started eating it that it had Poprocks in it and not minty things. It was the weirdest feeling, but kinda cool. After eating, I went back to the bus stop and got on the CORRECT bus back to my hotel. I logged almost 15km today, my feet are so done!