Kyoto my love, my second home, my lifeblood, I am in you! I got up, ate breakfast and checked out of my hotel in Odawara. I had an hour to kill before my Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, so I walked over to the local castle just to check it out. It wasn’t an old castle, the original one had been demolished during the Meiji era and the castle that remained was reconstructed in the 1960s with more stuff added through 2016. Still, it was alright. I grabbed the “lunch of champions” at Lawsons before heading to the train station: salmon onigiri, egg sandwich, pop, and a Pikachu donut for dessert; then took my seat for the ride out. The guy that sat next to me was really friendly, and we chatted the entire way out.
Once we arrived in Kyoto and checked into my hotel, I walked across the street to Shosei-en garden, which had some lovely momiji trees. This actually worked out pretty well, even though the fall colors in the Tokyo area weren’t all that great, down here the gingko are at peak, and the momiji are just coming up to peak. So if all goes well I’ll be seeing colors everywhere for the 2 weeks I’m in the region! After wandering the garden for a while I started heading to Kyoto Tower, but spotted a huge temple out of the corner of my eye and changed course to go check it out. Once I got there I realized exactly where I was. Higashi-Honganji Temple was the very first temple I visited my very first time in Kyoto. The nostalgia is real y’all, and I got to say hello to the most gorgeous dragon fountain I’ve ever seen once again after 15 years. After wandering around for half an hour they announced they were closing and kicked everyone out, so I continued on to Kyoto Tower and went up just as the sun went down over the mountains. I hung out up top chatting with a guy from Detroit for a while, then headed out to Kyoto station.
It’s funny, when I was here before they were still working on the station extension and half of the outdoor terrace feature was still empty or under construction. You could go up to the top, but there was nothing there. This time they had it all finished, with restaurants and shopping and a gigantic Christmas tree, and the stairs up the 10 floors lit up in tune with music like a continuous rainbow and seeing it finished now was really cool. I went to the top where there were restaurants, but each one had a line out the door so I went back down and found the tourist information center. The last time I was here it was a little desk once you exited the train, but that’s now a building information center, and the tourist center is much larger with a fancy room to itself off to the side. That being said that’s all that changed, the people working the tourist information booth were still super eager to help, pulling out maps and plans and bus schedules and event schedules and giving you so much information on what to do, where to go, and how to do it that it was almost overwhelming…and I practically lived here before! I took everything, I’ll have a backpack tomorrow and will bring stuff with me just in case. I thanked them for all of their help then went back out to find food.
I ended up at a ramen shop not far from my hotel that was really good, then stopped at 7-11 to pick up snacks for the next couple days. For some reason this 7-11 actually had an alcohol selection that didn’t just include beer, so I decided to experiment with some of these new options (Strawberry Pocky flavored malt beverage, anyone? Delish!) and there were a bunch more to try out that I left behind because I didn’t want to look like an alcoholic by grabbing them all at once. After getting back to the hotel I jumped into the deep soaking tub and had my drinks while trying to plan out the next few days.
I think tomorrow I’m going to get up and head straight out to the northwest to visit my favorite buddies out at Sawayama, monkey mountain. I used to go out there at least once a month when it was warm enough back in the day. Then I’ll make my way north hitting all the various temples until I get to the Golden Pavilion. I’m sure by the time I get there it’s going to be packed, but I want to see my monkey friends first thing. I can’t wait! After the day I had yesterday, I’m so much happier being in Kyoto now! Oh, plus I noticed today that my pants kept sliding down. So I pulled out my belt to check and I’ve lost almost 4 inches on my waist since I started traveling in August!
