Sunday, March 16:

Got up late as we were leaving Tokyo for Kyoto.  After packing up most of our loot (and leaving a few odd things to pick up on the way back) we headed out.  We had to meet Tsudoi at Ikebukuro station to give him Hitomi's wallet, as she'd left it at home.  I also had to sign their marriage form.  We then proceeded to the JR info desk to get our JR Passes (lots of paperwork here, expect 15 mins wait).  Then we got shinkansen tickets to Kyoto and caught a local Yamanote line train (using our Passes, yay) to Tokyo station, where we had to board the shinkansen.

The trip was uneventful.  We took a Hikari superexpress train to Kyoto, 2:45 hrs travel.  Charee was excited to finally see Fuji-san on the way.  Upon arriving at Kyoto JR station we proceeded to find our ryokan (japanese inn).  Well of course that turned into a debacle, as we got lost.  With the help of a local girl we finally got their (by a very round-about route).  The place we're staying is called Yuhara Ryokan.  Our room is very nice, about 3 times bigger than where we stayed at Tsudoi's, with a smaller room with a table and sink attached.  The bathroom is shared, but that's okay.  We've been having a japanese style bath every night which has been nice.  After offloading our gear we headed back to the mall at the station for some omerice (rice wrapped in omelette), the best place in Japan imho for omerice!  Finally found it and it was oishii as I remembered! (Mikan is wicked expensive tho, must be out of season now, alas!).

Monday, March 17:

We decided to go and explore a host of temples in north east Kyoto.  We took a local train to Keage station, and began walking in the direction of Nanzen-ji temple, visiting a few other temples, shrines and gardens on the way.  I'd forgotten how expensive entry to these temples is!  Usually between Y200-600, with the average around Y400-500 a pop, which doesn't seem like much, but really adds up when you're visiting 10 or more at a time!  We took the path from Nanzen-ji to Eikan-do temple, Kumano Nyakuoji shrine, Reikanji, Yojiya, Honen-in and finally the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji), which unfortunately was under renovation and covered in scaffolding (but the swines still made us pay the full Y600 entrance fee!).  There were other places visited along the way, can't remember the names (who can keep track!) and I'm sure we won't be able to recognize one temple from another in the dozens of pics we took!  It is however a very nice walk and the weather was warm (hot even!).

We wanted to go visit Nijo castle and the International Manga Museum (near Nijo) so we started walking another trail in that direction (south south westerly).  Man we walked for hours again, up and down hills, through foreign streets, we had no idea where we were going.  One place we stopped at was a pretty nice temples with 4 rather scruffy-looking temple cats (Scruffypants, Marilyn, Howly the Roofcat, and Blackie el Stupido), which seemed to enjoy my stale beef jerky (except Blackie).  We finally figured out where the heck we were and decided to try taking a bus instead of hiking.  Naturally we got off the wrong stop and still had to walk a million miles more to Nijo.  By the time we got there (late in the day), the blasted thing was closed!  The Manga Museum closed at 7:30pm so we headed there, only to find that it had closed too!  Doh!  All that walking for nothing.  We must have walked about 20 km's.  We decided to sod it and take the bus to Gion for dinner (by now it was dark), which we actually managed to do without incident.  Gion, however, was swarming with people, and while the temple there was nice all lit up with lanterns etc, we couldn't find a decent (read as "cheap") place to eat.  Charee settled on some tako yaki (octopus balls, no not those balls ;)) and me with a classic japanese cuisine of "sausage on a stick".  At this point we gave up and decided to just go back to the ryokan and the small restaurant next door.  So we got on the bus and off we went... in the wrong direction!  Apparently subconsciously we wanted to see more of the night life.  Alot of the city buses run in a loop tho, so we just stayed on until we'd gone all the way around (instead of paying another Y220 each on another bus) to where we wanted to get off (which was, btw, only 2 stops away from where we were before!).  We got off the bus at the wrong stop again (go figure), and had to walk another 30mins to the ryokan in th dark and cold.  We did eventually find it this time.  We went to the restaurant next door: Charee got yaki soba, I got okonomiyaki.  The portions were huge and we couldn't finish them.  We retired, had a bath and silently cried ourselves to sleep for our aching feet.

Tuesday, March 18:

Today we decided to go to Kiyomizudera temple (the famous one on the hill).  This time we got a daily bus pass each (Y500) which we should have gotten yesterday.  Took the 206 bus from Kyoto station to Gojozaka, then hiked up the hill.  It was very hot today!  The temple is nice and worth visiting, only Y300.  After spending an hour or two there we decided to take the bus to Nijo to see the castle and Manga Museum.  Nijo-ji is not a very impressive castle tho, even tho the grounds are huge.  There are better castles in Osaka and Himeji as I recall (which we'll be seeing in a couple of days).  And at Y600 each, it's quite unimpressive.  The Manga Museum was better tho.  We stopped for some udon along the way.  The udon place was cool, you could make your own udon dish with a variety of add-ons, and the base udon bowl is only Y290 for a regular serving (which is quite big).  Anyway, we spent awhile at the Manga Museum, which has thousands of manga books (mostly in japanese, but some in other languages too).  We saw an old-fashioned manga story teller dude.  He was pretty funny even tho he spoke rapid nihongo I barely understood.  The manga itself comprised of a series of pictures on boards he'd show one at a time while telling the story.  We were pretty tired after that and spent the rest of the afternoon, what was left of it, reading manga books.  Charee was quite happy to find some old faves in Thai.  We had been planning to go to Arashiyama (north east Kyoto) but decided not to as we were too tired.  We headed back to Kyoto station for something to eat and an early night instead.  Probably still recovering from yesterday's adventures.