Kyoto and Osaka Road Trip

This one is from Graham :)

As you can see from the subject line, we've just gotten back from a weeklong trip to Kyoto and Osaka. We saw more than we could have even attempted to plan. For the most part, we lucked out too with the weather. It's drizzled a bit, here and there, but for the most part, it was beautiful weather.

Our first stop was Kyoto, leaving on Monday (the 7th). Leaving the house at about 630am, we stopped about half way for some breakfast. The two rest stops we stopped at (one going there and one on the way home), were incredible. Nothing like I've seen back in Canada. They were very large, extremely clean, and had a full food court and grocery store.

We arrived in Kyoto in great time, and went straight to our first destination, The Silver Pavilion. It was a large Temple surrounded by plenty of rock and sand gardens and paths through the forest. Despite the large amount of people there, it was very quiet and peaceful.

Afterwards, we took a nice long walk along the Philosophers Path. It was a stone walkway with several other, smaller temples and shrines. It was here that we found the teddy bears fishing, which Brooke loved so much. Having spent the first half of our day in the car and the second walking around in the hot sun, we decided to head to our hotel and rest of the evening.

The next day we started off with visiting the Golden Pavilion. I'm sure you can tell which one this is in the attached pictures. We could not believe it when we saw it. It is far more stunning than the pictures lead it to be. When entering the temple area, you come around a corner from a hedged walkway and then there it is. The amount of work it must take to maintain these types of temples must be enormous. Whenever we visit these places, there are always staff walking around sweeping leaves and doing other grounds work.

Next we drove to another temple, which I can't remember the name of. We got started on our day a little earlier than expected, so Jackie just picked a destination recommended in the travel book we have. Again, there were many beautiful old buildings. This one however, feature a display of over 30 different wooden statues which we over 600 year old. Some of them were over 15 feet tall. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take photos, so they aren't included in this email. Our final destination of the day was the Bamboo forest. This provided a beautiful walk for the late afternoon.

For our last day in Kyoto, we decided to do something a little more geared for Brooke. It was pretty rainy to start the morning, so we went to the Kyoto Aquarium. We got to see all the usual types of fish and jelly fish, but also watched a dolphin show. Brooke was insistent that we sit in the front row because she really wanted to get splashed on by the dolphins.

For our final Kyoto destination, we visited the Kyoto Castle. It was here, back in Shogunate Japan, that the different prefecture shoguns would meet to discuss politics. Up until this point, the public was not permitted in any of the temples or old buildings, but here we were able to walk around inside the castle and see all the original wall paintings and see the various rooms. All the wooden floors creaked, and it was made this was intentionally. It was created this way to help as a deterrent for intruders (Ninjas!). We couldn't believe that we hadn't initially intended to visit the castle, but were thankful we had. It was probably one of my favorite destinations for the trip.

On Thursday, we left Kyoto right after breakfast to make it to Osaka before lunch. We got fairly lucky with traffic and arrived on time. Our first destination was the Osaka Castle. The grounds around the castle were beautiful and the exterior of the building was impressive, but I was slightly disappointed with the interior. After our impressive experience with the Kyoto Castle, it just wasn't up to what I was expecting. The entire interior had been renovated into a modern looking museum. Esthetics aside, it was still a great destination. The museum was featuring an exhibit on a war between to clans for control of the area back in the 1600s. Next year is going to the 400 year anniversary. For lunch that day, we decided to try to famed local cuisine, Octopus balls. They are a ball of fried bread with a piece of octopus in the center. You can get all sorts of toppings for them, such as mayo, salt, or garlic.  They weren't too bad, just nothing to get excited about. Just as our first day in Kyoto, we went back to this hotel after and decided to relax for the evening.

 Friday was Jackie's birthday, so we decided to do something that Jackie likes. We headed to a park near the water. Unfortunately, Google maps wasn't so clear or precise so we got lost for about an hour and a half trying to find the place. Lessons learned though, and we now don't place 100% of our blind faith into the GPS. The park we visited has the title of having Japan's Shortest Mountain. It is just less than 5 meters above sea level. Brooke had a really good time as we found a playground. There were about 3 large groups of school children there so Brooke had lots of kids to share the playground with. This was probably the hottest day we've had in a long while. It was easily over 30 degrees. The school kids were very intrigued by Brooke. At one point Brooke was running down the small mountain by herself, and in no time she had over 5 kids surrounding her, making sure she got down okay. We stayed around the wharf until about 2 pm, and by then the heat was too much, so we got back into the A/C'd car and drove back to the hotel for the night.

Saturday we headed home, as we wanted to get home in time to have our friend over for Thanksgiving dinner. We were lucky to enjoy a great view of Mt. Fuji on the way home, as it usually is clouded over.