Three Day Weekend in Kyoto

So two weeks ago we had a Saturday off for some reason... Briana and I decided to celebrate the three day weekend by heading off to Kyoto!

Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan, and is the place to go if you are really into traditional Japanese culture. It has shrines and temples everywhere! The city is really beautiful, and the mix of the modern and the traditional is really impressive. It's a great city and its only about an hour/hour thirty from Ogaki!

Saturday afternoon we headed in and stopped by the tourist information booth to figure out what we should do first. Briana wanted to go to the Bamboo forest so we asked about that. It is at Arashi Yama, so we were off to the mountain side! We wandered around lost for a little bit trying to find that bamboo forest once we actually got there, but it was really nice. We walked around and took some cool pictures. The small village we wandered through on the way down the mountain was really cool as well.

Once we got back to Kyoto proper one of my co-trainees Derek met up with us. We all took a cab to Gion, a popular district in Kyoto where all the good shopping and night life is located, and where the the hostel we were staying in was. We checked in and dropped off our bags and then went to go have a late lunch/early dinner. We found this AMAZING indian food place. Delicious! Then the three of us headed to the Fushimi Inari Shrine where we met up with another co-trainee of mine, Abby. This shrine is the only one that's open at night. Its actually better at night. Its a shrine at the base of a small mountain and behind it is a path that goes all the way up and around the mountain. The path is completely covered in red torii gates. Torii are the wooden arches you go under when you enter a shrine or temple. It was really pretty, and kind of surreal. The torii were crawling with spiders. It was really creepy. But you walk up the path, climb some stairs, and every so often there would be a little landing with a mini shrine, or several mini shrines. Then you climb some more. Mini shrine. Climb some more. We didn't do the whole climb. We got to a scenic outlook of Kyoto, took some pictures, and then went back down. It was about an hour all in all and were were dead tired and sweaty after it was all said and done.

Once we got back to Gion we decided to go drinking by the river. There were a lot locals lined up and down the river drinking and talking and laughing. It looked like the thing to do, lol. So we hit up a convenience store, grabbed some tall boys, and went to sit on a sand bar. We played a drinking game called Kings Cup to pass the time. Suddenly the heavens opened up and we ran to shelter under a bridge. Also trapped under the bridge were a bunch of European biophysicists in Japan on business. We chatted it up with them for a while, and when the rain died down, we all decided to go to a bar together.  We eventually found a cool place with good music and lots of space (a rarity in Japan). It was a fun night of talking, beers, dancing, and magic tricks (true story!). Yay for single serving friends! Trying to get home that night in the rain was a nightmare. We got turned around and went the wrong way down this major street. We didn't have umbrellas... Briana and I just decided to take a cab back, even though it wasn't that far.

The next morning Briana and I headed out to Kiyomizu temple. We were supposed to meet Ayumi there, but she ended up over sleeping. So we shopped around for souvenirs and drank at a really cute cafe to hide from the rain. Once the rain passed we went into Kiyomizu temple. Breathtaking! If you can only go to one place in Kyoto, go here. After we went and met up with Ayumi back in Gion and went shopping. We ran into Abby on four separate occasions while shopping, and Kyoto is by no means a small city. The fourth time Abby decided to stick with us. Later Derek caught up with us as well and we all went to dinner. We wanted a traditional Kyoto meal, which led to us going into a random interested and ordering a 4 course meal that we had no idea what it consisted of. Mine was delicious! Briana and Abby ended up with whole grilled fish, which was quite a shock to them, it was hilarious.

After dinner we went for a few hours of karaoke. Good times! Karaoke is always good times. Then Ayumi took us to a bar where all the drinks were $3. So we taught her how to play King's Cup and ended up playing two rounds. Really funny. Ayumi caught on really quick for not speaking any English. Way to be, Ayumi chan! We left that bar and wandered around Gion for a bit looking for our next place. Ayumi called someone and got a suggestion, and we ended up at a Nepalese themed bar. It was really cool. A nice relaxed atmosphere. At this point it was about 3 am and we were all falling asleep though, so we only had two drinks before heading home.

Early the next morning Briana and I met up with Ayumi and her "he's not my boyfriend" boy friend whose name I can't remember. They took us to Kinkakuji, the golden pavilion. It is really pretty, but there isn't much to it after you've gone "oooh, gold!" So we left there pretty quickly and went to Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion. The pavilion itself isn't as impressive, but the rock garden and scenery around that area is breath-taking. Its my favorite tourist destination in Kyoto. I bought a few souvenirs from there, I didn't get any anywhere else. After it was time to say good bye and head back to Kyoto Station where we caught the train back home to Ogaki.

It was a really fun filled adventurous weekend! Woo!

~寒