While typically, one could call a trip to Japan a vacation in itself, what if you were to treat it like home? My wife and I have been to Japan twice, but both times, we have tried to treat it that way. We went during the cherry blossom season, but we did one major thing in our second time around that we didn’t do the first time. Pick up a JR Pass.
For those who aren’t in the know, the JR Pass is a pass that you can get, valid in 7, 14 and 21 day increments, that allows you travel on all Japan Rail trains anywhere in Japan to the exclusion of the Nozomi Shinkansen on the Tokaido and Sanyo lines. Those lines take you to the major population centers within the main island of Honshu and ends in Hakata (Fukuoka) on the Kyushu island. But this story isn’t about the JR Pass, although without it, we probably wouldn’t have been able to do soem of the things we did.
Both times we were in Tokyo, we stayed at the same guesthouse. We essentially treated it like home. The first time we were there, we met with a nice couple who arrived at the same time we did, and now we are good friends with them here in Calgary. The second time, we didn’t make close friends with anyone, unlike last time, but we did meet with a couple people from Quebec, and a teacher from the University of Alberta.
For all intents and purposes, we made Tokyo our home. There are all sorts of reasons for this. Excluding work, paying taxes and bills, we still had to do our own grocery shopping, figure out the community (Hibarigaoka), and learn the train systems for some general things like shopping. We would have gone to some of the more local restaurants by where we stayed, but since Hibarigaoka isn’t exactly in Tokyo, restaurants that are tourist friendly (like english menus and the like) were more difficult to find. While I knew enough Japanese to get by, I was still at a significant disadvantage.
Front cover of the JR Pass booklet
We were in Tokyo for 3 weeks, but we managed schedule things so that week 1 was Tokyo, week 2 was JR Pass and Week 3 was Tokyo. Since we had our JR Pass active smack dab in the middle of our trip, it is no wonder it would feel like a vacation in a vacation. It truly was.
The day that we scheduled to use our JR Pass for the first time was the first day that we had a house booked in Kyoto. Our pass was valid from March 31st till April 6th. We had made our way to Tokyo station on the morning of the 31st to submit our exchange order for our JR Pass, and continued to board the Shinkansen southbound towards Shin-Osaka, which was the last stop on the Tokaido line. Kyoto station is just before Shin-Osaka. On the Hikari Shinkansen, the trip takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes, and you get an opportunity to see a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji along the route.
We had arrived in Kyoto around noon. Since I didn’t have a clue how to get to the house we rented, I just ended up getting a taxi and handing him a map. I didn’t really have to speak Japanese in this case except just for clarity. I believe I gave him the map and said, “koko ni ikitai desu,” which I believe was, “I want to go here.” We went down a few main roads, but ended up going down a small road that was barely wide enough to fit a single car width. There were even power poles on the sides of the road we had to swerve around. It wasn’t much longer before we got to our place, tucked away within a tiny alley way. Instead of describing the home in words, here is a video walkthrough of the house.
We essentially stayed in the eastern part of Kyoto. To be honest, I’m not sure if there is a bad part of the city to be in, but I think where we were was exceptionally nice. We got to walking around and found out that we were actually within 20 minutes from Gion, one of the most famous geisha districts in Kyoto, Kiyomizu-dera Temple, one of the best sights to see in Kyoto, and of course, Kyoto station. From there, it was a short trip for us to get to Inari station, which is a 5 minute walk away from the famous Fushimi Inari Shrines.
When we first decided to finally head out of the house, we decided to try and find food. We ended up walking south out of the alley onto one of the main streets. Once on the street, there were a number of taxi cabs on the road, but across the street was a small park, then to our left was a small shrine. Nothing amazing, but in Kyoto, you will find that you can’t walk 10 minutes without coming across a shrine of some sort. We did stop in to check it out to find that near the altar was pamphlets on weddings. It seemed that a lot of smaller shrines had information on getting married at their locations.
Leaving the shrine, we continued south to one of the main streets (Shichi-jo Dori), crossing it and headed west. We had stumbled across a small shop, which took us a second to realize that it was a small grocery store. It is the kind of thing I wish was viable around where I live, since I do prefer smaller stores to larger supermarkets in most cases. While small, the shop pretty much had everything we needed, so we picked up some curry, vegetables and some small microwavable packages of rice, and made our way back to the house. We had felt that already we had done a lot in the day, but it wasn’t over. It was not even dark out yet. We had finished our curry supper around 5:30 pm.
We decided that this time, we would head out, but head north. We had no real direction in mind, but I made sure that I could get a GPS fix in my OffMaps app for my iPhone. I had bookmarked where home was so I knew we couldn’t get lost. Upon arriving at Goji Dori, we had looked around and tried to figure out where we should go. We began walking east down the south side of Goji Dori. At this point, I started to get a little curious as to what actually might be nearby. I had consulted with my OffMaps guide and found a few temple points of interest. I had no idea what they were other than points on the map, but they were in the guide, and they were within walking distance.
The sun began to set as we began our journey up the street, then crossed to the north side over a pedestrian overpass. Periodically consulting with the map, we ended up realizing that suddenly, another temple appeared to be closer. Since there was no need to backtrack, we continued heading towards this new location. As we got off Goji Dori towards the temple, we ended up on a gradual incline with many shops, all very small, and some very expensive. We reached the top of the road to see the spectacular site of Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. At this point, we had no idea what we had stumbled upon, other than the fact that it was now dark, and we were in a pretty big temple with fully bloomed cherry blossoms lit up in the dark. The entire temple and all its shrines were all lit up with bright lighting, and the grounds were crawling with local tourists. It was a large temple with beautiful sights and many structures.
In some of the temple halls, there were lineups of Japanese people waiting in line to get to an area that to this point, we are still unsure about, although I hear that it is supposed to be a very spiritual experience. In various other areas were people donating Yen into alters and praying. Praying for things like good health, riches and good luck. The Japanese culture is a very superstitious one, so praying for luck tends to be a high priority, and you would be hard pressed to find a temple or a shrine where someone isn’t there praying.
As we continued our walk, we continued to see many more cherry blossoms and trees all beautifully lit up in the night. It took us nearly an hour to go through most of the temple grounds as the path took you along side a large hill with white trees lit up on it. At night, Kiyomizu-Dera Temple was quite easy to recognize as they usually had a large spotlight aiming outwards towards Kyoto Tower. Likewise, as you were walking towards the white trees on the hill, you had a beautiful view of downtown Kyoto, including the tower. Walking towards the exits, we ended up going by some small lakes with cherry blossoms hanging their branches over top of the water. During the night, the reflection of the trees in the water looked just as vibrant and spectacular as the trees themselves.
While my wife had her small Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera with her, it was at this point that I felt we needed to come back with my Nikon D80. As excited as I was, I was worried how my pictures would turn out without a tripod. I began to think a lot about how I would try and get a nice clear shot of the trees. My hands don’t tend to stay very still, and the best I was able to do was an F3.5 aperture setting on an 18-70mm lens. I would have to wait until we came back another night to find out what kind of shutter speeds I would have to use, but at this point, I was already assuming that I would be using anywhere between 1/15 and 1/30 of a second shutter, which can leave the shutter open long enough that my hand trembling can cause the picture to blur a bit.
We continued on towards the exit, but instead of coming back the way we came, we ended up going down a different road where most of the tourists ended up making their way towards the temple, and rightfully so. While the road we took to get to the temple had many shops, they were nowhere near as tailored towards tourists as the ones on this other street. There were some of the most interesting shops. Many selling Japanese sweets, many of which were local to Kyoto as we never seen many of them anywhere in Tokyo. Other shops had typical tourist trinkets that epitomized Japan, but some were very serious at it. As an example, if you go into a general tourist shop, you might see paper fans, chopsticks, kimonos and the like, but they would generally be of lesser quality. There would be few of these stores, but there were the shops that were very specific in their wares.
We browsed through a shop that sold very traditional Japanese wear and very few things more. Maybe the odd t-shirt for tourists, but they had some run of the mill yukata and kimono to the more expensive fabrics and obi. You could feel certain that if you wanted to get something authentic and not “tourist-cheap”, you were going to find it there. Likewise, there was a large store dedicated only to some of the highest quality of paper fans, which we didn’t end up browsing through, however, as I did mention chopsticks, the was indeed a store that sold nothing but chopsticks.
As we walked through the store, we noticed that most of their best product was on the showcase in the middle of the store, to which you would end up walking around to browse the entire shop. The chopsticks were set up on individual holders on the middle wall with prices underneath them. Many looked fairly run-of-the-mill, but lots were very high quality materials and felt very well balanced. The shopkeeper was nice to point out that we can have our names engraved on any set of chopsticks that we purchase, albeit in fairly broken English. I was figuring that if I ended up purchasing my own, I would end up engraving my name in katakana, which would be pronounced Kurisu (クリス). Given our limited budget for our trip, we did end up passing on getting our own chopsticks and continued on.
Our final destination for the night was to get back to the house. It was about a 15 to 20 minute walk back at night, but regardless of how many or how few people were around, you always felt safe. Once we got back to the house, we decided to take a look on Japan Guide and find out more about Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. It was at this point that we realized that we stumbled upon a temple site that is considered one of the best of the best sights to see in Kyoto and is the #3 most visited sight, behind Kinkakuji, the golden temple, which we didn’t see, and Kyoto Station, which everybody that goes to Kyoto sees.
We had stumbled across an event called the Miyako Odori, which I was told about back in Tokyo by a fellow YouTuber names RoninDave. After research into the event, we had discovered that the only way to get reservations was to call or fax. Since I wasn’t fluent in Japanese and didn’t have a fax machine, I had it in my head to ask if they spoke English first. I had tried to call, but at this time of the night, the office was closed.
At this point, I decided it was time to clean up and relax, at which point I drew myself a hot bath and enjoy the rest of the night at the house. It was a cool night, but we had ample heat to keep us comfortable in the living room and bedroom for the night. It was time for the wife to do her daily photo dump to Facebook, and us to both finally rest our bodies, which had experienced over 3 hours of trains, and many more hours of walking during the day. While it was a lot, it was nothing compared to what was to come. Our first night in Kyoto, and day 1 of our JR Pass was finally drawing to a conclusion.
