Japan 2018: From Osaka to Kyoto

The kids were up bright and early this morning, in spite of having a busy & tiring day yesterday. Charlie & I are getting this sleep thing under control, thanks to the aforementioned busy day :) Breakfast was once again yummy & home-made by Momo & Hiroko (I offered to help, really!).

Last evening I gave everyone their omiyage (presents given to friends and family when you travel). Since we were going to Universal Studios, I found everyone Harry Potter t-shirts. The kids wore theirs today :)

Momo, Hiroshi, Hiroko, & the kids were traveling back to the Tokyo area by shinkansen this morning and had figured out the timing and reserved their tickets last evening online. So after breakfast parents packed & kids ran around and had a great time together. The only casualty was Mai-chan's hat, which had disappeared sometime since yesterday afternoon. Considering all the stuff we all carried to Osaka, that seems pretty miraculous to me. The gang left around 10:00 to catch their subways & trains. I felt lonely the minute they went, since the house had been full of joyful noise & conversation since we'd arrived. Fortunately, we'll visit Momo, Hiroshi, & the kids next weekend and finally see the new house they built last year.

We didn't have to check-in to our hotel in Kyoto until 3:00 pm, so we had more time. Momo had looked up the trains to Kyoto last evening on her ipad & helped us figure out which subways & transfers we needed to make to get to the right train. After a quick FaceTime with Brendan, who was winding-down his Sunday evening (being 13 hours behind us, time-wise), we finished packing & left the house for the subway station. And thanks to Momo's excellent instructions, we and our formidable luggage made all of the transfers to the Yodoyabashi Station, where we picked up the Keihan line for Sanjyo Station, the nearest to our hotel in Kyoto. When we looked at the schedule of trains, there were all sorts of trains, from locals to super speedy "Raku Raku" train. When we bought our tickets the machine didn't have any way to indicate which speed of train they were for, and the tickets we bought were just 410¥ apiece. That's about $4.00 in US currency! So we found a ticket window with a live person to ask, because I was really nervous we had the wrong tickets and didn't want to get on the wrong train. Turns out, every train, no matter what the speed, was the same price (!). Some seats were reserved on the speedier trains, but once we got to the platform, we noticed that they all had sections that were less posh, & we figured these were for the non-reserved ticket-holders. We could have taken the shinkansen to Kyoto, which would have taken about 20 minutes, but we were sure the tickets would have been expensive (it was close to $150.00 apiece one way from Tokyo to Osaka by Nozomi). This trip took about 50 minutes, but for 410¥ apiece, we we pretty happy with it.

I think we're headed to Kyoto!

The scenery outside the train window on the way from Osaka to Kyoto was mostly suburbs transitioning to small towns with some manufacturing & not much agriculture (a bunch of rivers, though). You could see blue of tarps dotting the rooftops, too, a reminder of the typhoon that roared through the Kansai region the week before we arrived. We saw on the news this evening that the Kansai Airport, in Osaka, is just reopening after experiencing severe flooding.

We got to the Sanjyo Station in  Kyoto a little before noon & found the taxis after a bit, as the signs were a bit hard to follow. We knew the hotel wasn't far, but didn't want to drag the luggage through unknown territory. We then had what has become such a recurring event on visits to Kyoto that it just makes us laugh these days. We got to the taxi stop and a spry, wizened gentleman hopped out of his taxi to load our luggage & find out where we were going. When we told him, he'd never heard of the hotel and had no idea where it was. Nearly every time we arrive in Kyoto and take a taxi, the driver, usually an older gentleman, has no idea where our hotel is. Said gentleman then consults with all the other drivers, and some discussion takes place. Eventually someone has heard of the place, and we get going. Unfortunately, the information page Charlie copied from the hotel had the address in Romaji (roman letters), which our driver had trouble figuring out. He consulted a nearby bus driver (this was a new thing) and while he did, I looked the hotel up on my phone & found the address in Japanese. This worked, except that, as he explained in Japanese, he couldn't actually take the car down the street where it was. I told him that nearby was fine, & we were off. Bonus- he spoke Kyoto-ben, the local dialect, which is often used by humourous characters in anime & manga, so I was too busy geeking-out to be put off by the info about not being able to drop us right at the hotel. As it turned out, he got us very close to it & we were able to trundle the luggage the short distance to the hotel.

We were early for check-in, so they put our luggage away & we went off to explore. Charlie does a lot of guidebook reading before we travel to Japan, so he knew a lot about our neighbourhood already. Our hotel is very close to the Teramachidori, (it means "temple street street), which is a large, covered shopping area. It started out a long time ago as the "street of shops" that lead to many temples & shrines in Japan, originally established near shrines because they were the safest places & shared their security with the local merchants. As we wandered the Teramachidori we saw at least four small, very old Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines tucked into odd corners of the street. Charlie made an "aisatsu" (greeting) or visit to the Seiganji, a Buddhist temple that dates from the 7th century. The steps were kind fo steep for me, so I let him say "hi" to the enshrined Boddhisatvah for me.

We also decided to find a cafe for refreshment, and we were not disappointed! We saw an advert for sponge cake (actually castella cake) french toast and a matcha ice cream parfait outside one called Ukeian and that's where we landed. So yummy!!!

While there I looked up the location of the Kyoto Pokemon Center on my phone, and it was just a 10-minute walk away. With more than 2 hours until we could check-in, it seemed like a good idea to go there & find one on the things I've been looking forward to for weeks- Maiko Pikachu! A Maiko is a Geisha in training, very much a Kyoto thing, and Maiko Pikachu is the mascot of the Kyoto Pokemon Center. The Center is on the 5th floor of a Takashimaya department store. We found it easily, & wow, was it crowded! Maybe due to the holiday today, I do not know. All I know is that I found Maiko Pikachu, & a bunch of gifts for friends there. I am happy!!

On the walk back through Teramachidori we saw all sorts of fun sights, including what I believe to be a hedgehog cafe, & a fun okonomiyaki shop:

Then it was time to go back to the hotel & get settled in our room, & do laundry! Which took us until about 6:15 and dinner time. We found a restaurant that specialises in panko-fried pork, chicken, & shrimp. We were instructed to grind goma (sesame seeds) with mortars & pestles, and then add ladlesful of a house sauce, like Bulldog Sauce, into the mortar which became a sauce dipping bowl. It was all so good!

Then, back to the hotel. Charlie is sampling Japanese tv right now, having had a shower and soak in the ofuro, the large bathtub that is ubiquitous in Japan.

Tomorrow we will meet our friend Tomoko, who lives in Kanazawa & who's making the 2 1/2 hour trip to Kyoto to see us. We are so psyched!! We plan to visit some places new to us and have some yummy meals together, too.