Japan part 3 - Kyoto temples and palaces

After we left Takayama, we took the train to Nagoya and then bullet train to Kyoto. We stay in Kyoto for 2 nights in the Northwest residential and temple area.

Here is the Kyoto station, it's huge. There is many shops and department stores here. Michelle really liked this. This is a big covering at the front end of the station. You can see escalators going up 11 stories here. On the 10th floor there are 7 noodle shops and on the 11th floor there is many kind of restaurants.





We were hungry so we went to get a tempura lunch set. This was good, but not exceptional or anything. Michelle had veggie and shrimp tempura and udon noodle. Joe had shrimp and fish tempura and soba noodle and sashimi. The dessert was some kind of moose, pretty good.

We stayed 2 nights at a temple this time. You'll see more pictures later.
We dropped off our bags at the temple and then decided to go to Nijo castle which is only 2 stops away. But we had to walk a bit because our the JR station is on the other side of the castle.
We got there right at 4pm and hear the announcement - The palace will close at 4pm come to the door right now!.

We got to the palace right at 4pm, but it actually closed the door at 4:20pm so we had plenty of time. Nijo has nightingale floor so it squeek when you walk on it. It really does sound like birds, pretty cool.
We finished pretty quick, maybe 20 minutes.

Then we went to look around the garden.
nice pond
Here is the inner moat around the castle
We walked up on the wall and it was nice and breezy up there. The weather has been weird, some day was really hot and some day was rainy.
panoramic view
This is the outer moat and guard house.

Afterward, we went to Arashima a town that a little out from Kyoto. This is only a few stops from our temple also. They had a nice bamboo forest and many temples here. Michelle forgot to charge the camera so we ran out of battery and didn't take a lot of pictures here.

We went back to temple after Arashima and decided to try this place the abbot recommended - Kitchen Rakuraku. This place is about 15 minutes walk and we thought we would never find it, but it was right after the highschool like the abbot said. The kids are just coming out of school at 8pm. This place is izakaya, a hot food bar. It feels like sushi bar with hot food. We sat down and the owner said no English menu, but he could speak a little bit so we could order. We said some fish and pork and whatever. So he got a large plate for us to share and then started making things to eat. He put a bit of food at a time for us, I guess he could put food in small plates and then give to us but this was actually more fun for us. We got a tofu salad, mixed green salad, a few slices of pork belly with mustard, fish and more pork. Everything was really good, this is one of the best meal in this Japan trip too.
Here is the owner - Akira.
The customer next to us could speak some English so we were able to talk a bit and have fun. He came to visit Portland a long time ago and he said he drank a lot of beer here. :)

The next morning, we woke up early to go do laundry at 7am and buy some rice ball and green tea for breakfast. We ate breakfast at this no name temple after we put the laundry in the machine.

After laundry, we went to have zen lesson at our temple. We did 2 meditation, 15 minutes each. It was raining and the sound really helped the meditation. It went by pretty quick and even Michelle didn't have any problems. We got green tea and rice cracker afterward. This meccha green tea was good, not as bitter as the last one we got in Takayama.
Here is the abbot giving us a tour of the temple after the zen lesson.

That's me zenning. This was afterward and we went to take pictures.
We went to Mos burger for lunch. I got burger with meat sauce and Michelle got regular burger. It was really good too.

I made a free reservation to go see Kyoto Imperial palace on the internet so we headed there.
There were a bunch of people waiting and we all followed the guide.
Michelle
This is the main South gate that the emperor used. The wife and kids need to go to another gate.
The palace garden is very nice.

Panoramic view

The star of the show. 8)
After palace, we took the bus to Kinkakuji, the golden pavilion. In Kyoto, it is much easier to use buses rather than subway. We had some problem with the bus in the beginning, but eventually learned how to use them.
This place is quite impressive.
Here are some stone buddha. You see the silver one yen coin in the bowl? That's mine. I made it in there for extra luck!!!
After that we are very tired and went back to rest at the Shunkoin temple. This mean manta ray.
Shunkoin temple is part of the huge Myoshinji temple complex. There are a bunch of temples here and people take short cut throught the temple complex.
Here is the main building in Shunkoin temple.
The guest house is pretty good, it is basic, but that's all we needed. The problem is that it is two rooms divided by wooden screen again. The euro guys in the other room were so noisy. They snore so loud. Michelle said I snored really loud too. We are pretty tired now because we walked so much every day.
That night we went to Kitchen Rakuraku again because we don't want to go too far. Salad with spinach, mixed greens, lima beans, peas, tomatoes, and these tiny carrots with greens attached. yumm..
noodle with shrimp and squids. The shrimps and squids were juicy and crunchy, Michelle liked them a lot. Kyoto is known for very good fresh food.
This is grilled beef on greens with fried garlic and grated yam with ponzu sauce. This is the same concept as Thai beef salad, but has different flavor. Thai beef salad is more Zap (stronger.) The beef is really tender. Japanese beef is really good.


dessert - mochi with jelly and wafer icecream.

Hang out after dinner.
Here is the Shinkansen.
We checked out of the temple and headed to Miyajima for one night then back to Kyoto.

Japan part 2 - Izu and Takayama

part 2 - Izu peninsular and Takayama.
We took the local express train from Tokyo station to Atami. Then from Atami, we took the local train to Usami a little beach town in Izu peninsular. This area is famous for Onsen, hot springs. We stayed at a Minshuku, a cheaper bed and breakfast type place. The family rent out rooms to tourists. We went and drop off our bags and it looks like we are the only one there that day, it was a Tuesday I think.

We are going to look around the peninsular a bit so we got a bento lunch from a store near the station. The bento has stir fried beef, a piece of chicken, preserved veggies and a little salad, and some other things I forgot. Michelle got a little box of mushroom rice, that was really good. We also got a big fried ebi, yumm...


We took the local train to Jogasaki station and walked to the coast, it was 1.5km walk with a gentle slope downhill. I thought it would be difficult to walk back up hill, but I didn't have any problem, just had to go slow. The Jogasaki coast has a cool suspension bridge. It was a little scary, but cool. I got a green tea soft serve ice cream.

Here is the view of the bridge and light house. The bridge didn't look scary here because the rock is blocking the view of the water.

We took this "black ship train" back toward our minshuku. We got off at Ito to get dinner though. The Minshuku can make and serve dinner in the room, but it will cost 2500Y each so we just go get dinner in town. We are out and about anyway. The black ship train has comfortable seats facing the view, really nice.
Dinner. I got Soba noodle and Michelle got Udon noodle. We both got the noodle with a disc of fried shrimp, mussels, and veggies. Japanese people seems to eat a lot of fried food. I think most noodle shops closed at 5pm too. This place was starting to clean up around 5pm.

Here is a picture of our Otsuka Minshuku. The lady owner is really nice. I think this place has 5 stories and 4 rooms on floor 2 to 5. So probably 16 rooms max.Here is our room, 301. This is actually 2 rooms, the rooms has wooden screens to seperate them. Since we were the only guests, they took down the screen and we had a big 12 tatami mat room with beach view.
We rested a bit then go down to take a hot spring bath in the basement. They had 2 small hot spring rooms. We got the smaller one to ourselves. The tub was pretty small and only big enough for 2 people, but the hotspring water was really nice. Our skin were nice and smooth afterward.

The next day we activated our Japan Rail pass and took the Shinkansen to Nagoya and then to Takayama. Here is Mount Fuji. We only saw Fuji from the train this trip.
From Nagoya, we took a local express train to Takayama. The view is really nice with a lot of rivers and country towns.

I got mican oranges from the market and got this peeler from the minshuku. At first I thought it was just orange and ate half of the first one with out peeling all the inner skins off. It was really bitter. Then I figured out how the tool worked and was able to peel the fruit correctly. You are suppose to just eat the orange flesh and take out all the skin.Cold soba noodle with dipping for lunch in Takayama. It was really hot that day too, I got a headache and looked for aspirin from drug store. They didn't have any aspirin, but said bufferin will work.
After you eat all the noodle, they gave us some hot broth to pour in the sauce then you're suppose to drink the soup. It was too salty though so we only drank a little bit.


After lunch we took the bus to Hida village. They move old houses in this region to this place to make a museum/tourist attraction. It was really nice, I like it. Many of these houses were in places where they built dam so they were going to be flooded.


The roof is made from reeds and it took the whole village a week to finish one house. Then the roof will last 10 year? or something like that. The roof is really steep to keep the snow from building too much. This area has a lot of snow in the winter.
In one of the old houses, there was an old fashion stair. It is just a log with steps carved in.

Here is a bigger picture of a Gassho house.


Krok. :)
After the village tour, we came back to the Takayama town and headed toward the older part of town. This is the bridge crossing the river. I don't know what this guy is pointing to, maybe just stretching his finger.

On the other side walk at the bridge.
There are 3 old streets that are preserved to have the old feel. There are sake shops, sweet shops, green tea shops, and tourist stores.
For dinner, we went to Sazuya a place that Lonely Planet guidebook recommended. I had Hida beef. It is beef with onion, mush room, veggie, and fresh miso cooked at the table on Hoba leaf. This was really good, one of the best meal this trip. The beef was very very tender and taste great. This is Hida beef, suppose to be better than Kobe beef.

Michelle got another grill dish. Grill beef, mushroom, and veggie. This one is really good too. You can see mine at the bottom, the food is mixed up well now, yummmm...

After dinner, we walked around a bit more and got some boa for midnight snack because our ryokan is out of town.
The ryokan picked us up from the station. This ryokan is made of 2 gassho houses and another connecting structure. The ryokan is actually nearby the Hida village we toured earlier. The welcomed us in a traditional room with fireplace and gave us Japanese green tea, pretty bitter. Then they showed us to our room. This room is 8 tatami and pretty large. You can see our 3 bags in the background. We traveled pretty light this trip as usual.
We went for a shower and hot tub soak after a little rest. This place has really nice shower and hot tub. We reserved the place for our self from 7 to 8pm. The floor of the shower room has tatami mats too, that's surprising for us. The hot tub was big and the water was really really hot. Michelle could only get in half way and she looked like a half boiled lobster. I got in all the way and had a really nice short soak. After that, we went out to take a few pictures. Every places on our trip gave us yukata to wear at night except Toyoko Inn.

Michelle got a red outer garment. The hotel is in the background.

We paid 1000Y extra for traditional japanese breakfast. Actually pretty good.
This is a big dinning room with fire pit. The atmosphere is really good. There is only 2 other guys staying here beside us.

here is where our room was.

Next Kyoto....

Today is rose festival in Portland and I see they are racing dragon boats on the river. Michelle has toast masters so we are not going to the parade this year. We'll probably go see the floats tomorrow.