June 27

Our first order of business was breakfast so we smacked on our leftover bananas! Then we packed up and said good bye to our great little apartment.  

We headed to our first shrine of the day, Nijo Castle. Nijo Castle was built in 1603 as the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa leyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period (1603-1867). After the Tokugawa Shogunate fell in 1867, Nijo Castle was used as an imperial palace for a while before being donated to the city and opened up to the public as a historic site. Its palace buildings are arguably the best surviving examples of castle palace architecture of Japan's feudal era!  

Surviving in its original form, the Ninomaru palace consists of multiple separate buildings that are connected with each other by corridors with so called nightingale floors, as they squeak when stepped upon as a security measure against intruders. I thought I was going crazy and perhaps they had caged birds somewhere!  It really sounds like birds singing! The palace rooms are tatami mat covered and feature elegantly decorated ceilings and beautifully painted sliding doors. Most of the paintings are reproductions but the ceilings and sliding doors are originals.

 

The palace is surrounded by green space and tree-lined walking paths. Nearly 400 cherry trees and a plum orchard are part of the gardens as are a large pond, ornamental stones, and manicured/sculpted pine trees.

While we were walking the grounds we were approached by school children!  They were apparently practicing their English so introduced themselves and asked about 4 different questions before asking us to sign their notebooks.  Too funny! 

A family was feeding the carp as we walked over one of the bridges crossing the moat —they are some big fishes!

It was a drizzling morning, just irritating enough so we bought some inexpensive umbrellas.  It was muggy so wearing our rain coats was warm/hot! 

Bananas weren’t enough so stopped for Japanese fast food:  MOS Burgers! We landed up having a very spicy chicken sandwich and ocean-flavored onion rings!  It was fast. It hit the spot.  As we were walking through the grocery part of the store to get out we stopped and gawked at the watermelons!  1980 yen!! That means about $19.80 for one melon!! 

Our next stop was Kinkakuji, a Zen temple in northern Kyoto whose top two floors are completely covered in gold leaf. That is a LOT of gold!! Formally known as Rokuonji, the temple was the retirement villa of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Kinkakuji is impressive, built overlooking a large pond, and is the only building left of Yoshimitsu's former retirement complex. It has burned down numerous times throughout its history including twice during the Onin War, a civil war that destroyed much of Kyoto; and once again more recently in 1950 when it was set on fire by a fanatic monk. The present structure was rebuilt in 1955.  

We wandered around the temple's gardens which have retained their original design from Yoshimitsu's days. The gardens include Anmintaku Pond that is said to never dry up, and statues that people throw coins at for luck. We did not throw coins but did admire the non-grassy areas which were covered in moss!  We’ve not had grass but moss for our yard for years!! The gardens gave us some great ideas for part of our backyard by the play area! 

We took a bus to another part of town to experience the Arashiyama Monkey Park. Yes, monkeys.  Not just any monkeys but Japanese macaque monkeys which are also known as snow monkeys.  We had to climb a summit (of course!) and were warned not to look them in the eye (They don’t like that.) or point a camera directly at them (They don’t like that either.). They also don’t like being touched (We can understand that.) or fed human food.  We climbed up and up and around, realizing it could be slow coming down as my Maggie knee is still sensitive, but it’s monkey’s! We saw our first one near the top and then more and then a lot! They live in large groups anyway but there are about 140 here.  The little ones were especially cute playing in the water! It was sort of unnerving to be WITH them and not on the other side of glass or walls! And the view from the summit was spectacular.

Yes, it was still raining and raining harder. We were getting wetter and wetter even with umbrellas! The walk down was slow as I had to do the side-step, and thus only slightly irritating.  We needed to catch a bus back to our last shrine but wanted a snack.  We shared (as we’ve been doing all our meals) sushi!! I’ve never done raw before but took a leap of faith and it was tasty!! Tuna, salmon, and some other fishy things! 😊

Our last stop was the Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine. Fushimi Inari Shrine is an important Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto. It is famous for its THOUSANDS of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari.

Fushimi Inari is the most important of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari’s messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds, some earring read aprons. Fushimi Inari Shrine has ancient origins, predating the capital’s move to Kyoto in 794.  

We meant to only look it over but the orange gates drew us in as you really walked through tunnels of them! So, we mounted another summit—LOTS of steps and paths and more steps, all going UP! We debated several times about stopping but we went on a bit more, even though we were pretty soaked by this point. People coming down gave us different times on reaching the top so we weren’t sure how long it would take!  There are shrines/graves interspersed as you walk, so neat.  The signs warning us about wild boars and biting monkeys wasn’t as intimidating as the sign from the other day about very venomous vipers! It was worth it.  

Since we opted to climb and that took a longer time, we decided to stay the night in Kyoto and head out in the morning.  Andrew found a great little hotel/apartment nearby.  Cheap, only $50 but very, very nice.  We did have to pay cash and never did see a real person but got instructions via email and used passcodes to unlock doors and lock boxes.

It was late and we hadn’t really had a full meal so we changed out of our dripping clothes and went in search of food. We found Japanese chicken curry and dumplings. Wow! He didn’t have desserts but did give me a glass of ginger juice! It was great! I’m going to have to learn to cook with ginger when I return home and also make juice! 

Back home and tomorrow we head to Tokyo!