Pics from Kyoto are here. (Avoiding hater flickr, because it wouldn't let me upload more pics. >.>)
We left Miyajima and rode a train to the station in Hiroshima where we could board the shinkansen (the bullet train). We had some free time to wander around the station and buy souvenirs and whatnot before we boarded the train, so I got some stuff for my family as well as a snack for the train ride: delicious citrus-flavored kit-kats! They are a regional specialty (only sold in the Chugoku region of Japan) and they were totally dericious! They tasted like creamsicles. :D
Boarding the shinkansen was an adventure in and of itself - say your train is scheduled to leave at 10:56? The train pulls in at 10:56, you get the hell on, and then it leaves at 10:56. Needless to say with a group of almost 30 with luggage trying to board the same car, it was interesting. >.> The ride itself was pretty uneventful aside from the fact that it was SO COOL. I mean, you hear about how fast the bullet trains are but you don't really realize it until you're on one and you're really just tearing through the countryside. I took some pictures from the window but I'd be surprised if any of them are not blurry.
The first thing we did when arriving in Kyoto was to get on a different (local) train, which took us to our lodging for the night, a capsule hotel! We were able to drop off our luggage in the lobby of the hotel, leaving us free to wander about for the day.
Our hotel was blessedly close to a bunch of exciting things, and one of our group leaders (from the school office) had a recommended path through them to see as many cool things as possible in the least amount of time. The first thing we did was to go to stroll through the Gion district, which is the famous geisha entertainment district. (Most of the buildings were unfortunately closed since it was the middle of the day, though, so we didn't see any geisha. :/) The street was really cool though because all of the buildings were very traditional and most had gated gardens separating them from the public roadway.
Next we went to see a Shinto shrine. Kyoto is famous for its shrines and temples - there are hundreds of them in the city and surrounding area/mountains. Yasaka Shrine was really cool - there were loads of little side shrines and statues as well as some big pavilions. We saw a wedding party in traditional garb and sniped some pics of them. We wandered around inside the shrine for a while and then headed out again on our way to the next stop, Kiyomizu Temple.
Along the way we popped in and out of a bunch of cute little shops. In one I bought a good-luck cat for a souvenir, and couldn't remember what the word for them was in Japanese. I thought it was ma-neko or something similar, and then a friend was like 'bake-neko'? Which means monster-cat, which gave the lady checking me out a good laugh. It's 'maneki-neko', by the way. We stopped in a little cafe for lunch/a snack (as in I got dessert and Jenny and Mike got food and dessert). I had green-tea ice cream with red bean jelly and shirotama (rice paste/mochi balls) on top. It was quite tasty. :D
After eating we continued on towards the temple. That was when we saw one of the most exciting things about out Kyoto trip: a geisha house with its garden doors open and four maiko inside in full geisha makeup and attire having a professional photoshoot done. We creeped on it hella hard and took a bunch of pics - they were so graceful and beautiful and very doll-like.
After that and a lot of wandering, we finally ended up at Kiyomizu Temple on top of a big hill on the edge of Kyoto. It was vary pretty, and we could see a panoramic view of the city from up there, which was amazing. It was just starting to get a little dark, and we had other plans yet, so although there was a path you could take to go see a waterfall up on the mountain, we opted to keep going. We meandered back down the hill slowly, stopping to buy ice cream at a little stand (I had sakura flavor! It was strange and delicious!) We walked back to the giant Kyoto station to hop on a train out to a shrine a ways away from the rest of our scripted plan. On the way we got to see Kyoto Tower, which is built on top of a Yodobashi electronics store, starting to light up for the night.
The shrine we went to was Fushimi-Inari Shrine, which is quite possibly one of the coolest places ever. It was already dark when we got there, so we were concerned that our pictures wouldn't come out well, but using flash actually made them AWESOME. The draw of Fushimi-Inari shrine is the torii. (Torii are Shinto shrine gates, usually laquered red.) There are pathways all over the area there that are literally walled in with the torii, making basically a tunnel. There were very few people there, and we wandered around spinning mysterious and scary stories about all the spirits that might be lingering there until we literally terrified ourselves, jumping at a sound we couldn't find the source of and finally skedaddling because we couldn't deal haha. ^^;
From there we got on the train back into downtown Kyoto and met back up with the big group to go to dinner. They had arranged an all-you-can-eat meal at a buffet near the station. We ate ourselves silly. After eating, it was pretty late and most of the shops had closed. We opted to walk back to the hotel to work off some of the enormous amount of Japanese food we had just ingested.
When we arrived back at the hotel it was to a scene of discord - the hotel had accidentally booked the girls on boys' floors and vice versa. As the girls outnumbered the boys by a lot it was a problem. They eventually just blocked off a whole floor for TUJ students and we were fine, although our group leaders argued a refund out of the place for the girls who had to sleep on the guys' floor. And I got to confuse the hell out of the Japanese men when I got on the mens' elevator.
(Quick explanation of capsule hotels if you've never heard of them: They're really inexpensive places to literally do nothing but crash for a night - they eschew an actual hotel room for stacked rows of single-bed-sized capsules. You climb into the pod and pull down a screen for privacy in order to sleep. The hotels are set up with men's and women's floors to ensure that no one's sexins interfere with other peoples' sleep. The women's elevators only access women's floors and vice versa for the men. One floor of each section has showers and bathroom facilities, so in order to shower I had to go all the way down to the lobby and back up again. The hotel also provides you with pajamas, slippers, toothpaste/toothbrush, and showering materials, which was handy.)
So that was pretty frustrating, and we had to be on the road pretty early the next day, but we finally got ourselves set up and hit the sack in our little pods, which was really cool, actually, and rather comfortable as well.
The next morning we got up early (the pods use a ambient light alarm to wake you up so alarms don't bother the other customers - the lights get gradually brighter and then turn on completely at the time you set, so you wake up gradually and silently. I didn't trust it to actually wake me up, as I'd slept through an earthquake in the past, but it worked perfectly!) and headed out to the station. We had basically a free day that day - we could wander around Kyoto again, or take a train to Nara, or go straight to Osaka, as long as we ended up in Osaka at the end of the day. We wanted to go to Nara, since we had seen most of the things we wanted to see in Kyoto (I'd have liked to see the Manga Museum and Kinkakuji/Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but they would have been a significant time drain...) and we had most of Sunday to see Osaka. It's only like Y600 (about $6 USD) to get between all three cities since they're so close, so we bought our tickets and hopped on the train. :D
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