Sarah here again and I know Alan will want to have his say in red.
After Alan’s nightmare during the night that he was being attacked by a kitten (hee hee) which woke me and half the hotel, we had a bit of a lie in again this morning. It was more like a big ferocious monster with huge sharp claws and fangs attacking me thankyou very much! That is not what you said when I asked you what the nightmare was about.
We got ourselves prepared and left the hotel a little before noon. There was a quick trip on the subway before we headed to the Kyoto Imperial Palace. The layout of the public transport, as previously mentioned, is not at all like we have found in other cities. After walking 40 minutes, we still hadn’t made it around to the entrance to the Palace. It is in an enclosure 1.3 km north to south and 0.7 km east to west. Not to mention the rest of the grounds which are huge and you have to walk through to get there. We came across a number of gates, none of which were open, and still to this time we are unsure whether in fact it was actually open today.
Strangely, we relied on our map and when it suggested the Nijojo Castle wasn’t too far away, we decided to believe it. We really need to stop looking at this map and saying oh well it’s only a couple of centimetres on the map so it surely can’t be too far can it. On the way we passed the Go’o Shrine which, for some reason, Alan found funny. Another 40 minutes and we were finally at the entrance to the Castle, only to discover that unlike Osaka Castle, they don’t allow you to walk around the grounds without paying. As we have really seen enough in the way of Temples, Castles, Shrines etc, and the fact that today is a really hot day, we decided to give it a miss and go and get some lunch. The map again indicated that the JR rail station, where we can use our rail tickets, wasn’t too far away and another 30 minutes or so we finally made it to the station. We looked for some lunch places on the way but they were all Japanese and none of them had an English menu.
We returned to Kyoto Station for lunch. There was a couple from Portland, Oregon on the next table who had just arrived in Kyoto although had been in Tokyo for the past 5 days. They are vegetarians and were saying how hard it was to find vegetarian food here. We were a little surprised considering most places we pass all seem to have vegetarian food.
The only options we have for dinner around our hotel are a very expensive (about $130 a head) restaurant at the hotel, McDonald’s, two Japanese restaurants and one curry restaurant. Although the curry one smells nice, when we had a look it was all the same brown sauce and rice with your choice of meat. We chose one Japanese over the other tonight as it was less crowded. Again, there was no English menu but prices which indicated it was reasonably inexpensive. It was a strange set up in that you go in, put money in the ticket machine and choose your meal, give it to the waitress and find a seat. As we were trying to decide what to have, from the pictures on the menu, the waitress came up with an English menu. However, she didn’t know what they were and they didn’t come with pictures so choosing something in English didn’t mean it could ever be translated into Japanese. It’s a traditional Japanese restaurant and it seemed that nobody there spoke a word of English so it was a case of not really knowing what food we may end up with.
The meal came and not only did we get the dish we ordered but also rice, a cabbage salad with a strange sauce and miso soup. What we ended up ordering was like hamburger mince made into two patties topped with something that was cold and not very nice, three little roast potatoes, five green beans and two shrimp sticks with sauce. All in all it was a nice meal and only cost $11.
Tomorrow’s plans are to visit Saga Arashiyama where there is a beautiful bamboo forest and,of course, a temple. We are still hopeful of getting to the Golden Pavilion although we are yet to work out the exact way to get there. Based on experience with our map, it will take us 2 days to walk there.
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