Japan Trip (March 23, 2001)

Index

Kyoto Night Adventure

Kyoto, Japan March 23, 2001

Japan Trip, 3/23


To-ji from the South Gate.
Back is still hurting. Need to take it easy. Decided to stay within the central Kyoto. Will take a bus or a subway as much as possible. Cloudy but not too cold.


Pagoda from the South Gate.
Touji. Took a bus. This time it was better [the last time, I got off the bus a bit away from where I was going]. Asked the driver for the nearest stop. The temple was fairly huge. Paid to get into a museum and to see the main buildings and statues closely. The 5-story pagoda is supposed to be the tallest in Japan. Some of the statues were interesting, but they weren't allowed to be photographed.


Lawn with White Pebbles.
Noticed... Some bikes don't have rear seats, so some girls were standing in the back on the extensions of the rear axis.
Against the Pagoda.


Ninomaru Palace at Nijo-jo.
Nijo-jou. Kyoto's Tokugawa "castle". It's more like a huge house with walls. I liked Himeji-jou better. The house is huge with old but beautiful paintings by Kano. Squealing floors [for detecting intruders].


Garden in Nijo-jo.
Finally had a ramen!!! [I've been looking for one since I got to Japan, actually.] Noodles were thinner than expected.
An Interesting Layout on the Way.


Picnic Just Outside the Imperial Palace.
Kyoto Gosho. Luckily was able to take a guided tour around the palace (English tours are at 11 and 14 [o'clock]) [the guided tours are the only way to get into the premises]. Got a copy of the permission [also asked for a souvenir :p]. Kyoto has been the emperor's residence for one thousand years so buildings were quite interesting. The thickness of the bark roof signifies ranks. The roof needs to be replaced every 40 years. The red borders around tadami means lower ranks. The white means higher.
The Gate Used by the Emperor.

Garden Inside the Place.
"Pebble Beach" Inside the Palace.

Found a Starbucks at Karasuma-Sanjodouri. Two more places opening today [according to a sign inside the shop]. I guess it's catching on here as well. Tall capucino was 320 + 16 [tax] yen.

Covered shop streets [between buildings, I guess]. A lot of young people. Namco center was disappointing. It seems it's either a photo booth shop or a pachinko. No wonder everyone's abandoning arcades [I meant game developers].

Sushiyoshi. Sushiya [finally decided that I need to have sushi since I was in Japan]. Anago was good [they didn't have unagi and I learned later that without anago you can't really call it a sushiya]. Had a hard time ordering at first [they didn't have a picture menu, so I finally started with a small sushi combination, then order a few things separately which tasted good].

Met a Korean-Japanese couple. [This is actually quite a funny story. I was seated on the counter right next to them. I guess the lady noticed my struggling Japanese to order sushi and started asking me a few questions. While introducing myself to her that this was my first time in Japan and stuff, I told her that I grew up in Korea. And surprisingly, she said "Are you Korean?" in Korean. Anyway, the ojisan didn't speak much Korean, but the obasan's Korean was good enough to carry conversation.] They paid for my dinner. Musuko-youda-to itte. Took to their nomiya, Anjue. I think they wanted me to meet their second daughter. [At first when they asked me to join them at their nomiya, I got a bit suspicious since I heard some scary propaganda stories when I was young about abductions by North Koreans in Japan. :p But they seemed nice, so I went along with them.] They treated me very well. [I did meet some of their daughters, but nothing happened.]

After coming back, had a talk with Shuuhei-san. He just heard that he got into Tokyo Rikka Daigaku. Congratulations! [I exchanged a few email messages after I came back, but hadn't talked to him since. He must be enjoying his college life.]

>> "Crowds"...



Created with Emacs

Maintained by Younghong "Hong" Cho
Last updated: June 17, 2008
Created: April 1, 2001