Day 4, part 5, Kyoto Station

We never imagined it would be so extraordinary.

Kyoto Station, opened in 1997, was built to celebrate the 1200th anniversary of the founding of the city. I learned that in this guide after leaving Kyoto. That guide rightly observes that it is a "perfect contrast to many foreign tourist's image of Kyoto." 

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We had, on arrival in Kyoto from Tokyo, scurried underground to catch a subway train and indeed when leaving Kyoto, we arrived at the Kyoto Station the same way. But we were early at departure, early for our Tokyo train and decided to have a look outside. We had some difficulty initially discovering the outside. Helen summed up the situation, as we passed from one major shopping corridor to the next, full of gloss and beautiful refined people: "Perhaps there is no outside, there seems no need."

But we did get out and again it was Helen, seeing an escalator of extreme size through a glass wall, who said: "We have to go on that!" She also noted on the building diagram outside that there was a museum on the eighth or ninth floor. I noted as we moved to enter that there was another escalator. No, mine if bigger, she said. Indeed, from the bottom, when we stood there, her escalator was bigger. Moreover, there was a cunning visual trick. From the bottom one could not see that there was another escalator after the first escalator. And ditto. Perhaps Everest is like that.

The escalators go almost to the top. Stairs necessary to finish the trek. Not too many. A few courageous or foolish appear in my escalator-shot movie to be running up the stairs all the way.

At the top, there is a small sign, the name of the place. You will at least have to ride my movie to know it. 

Helen having whipped me up the hill, so to speak, at the top said: "I wonder if I can get down, my vertigo will probably cut in." I pointed out that while no elevator, there seemed a large crane higher to one side and a heliport. In fact, I think the journey up and down cured her vertigo. But we were pleased to have more time as we took another quarter hour at the bottom to find the Shinkansen. The word bottom was relevant. We had gone down too far, we needed to ride up escalators again to find the Shinkansen station. Not as many escalators as we tried, we had to ride one down a floor when we overshot going back up.

These observations:
1: do get to the station early in Kyoto to ride to the top on escalators. But there seems no alternative to steps at the top, and without taking those steps, you miss out.
2: this is good stuff when you are planning to sit on the train for two or three hours.
3: whether this will cure you as it apparently cured me of the desire constantly to feel semi-undressed and grasping for my seat belt as I did on coming to Kyoto on the Shinkansen Kyoto at 200km an hour, passing other trains at combined 400+km/hour I don't know. The evidence is that sitting in my aircraft type seat on the train back to Tokyo I did not miss my seat belt. Perhaps just tired.
4: whether you will be cured of vertigo we cannot say. Whether you will develop vertigo we can't promise.
5: leave time to find the train when you come back down. It's a big station with many distractions.
6: We found some excellent crusty bread in the station such as we haven't found in Tokyo, but we honestly can't tell you where we found it. It had a French name, of course. And the transaction required all our resources of polite terms of trade, the sumimasen, the arigato, the domo arigato goziemasu. But no matter how strenuous our efforts to be polite, the lady beind the counter stood by the tradition evident everywhere in Japan that not only is the customer always right but the salesperson must always be able to respond to any statement of appreciation, any minor or greater bow, with more profound appreciation. It was not a 7-Eleven shop, where the language matter has been advanced to a further level.

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This adventure into modern architectural genius and mind altering cheekiness was a wonderful end to our visit to Kyoto, I recommend it, from the above it seems to have given my brain a flip. This building offers the same kind of frisson as the beautiful modern house lurking among cherry and other trees in the middle of the Philosopher's Walk, hint hint, see my video of that. 

We did not go to the museum...

But on the way to the station we had passed these steps. 

Day 4, part 4: Kyoto, Kawabata Dori and Sanjo Dori

Kawabata Dori (Kawabata Street) runs alongside the east bank of the Kamo River. Here we walk from Shirakawa-Minami Dori north to and across the Sanjo Bridge. The street is named for the Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata.

The Sanjo Bridge today, below Hiroshige's 1830s painting, from the opposite direction

View from the Sanjo Bridge

Elegant people on the Sanjo bridge... elegance and graciousness in abundance here

These rocks are iwasaka

and here is the view from that bridge today

Day 4, part 3: Kyoto, Shirakawa-Minami Dori

Now walking from the corner of Shinbashi Dori, down Shirakawa-minami Dori 

and then, next blog entry, north along the bank of the Kamo to Sanjo bridge.

click on any image for enlarged slideshow of all

Photos of scenery are from eye height, candid pictures of people are from the hip, nice angle of view and unobtrusive, sometimes inaccurate, but some here are very pleasing. All images from Fuji XF-1, reduced to width of 1200 pixel, unsharp mask filter applied after size reduction.

and a shrine at the corner

That road out there runs along the Kamo River. We turn right in the next blog entry.

Day 4, part 2, walking in Kyoto: Gion buildings

In part 1 of Day 4 we had walked from hotel south via Pontocho to Gion Dori and then east to Yasaka Shrine. Returning to our hotel near the Sanjo Bridge, beginning in this second part, we went north west through tiny streets of Gion, red light district at night, some astonishing design visible during the day, to emerge from Shinbashi Dori and walk beside the canal on Shirakawa-Minami Dori, down to the river then north on the east bank of the Kamo River....  the area just over the river in Hiroshige's painting from the 1830s, copied here from wikipedia

above the Yasaka Shrine, we found people setting up for Saturday lunch under the last of the cherry blossoms. This is a short video clip.

Then we walked northwest through narrow streets of Gion, a redlight district when the sun is not shining. Many people would only see this at night. Daytime reveals astonishing combinations of traditional and modern building.

and then, at the corner above and in this little video, we arrive in Shirakawa-Minami Dori, with canal and cherry blossoms. Photos from the next part of the walk in the next blog entry.

Day 4: walking Kyoto, part 1

There are so many elements to Kyoto. The elegance of the people, different from Tokyo, though we confess we have not shopped Ginza. The way every corner reveals something different.

The layout of the city is a puzzle on the map at first look when far away. But find the station and downtown becomes easy to follow, a very square pattern, east-west north-south, north of Kyoto station, so if you can keep track of corners turned you know where you are easily enough. If uoiu've done research in advance. That's the point: research hard in advance, plan as little as possible.... or just put yourself in the nads of a guide and skip the interesting bits between the crowded tourist top points.

The walk covered in this blog entry proceeded from near Sanjo Dori, top left, down the narrow lane of traditional buildings mainly restaurants, running on the west side of the Kamo River to the Gion Bridge; between the Sanjo Bridge and the Gion Bridge, then west along Gion dori to the Yasaka Shrine; from there in the next blog entry, by another wending way back to our hotel near Sanjo Dori on Kawaramachi Dori.

Of course you could plan a little better than I, presenting nicely printed reservation information page from booking.com, in Japanese, to hotel receptionist, who ducked away for a moment to see the boss and returned to point with standard but wonderful Japanese smiling and voice, to the plain-as-day dates for me to read and agree that yes, they were expecting us last night. But no problem, was the gracious advice, you can stay tonight, no fee for last night. Great relief that they were not booked out!

Anyway, the point is you and companion/s need to have agreement on which direction to walk and when to walk... but then be free to follow what looks interesting. 

At 8 the only thing open was Stealbucks, where we had bland coffee and soggy wrap. Moving on to seek better fare, we came upon this temple and cemetery. Rather fun to see the opportunity to stick your head in a hole and have a silly picture at the door to such places!

An interesting history

We found fish for breakfast around the corner, market arcade setting up after 9am.

After that, a walk, begun at Ponto-cho, where in the evening there has been a hundred dining options.

Everything in this shop with rabbit images.
The name of the shop sounds like Pyo Pyo, Pyom, Pyom - sounds of rabbits
And such a charming gentle man.

This is the view back from the Geon bridge, southern end of Ponto-cho (left bank), running back to the Sanjo bridge over the Kamo River. Heron standing in the river, bottom left, being approached by duck. Heron failed to respond, duck swam away.

onwards eastwards on Gion Dori past fine shops

in fine company

We had just passed the red dot on the map 

when we saw an amazingly mixed-cultural event coming down the street (first item in this film)

The gate to the Yasaka Shrine guarded or lorded over by this imposing figure.

People  select wrapped o-mikuji, unwrap them to see the quality of the wish written thereon and proceed to tied it with others.

We were in the grounds long enough to see two Shinto weddings. This video is a glimpse of one of them. Wikipedia has an informative entry on marriage in Japan.