8-bitDesign

I’ll start by saying that I don’t think we spent nearly enough time in Kyoto.

Outside of that, I honestly don’t have too much to say about it, with my travel guide out of reach, as it is. We basically arrived from the Shinkansen late on Sunday, and promptly purchased a wide selection of beers, and spent the night drunkenly watching Japanese game shows.

Monday had us doing our variant of Pub-crawling, “Temple Crawling”. We hit four temples before dinner, and honestly, I can’t add anything that you wouldn’t read in a Lonely Planet or Eyewitness guide book. That, and I can’t spell any of the names off-hand.

I definitely feel that each of those temples requires more time to experience than the hour we spent in each, but as a way to flesh out our understanding of the city, they’re marvelous.

Kyoto is a city that hasn’t just made peace with it’s past, but lives happily alongside it. 500 year old shrines co-exist with modern suburbs and high-rises. It’s also far more open and welcoming than Tokyo, which can be an intimidating sight at first. The place is also lousy with gaijin; we were tripping over tourists on the regular. Then again, that could be due to us arriving just in time to see the cherry blossoms blooming.

Overall, if you want to draw an SAT-test worthy parallel, Kyoto is like England’s Bath, a smaller, quieter, city with a rich history. Absolutely gorgeous, and full of small little suprises off of side-roads, and behind temples.

Now, my favourite part has to be the walk we took before dinner, through the city park, which can best be described as Japan’s answer to Montemarte, and then through the main street towards city hall. The interesting there here, is that the most people in Japan tend be quiet in public, keeping cellphone conversations to a minimum.

Here, in Kyoto, on a Monday night, we found quite the opposite. Around us were laughing, joking crowds of people, fresh from work and the bar, and having a good time. Hell, a few passing groups even teased us a bit about our Japanese pronunciation while we were trying to find our way around. From what I’ve seen, Japan is a country where the people all agree that there’s a place and a time for everything.

We capped the night off to a trip to some reggae bar that Reynolds’ bartender recommended, and after a drunken stumble, more Japanese game shows. Not too shabby for our day in Kyoto!