EATING KIMCHI: KYOTO: The outdoor museum of Japan

Day 1

Our first day in Japan we arrived at Kansai Airport around 4:30 pm and proceeded to the Japan Rail center where we set up our Rail Passes and reserved tickets to Kyoto. About an hour later we arrived at Kyoto Central Train Station where we caught a taxi to eastern Kyoto, the main traditional district, where our hostel was located. Although taxis in Japan are notoriously over-priced, the cost of the ride split between the two of us was not bad.

We were staying in Khaosan Kyoto Theater Hostel which was located next to a large covered shopping arcade and within walking distance of Nishiki Market and the Gion area. The hostel itself was clean and comfortable, if very hostel-y. The staff gave us several maps including a bus map with instructions on how to get to famous landmarks from the hostel. This proved a huge help and we were able to take buses all over the city with ease. We also purchased a day-long bus pass to avoid constantly buying tickets (the pass also pays for itself if you ride at least four buses that day).

Our first night we stuck close to the hostel, exploring the shopping arcade and stopping for a ramen dinner which was delicious. I never knew what ramen could be until I tasted ramen in Japan.

Day 2

Fulbrighters at Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto

As it turned out, our trip overlapped with some other Fulbrighters just for our second day in Kyoto so we met up with them at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Southern Kyoto. To get there we took the city bus to Central Station and then used our rail passes to take the JR line to the Fushimi Inari stop.

Fushimi Inari is home to the iconic 'thousand orange torii gates' which lead up Mt. Inari. We did some hiking there and enjoyed the bright sunlight after days of cloudy winter skies in Korea. Fushimi Inari is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the god of rice. The shrine was covered in fox statues large and small, which I later learned are considered the messengers of the rice god.

In the afternoon we all traveled back to central Kyoto where we walked around Nishiki market. This was a lot of fun — all kinds of fabrics, handmade crafts and jewelry, street foods like fried rice-cake, souvenirs and the delicate plastic food replicas which are ubiquitous and astounding in Japan. Finally our friends departed to catch a train to Tokyo.

We decided to finish our evening by walking over to the neighborhood of Gion, known as the home of traditional tea houses where Geisha entertain their wealthy customers. We did see a couple Geisha on their way to jobs as we walked through the evening streets, but out of respect we didn't take any pictures. We had read before that as Japan becomes more touristy Geishas have had more and more trouble getting around mobs of foreign photographers on their way to work.

Although the wooden buildings in Gion were beautiful they had a private closed up kind of feel. As we walked I preferred the bright open feeling of Yasaka Shrine and Kodaiji Temple which we happened to wander into.

Yasaka Shrine, Kyoto

Gion Tea House, Kyoto

Streets of Gion

Kodaiji Temple, Kyoto

Back into the swell

Day 3

We started the next day at Kinkakuji, the famous golden pavilion in Northern Kyoto. It was a dribbley, gray day in Kyoto, but we were able to catch a bus and the rain held off during our tour. From there we caught another bus over to the Philosopher's path, a riverside trail that stretches through the dense temple area of Kyoto.

By this time we had gotten used to the Japanese system where you get on at the side door of the trolley or bus and take a ticket. When you exit, you leave through the front door and pay the fare based on where you got on (the ticket you picked up before). It's a pretty efficient system for distance based paying with cash.

We were able to walk along the Philosopher's path all the way to Heian Shrine and from there took a bus to the Higashiyama district, a series of narrow streets leading up the mountain to Kiyomizudera which overlooks Kyoto. By the end of the day we were very temple-ed out and tired from all our walking. Kyoto was beautiful, but if I went again I would try to break things up more by interspersing the temple viewing with other excursions.