Kyoto!

Last year, I went to Kyoto for the first time! It was my first time doing many things, actually, and I’ll do my best to break it down here.

The idea of a trip to Kyoto popped up when I was talking to my roommate from the Tokyo orientation, Kasey. Yes, we stayed in touch and were very excited to see each other again! It felt really nice to have connected with her so well, especially since most JET participants don’t really see people from their original consulate very often, if ever again.

Since she is placed in a different prefecture, we decided that it would be best to meet in Kyoto. After several planning calls, we had our set dates and activities done!

Sidenote, when I initially started writing this post, I wanted to fit every single detail into it, but it became way too long for that. Instead, I’ve decided to separate the individual activities into their own posts with all the details I can remember. So think of this post as more of an overview of the entire trip.

Planning

Kasey and I decided to meet in Kyoto on Thursday evening. We would spend about three days there and leave that Sunday afternoon. Together, we decided on certain activities that each of us really wanted to do, and then lesser activities that we could do if we needed to kill time. Before we booked anything – luckily – we had two more people join us: Matt and Ethan. Matt is another ALT placed in Kasey’s town, and Ethan if my friend from Canada who was visiting during that time.

Once everything was planned in Kyoto, I still had to figure out how I was going to get there. Kasey and Matt were flying in, but I was undecided on whether I should fly or take the train. Funnily, the domestic flights in Japan are incredibly cheap, with the shinkansen (bullet train) tickets being nearly double their price. However, to get to Oita Airport, I would need to drive two hours (since there is no train station in that town), drop off my car in parking, get on the plane to an airport outside of Osaka, then take the train to Kyoto from there. If I took the train, I’d be in Kyoto within four hours with only two transfers. In the end, it was decided for me. The planes filled up since I waited too long to book my ticket, so shinkansen it was!

I packed up all my stuff on Wednesday night and I was ready for my Thursday travel day!

Thursday

Thursday was quite a relaxing morning despite my typical nerves that come with trying anything new. Since I live pretty far into the Japanese countryside, I first needed to take a local train to Oita City. Unfortunately, the shinkansen line doesn’t come through Oita at all. On Kyushu, it only extends through the west side, running down to Kagoshima. That meant that I had to first take a train to the closest meeting point, which for me, is Kitakyushu in Fukuoka.

I had taken the train to Kokura (a ward of Kitakyushu) before, but the transfer to the shinkansen made me a little nervous. Kokura Station is huge…not necessarily Shinjuku Station huge, but bigger than the train stations I’m used. However, I gave myself a little pep talk, made sure everything in my apartment was ready for my few days away, then rolled my little suitcase down to the train station.

Since I had reserved tickets, I picked them up at the station, then waited for my train. It was already a lot less stressful since I didn’t have to grab my tickets from the busy ticket counter in Oita Station. This was the easiest part of my trip and I soon arrived in Oita Station with enough time to relax and grab a coffee before my next train.

My first mistake was that I went to the wrong platform for the train to Kokura. I stupidly looked at the number of train cars rather than the platform number. I saw a very obviously local train waiting for me at the platform and thought “…this isn’t right”. I headed back to the main hall, realized my mistake, and raced to the proper platform within five minutes of the train leaving. That is the latest I’ve ever been for a train since I usually like to be ten minutes early, just in case. The ride to Kokura is about an hour and a half long. I mainly stared out the window, doing my best not to fall asleep.

Once I arrived in Kokura, I took my time to make sure that I go to the right place – ensuring that I don’t go to the wrong platform. I had booked a trip that had about a half-hour transfer since I felt I would need more time than the ten to fifteen minutes that most transfers offer. I really did not need a half-hour. It took me five minutes to get off the train and find where I had to be.

The shinkansen platform was very easy to navigate. There were multiple signs pointing out which platform the train will be at in both Japanese and English. On the platform, there are also signs showing you where the cars of the train will end up, as well as which seat numbers should be entering through the front or back of the train car. It was all definitely a lot easier to figure out than I had initially thought. As for the actual train ride, it was great! I definitely think that it’s something to experience when you go to Japan. The ride to Kyoto was about two and a half hours long. It was a relatively empty train until I reached Hiroshima since there’s a bit of a hub within the Hiroshima-Osaka-Kyoto area.

When I arrived at Kyoto Station, my first task was the find Ethan. He had been the first of our group to arrive in Kyoto, and since Kasey and Matt would be joining us later that evening, we decided to stick around the station and grab dinner. Eventually we found each other, shoved our bags into a rentable locker, and found a place to eat.

Unfortunately, we soon got word from Kasey that she and Matt were have difficulties at the Osaka train station since it was so busy. Ethan and I ventured around the train station a bit more and got a few drinks at an izakaya. Eventually, since we were both cold and tired, we made our way to the hostel to get settled before Kasey and Matt met us there.

After a half hour walk, we finally got there and I used my broken Japanese to find our room. From there, we just relaxed. At around nine-thirty, Kasey and Matt showed up and gave us the rundown of how insanely busy the train station in Osaka had been. In that moment, I was really glad that I had opted to take the shinkansen straight to Kyoto.

We did the typical tourist thing and grabbed a late dinner/snack at McDonalds, then knocked out for the next day.

Friday

Friday was probably our busiest day. We woke up around 8am so that we could all get ready without missing the breakfast that the hostel provided. Our first stop would be a shop in Gion called Waraku, where we would rent some kimonos for the day.

It was about a half hour walk to the shop and we set off about forty minutes before our reservation time. At first, we started off with strong navigation, then Google Maps started playing games with the small, windy backroads of the city. This is something I’ve noticed become a little difficult living in Japan: sometimes there are little alleyways that really don’t look like driveable roads, but then you see a car coming down one. Japan also doesn’t have a grid system like Canada does when it comes to roads and buildings. Everything is on a diagonal and so many things are tucked into random corners. Which brings me to the second navigational issue we had: we could not – for the life of us – find the store.

Google took us to the address, and we were in the middle of a random side street. There was a little kimono shop, but when we went inside and I showed the workers our reservation, they let us know that we were in the wrong shop. With many apologies, we left the store and paused outside to get our footing.

Initially, I thought that I had possibly looked up the wrong address to Waraku since there are multiple locations in Kyoto, but after checking again, it was the correct one. Time was ticking down to our reservation and in a somewhat panic, Matt and Kasey had the address typed into both Apple and Google Maps while I was on the store’s website, trying to match the pictures they provide to the area around us.

We walked up and down the main street in Gion twice, not finding anything, and it was time for our reservation. I mustered up every ounce of courage that I could find to do something I had been dreading for the past twenty minutes…I called the store. It’s hard to understand Japanese with a person in front of you, it’s so much harder trying to speak it over the phone. Luckily, the woman working was extremely kind, so in a mix of broken Japanese and broken English, we were able to push back our reservation by a few minutes.

After the call, we set off again to find this place. I was staring at the picture on my phone, trying to make sense of where we were, when Matt led us down the same street we had arrived at. We were about to give up when one of the pictures on the website finally matched up with an area to the right of where Matt had taken us. The store ended up being down a somewhat sketchy alleyway with the smallest sign hanging over a doorway.

Everything went smoothly after we made sure that we were in the correct place. It took us about forty minutes to get ready, then we were out on the street in our kimonos. We set off for Yasaka Shrine which was only up the street. We stayed there for about two hours, taking photos and exploring the relatively large shrine. Once we were done, we returned the kimonos and focused on finding a place for lunch.

We ate at a really great udon placed located down another strange alley. We took our time and relaxed since we were already pretty drained from the exciting morning. The food did us well and we did a little more walking around the main street in Gion until we ended up in a nice omiyage (souvenir)-type shop that also sold ice cream and dango. I had been really excited to try dango since many of my coworkers said that it’s one of the things that Kyoto is known for. Dango is a Japanese sweet dumpling made with rice flour and usually served with some kind of sweetener, like a sauce or red bean paste.

Unfortunately, the dango was not a favourite among us. It was regular, unflavoured dumplings with a sweet sauce poured over it. Us as a group didn’t really mind the dumpling itself or the texture – especially me because I love that chewy texture – but I just didn't have a taste for the sauce. I’m not exactly sure what type of sauce it was, but I think it was along the lines of a sweet soy sauce glaze.

The matcha ice cream that we all got, however, was an absolute fan favourite!

We went for one final walk before returning to the hostel; it was finally rest time for the group of 20-something year olds. After some social media scrolling, I ended up joining Kasey on her bed for some much-needed girl-talk – which I’m sure the guys also loved listening to. We then started to plan our night since we really wanted to go to a club. We had gotten suggestions on where to go but ultimately decided on Kitsune Kyoto, a very popular “foreigner-friendly” / “well-known by foreigners” club. So, in preparation, we hit up a konbini to grab some dinner and drinks, ate at the hostel, and then got ready.

After our clubbing experience, we were wiped.

Saturday

The next morning, Kasey had booked us to take part in a traditional tea ceremony, so after three hours of sleep, we were up and rushing to get back to Gion ridiculously tired and somewhat hungover. This was also a great combination with the entirely uphill route that we took to the tea house. We made it with a few seconds to spare and quickly got settled for the ceremony to start. It was a very beautiful experience, and we were treated to both the historical and contemporary importance of tea ceremonies in Japan.

It was a rather slow day due to the previous night’s choices, but it was still a really nice time. We ate lunch at a small, mom and pop’s type restaurant which served incredible karaage (Japanese fried chicken), relaxed a little more, and then went to explore Kiyomizu-dera.

Kiyomizu-dera is one of the most famous temples in Kyoto, so the place was packed! There were so many people exploring the area that it was actually a little overwhelming at times.

Our only plans for Saturday had been the tea ceremony and going to a temple illumination that night, so the rest of the time was incredibly available to whatever we wanted to do. And at that point, we really wanted to take a nap.

After our collective nap time, we finalized our plans for that evening. We decided that before going to the temple, we wanted to hit up a maid café. I had never been to one before, but I had heard about them a lot. We found a couple places on Google and finally settled on one that was in the general area of where we wanted to go anyway. We did a little walking, hopped on a bus – which we literally could have been doing the whole time and saved our legs from the pain of walking – and arrived at the café.

It was a really cute time. The women working there were very nice and kind. The café was decorated in a bunch of bright colours and it definitely lifted our spirits after a bit of a tiring day. We ate our dinner and got some souvenir photos taken to finish up our time.

We started the walk to Kodai-ji, another temple that was illuminated that night. On a sidenote, Japanese people tend to refer to places being ‘lit up’ as ‘illuminations’ because the Japanese word for these types of things is ‘イルミネーション (irumineshon)’, basically the exact same word in English. However, the Japanese meaning simply refers to places that are decorated with lights. Take, for example, putting Christmas lights up around your house, your house will then have ‘illuminations’.

The illuminated temple was beautiful. It was quite late, and getting rather cold, but it was a perfect autumn night. There were many displays holding various historical artifacts along with the history of how the temple came to be.

When we finished about an hour later, it was time to return to the hostel so that we could pack up for the next day.

Reflections

The trip was an overall pleasant experience. I really enjoyed the activities that we partook in! I think we got our fair share of both traditional culture and pop culture experiences while in Kyoto. Despite being happy to return home when I did, I think I would have enjoyed a few more days to really explore the city. I wish I could speak for the entirety of Kyoto when I share how beautiful it was, but as you’ve read, we really only got to spend time in the Gion area. We had a relatively packed itinerary that was accompanied by lots of walking and impromptu/random sightseeing. I would definitely go again to focus on destinations a little more on the outskirts of the city.

However, I am aware that I live in Japan. It’s much easier for me to return to Kyoto than it would be for someone who is only traveling around Japan for a week. In that sense, I think that staying in Gion and trying all the “touristy” things, like wearing a kimono and taking part in a tea ceremony, are wonderful ways to experience and appreciate Japanese culture.