Gates, gardens, and castles in Kyoto

Today, we started by taking the train to Inari to see the shrine there. The big feature of this shrine is lots and lots of orange gates. People buy them for good luck, with the bigger gates costing more money. The gates go most of the way up a mountain, and we hiked to the end of the gates, about 700ft up. There was no view at the top, just lots of orange gates, but it was a really cool place.

After Inari, we took the train back and went to the Arashiyama neighborhood of Kyoto. We once again tried to find a lunch spot recommended in our guide book and failed. The difficulty with addresses is really annoying here, and we have now pretty much given up on trying to find specific restaurants. We had lunch at a random spot, then visited Tenryu-ji Temple. This temple was famous for its zen gardens. The temple lead right to a bamboo grove. The grove was cool, but not as impressive as we were expecting. The bamboo at Kodai-ji had been better, but smaller. From the grove, we walked to a nearby park, Kameyama-koen, for a leisurely stroll that lead to the bank of a river. We walked along the river before heading back to the train for central Kyoto.

Our last sight for the day was Nijō Castle (or Nijō-jō since jō means castle in Japanese). It was a huge castle from the shogun period, surrounded by a large moat, right in the center of the city. We got there just in time to see the palace inside. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. It had giant rooms separated by sliding doors, and in many ways reminded us of a modern day conference center (but with tatami mats and beautiful silk paintings). After a tour of the palace, we walked around the grounds, which had nice gardens and more old buildings. By the end of our castle visit, we were exhausted, and caught a bus back to our hotel. Unfortunately, it was rush hour, so the bus was packed and there was lots of traffic. Once we made it back to our room, we took a much needed break before heading to dinner.

For dinner, we headed to the Kyoto train station. That's right, fine dining in a train station. The station is 11 stories high and includes many restaurants, a department store about the size of Bloomingdale's in New York, a supermarket, and tons of little shops. Oh yeah, and also stations for three different rail/subway systems and a bus depot. It's crazy. Dinner was standard Japanese fare: lots of little side dishes with rice, miso soup, and a main dish. After dinner, we browsed the department store and checked out the various shops. We were shocked by all the kids stuff in the department store, especially the shoes. The selection was amazing; way better than what we have in the States. If the prices had only been reasonable (we pretty much only buy kids shoes on sale), Penelope would have wound up with at least one pair of cool new shoes, but we resisted. Instead, we went home and went to sleep.