Japan – Day 6 – Finalising Kyoto and our hotel bookings

December 20, 2015

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As mentioned earlier we had recently discovered that we actually did not have a hotel booking for our fourth night in Kyoto and came to the conclusions that this was indeed intentional. The intention being that we would make a decision about how long our stay in Kyoto would be as it wasn’t clear whether we should spend a full four nights there or just three. As it turned out we had forgotten this and only realised on our second last night. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for us at this point there weren’t any further reservations available at the Capsule Ryokan hotel. This forced us to make a proper decision (fortunate) and for which we decided that we would shorten our stay in Kyoto and spend a night in Osaka. Why Osaka, well it’s a full 14 minutes away on the Shinkansen which makes it a quick trip as it’s a large city with much fresh seafood eating to be had.

We decided that we would be best spending the morning in Kyoto and then head to Osaka in the afternoon. This gave us enough time to see the markets in Kyoto, Toji Temple as well as the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine, the best thing to do in Kyoto apparently. We find Trip advisor a little spurious, as to the eye, most of these temples and shrines are wonderful, but it would be hard to say one is better than another, but Tripadvisor can differentiate. This is we believe because at some point, like gravity clinging to particles of dust forming a planet, a user (possibly bogus) give a location a great review, then as someone reads it and sees that it’s great, goes to the location and then because it’s apparently great has a great time and reports back that it’s great. This progression continues endlessly until all of a sudden one shrine for no reason is much more interesting than another. We think the best thing to do would actually be to read up on some particular facet of Japanese culture which you most liked/ found interesting/ connected with, then based on that see what you like. The problem with trying to see everything is that it becomes one continuous blur of activity without much connection. While there is nothing wrong with this it does tend to remove the level of awe and make the trip more like a school excursion. However if you holiday wish is just to name drop later about places you’ve been then trip advisor the crap out of the place and make sure you get bus passes or rent a bike and avoid spending more than an hour at each location as there are a lot of them. Rant complete.

Heading from the hotel to the station we put our bags into a locker (the large 600 Yen locker which can hold two 40 litre backpacks) and headed for the Nishiki Markets. To get to the Nishiki Market you need to catch the 4, 5, 17 or 205 bus from the Kyoto station and then hop off at Shijo Kawaramachi bus stop (again thanks to the Capsule Ryokan for this information). The shopping district you arrive in at the bus station is massive but very western, walking north from Shijio street you will find a narrow street which is full of food stalls and ‘Japanese edibles’ as Google describes. This is the Nishiki Markets (to the best of our understanding) and runs for about a kilometre or so (I’ve put in a link to Street view here so you can actually see the street with a reference to it’s location, to enter go to here walk north and then left into the old Nishiki markets).

We wandered through the Nishiki Markets and looked at the food (cooked, prepared for consumption or fresh for you to cook later) and knives, which seem to be the main things as well as the occasional sochu or sake seller. We couldn’t bring ourselves to buy a knife which seems to be the thing to do, they look sharp but we have a great set of global knives at home so it needed to be something seriously special to warrant it. After a bit of eating and some coffee from a street vendor we headed back to Kyoto station on the 205 bus. This bus also took us conveniently fairly close to the Toji temple as it’s last stop and the bus driver was a lovely fellow who helped direct us in the right direction as we were the only people on the bus.

Toji temple was another peaceful place and we spent about an hour walking through the grounds enjoying what appeared to be the last of the autumn leaves, the gardens and some koi swimming in the water. The place was largely un-touristed which was great and made for a more individual experience unlike Kiyomizo the previous day. The two structures housing some Buddhist artefacts were also interesting and the sheer size of the wooden beams supporting the building was quite amazing. Since we’ve travelled in Japan we haven’t seen enormous trees so where these came from is something to ponder.

Finishing up at the Toji temple and heading back to Kyoto station was wear we made our mistake, don’t take your luggage out before going to Fushimi Inari, there are no lockers at the station where the shrine is so if you take your bags out and intend to leave them there you’ll be doing the same as us and taking the walk through the Torii with your backpacks. Not only this but it’s not easy to get to Osaka on the line that takes you to Fushimi Inari station and your are best to return to Kyoto station (as we realised when reading the station map for Kyoto/ Nara that the Fushimi Inari station). Therefore, just leave your bags in Kyoto station if you’re doing the same as us and pick them up on the way back as you head toward either Shin-Osaka on the Shikansen or Osaka station if on a JR line.

Fushimi Inari – trip advisors top thing to do in Kyoto-Nara area. Notable as commented by many users as ‘orange’. What we can tell you in with large backpacks and crowds of thousands this is not an entirely peaceful experience, but we can certainly say that it’s a lovely shrine and more interactive than others. One advantage of backpacks if that when you stop it’s hard for people to get past and thus you can take a photo of a relatively empty set of Torii. After a walk through the Torii we headed back to Kyoto station and then to Shin-Osaka, then the metro to hotel Mystays in Osaka.

The Osaka metro while relatively easy to navigate at 4pm in the afternoon would be a nightmare with backpacks in peak hour (apparently 5-7pm). Walking to our hotel we noticed several posters indicating Christmas lights as well as a boutique craft beer house, if we incorporated that, sushi and a trip to the Osaka sky deck we’d have a packed evening. Unloading the packs in the hotel we headed straight for the main eating street of an unknown name but in Botonbori in Osaka. We initially wanted to go to a crab place as it seemed to be popular but it turned out that its line was about 50 strong and waiting that amount of time seemed irresponsible to our stomachs. Instead we wandered a little further down to Daiki Suisan sushi which had a sizeable line of what looked like non-tourists but not quite hours worth of waiting. It wasn’t quite the life changing sushi we were after but it was definitely fresh and not too pricey. After about thirteen plates we headed for christmas lights and the skytower. The lights were quite lovely and walking together through another country in Christmas observing their sense of festivism was great, our only issue was that when we decided it was about time to head for the sky tower we located the wrong building, then when working out where the building really was it was too late to enter (closes at 10pm) and we headed back to Mystays with a brief drop in at the craft beer cafe Harenohi, they only have American style beers which were nice but the gyoza was the winner … Maybe next time we’ll find a craft beer place in Japan that brews Japanese craft beers.