Kyoto a gogo

Ok, so it was a long day, but totally worth it. Some things you might want to know... we are both waking up at 4:30 am, and we want to hop in bed for sleep at about 9:00 pm at the latest. We feel that we are getting around the town well, despite our inabiltiy to speak Japanese. We have our phrase book, dictionary and translator, but it doesn't always solve the problem. We have depended on the good will of our fellow man to get us through confusion from time to time. Its amazing how much you can accomplish just by paying attention, though. As far as eating goes... anyone of you that really knows me, knows that I am pretty picky. The good news is that there isn't a great deal of "white slimy food" over here... but the bad news is that I can't really decipher what is what... so that leaves me reluctant to try really unknown items. Brian is enjoying just about everything he eats- he likes Haggis from Scotland, after all. We will hope that Ivy follows in Brian's food footsteps!

So since we were up at 4:30, we got ready to go catch the bullet train in the central Tokyo station. We weren't sure where we were going, so we wanted a cushion of time to get us there. We were amazed that the subways were not totally crowded at 6:00 am- the stations were in fact, deserted. The only people aside from us on the subway were very hung over looking men that appeared to be on their way to work. We took two subways to get the the bullet train, and then boarded the bullet train for Kyoto.

The train ride was about 2.5 hours long, and was very comfortable. I wrote 35 postcards on the way there. They are not the most interesting postcards you will ever get... 35 is a lot of them to write. We enjoyed looking out the window at the passing scenery of the Japanese countryside. It seemed to us that there was not any discernable break in towns the whole way. Some towns were smaller than others, but there was "civilization" out the window the whole way. Some farms, factories, shrines, neighborhoods, industrial parks, high rises... a bit of everything. When we got to Kyoto, we realized that we had not planned ahead and bought any kind of a map of the city. Kyoto is a LOT bigger than we had guessed. My cousins Kim and Nashon had visited Japan a couple of years ago, and based on the notes from their trip- we thought we could figure it out. We were wrong, though. We thought we'd hop in a taxi and go to the Imperial Palace for a tour at 10:00. It's kind of a long story, and if you really want to know, I can tell you later.... but after jumping through A LOT of hoops to get there, present passports and get permission to tour the palace, in the end we skipped it to walk around town instead.

The sun was out in Kyoto-- the first time that we had seen that since we got to Japan. It was really, really hot! We did less walking in Kyoto than we've done since we got here, but we felt it more. We walked across town and found a "handmade art center". This was a 7 story building featuring all kinds of "made in Japan" goods- a good place for some touristy souvenir shopping. We are guilty of wanting to do this kind of shopping- as were all of the other tourists in town. It kind of reminded me of the "trading posts" that you find near the Grand Canyon. Whatever- we did buy a few cool things, such as Kimonos for Brian and Ivy, two wood block prints for me (!!), and a carved stamp with Ivy's name written in Kanji characters. We also had lunch there... not the best lunch in the world, but definitely one we didn't have to negotiate in a foreign language.

After we left the tourist trap, we hopped in a Taxi to head to the Gion district. The taxi driver drove us through a beautiful area that featured numerous shrines and temples, before depositing us in Gion. We walked back up the hill and explored some of these beautiful sites before doing our shopping. We are pretty convinced that we visited the same temple featured in Lost in Translation-- which was pretty cool for us. We actually went in the temple and sat for a few minutes and enjoyed the gorgeous experience. The temple was huge and full of beautifully ornate objects. We didn't really know what we were looking at, but we loved it anyway.
After leaving the temple and shrine areas, we went to the central shopping district... where we had a good time shopping for some gifts. We chose some chopsticks for Ivy at a store that sold nothing but chopsticks. One pair for when she is little, and another fancier pair (with pink rhinestones) for when she is older. We also went into a wonderful store that had all kinds of beautiful small gift items. I could have spent hours in there, deliberating over fun things to buy... Brian had to buy Ivy one more kimono outfit!

That was pretty much it! Home on the bullet train and we were tired!

Tomorow is our big day! We just got a call from Taz, confirming that we will meet Ivy at about 12:00 pm! We can't wait, and now I feel like I might throw up in anticipation...