We started off the morning with a walk up the street to the McDonald's near palace gardens. While getting in line to get our McWhatever breakfast sandwiches there was an accident involving a scooter and a car in the intersection right out in front of the restaurant. I am not sure what happened, I only heard the sounds first then gave a basic, "Oh crap," though a bit stronger language when I saw the person from the scooter lying under the bumper of the car. Not to be a vulture I only took one picture. It wasn't long before the police and ambulance arrived and they took the person from the scooter away on a backboard with head immobilized. They didn't move him or her until the ambulance came. I don't recall seeing a helmet so I figured concussion at the least. The person was wearing a purple running suit so it is easy to think female but I never could tell for sure. My guess on the accident is the scooter was trying to cut up to the front of the line like they all do and then the light turned and the driver of the car started just as the scooter was doing that. Only a guess but it was a fairly loud crunching sound.
After breakfast we walked into the garden grounds and saw what we could before the Imperial Palace tour started. The cherry blossoms are more starting to bud here than they were in Tokyo which was a bit further along. The grounds are very large and there is a lot of walking to get through it. At 9:50 we got up to the palace and took the tour which lasted a bit over an hour. The grounds are all where the palaces stood but of course everything was burned at some point or another so everything is replacement along the way. Visually this tour was much nicer than the Tokyo Imperial Palace tour because the buildings are all still done in the older styles. The Tokyo palace buildings look like concrete bunkers. The tour was conducted in English and the lot of us on the tour were gaijin of some format. I get the impression a fair number of them did not understand English because they did absolutely nothing to pay attention to the guide. They were a very noisy lot but fortunately the majority of them did not push up to her so those of us who wanted to hear what she had to say could get up there and hear her easier. The tour definitely could have benefited from the little security guy from the Tokyo tour. There was almost no attempt to stay with the guide though at least no one tried to jump any barriers. The grounds are very nice and I only regret that the weather was more overcast because I am sure the pictures are not going to be as vibrant as I would like. Still we didn't get completely rained out. I realize now that they have another palace on the grounds, the Sento Palace that I did not book a tour for. Unfortunately, I didn't realize there would be another palace in the same city, heck in the same garden park. I told the others I would try to book it but on getting back to the room later in the day I have found it is booked solid until July so we will have to come back to Kyoto at another time to do it. Oh well, live and learn. A point where my research failed me.
After the tour we finished off the gardens then headed to subway and rode into Kyoto Station to have lunch. My thoughts were there would be a lot of places to choose from in a small area and I was indeed correct. We let Ronni choose and she choose Mano's Cafe because she liked the desserts that were showing in the storefront. Indeed the place really seemed to be more a dessert place than a restaurant but they had some pizza, pasta and sandwiches. Ronni and I each got a Pizza Margherita and Brien got the Mixed Sandwich which appeared to be a combination ham/egg salad/ salami/ cucumber/ who knows what else sandwich. She tried a Yuzu Soda which seemed like a make it yourself Fresca. I had a coffee float which was iced coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and Brien had a Mixed Fruit float or something that was like a sorbet shake. The food was reasonable but messy and they had not napkins. We had to use the hand towel from the beginning of the meal to clean up. For dessert I had a cafe American and a cherry blossom chiffon cake. Brien had a carmel chiffon cake and Ronni had a berry berry cake which was a yellow cake with cream icing and berries. It was all decent food though a tad pricey by the end.
After lunch we walked around the mall of the station and found the Higashi Temple along the way and looked in on that. It appeared there was a large Buddhist rite going on in the temple and a lot of people were kneeled and watching it. We had to take off our shoes to go near the temple. Along the way we found a gallery that was apparently heated by the fires of hell and got worse the lower floor you got. We had to exit quickly or we would have burst into flames. The temple has a large construction around it. I am not sure if it is for protection or because they are rennovating it. It does give it a very strange look.
After the temple we climbed back into the subway and headed to the hotel where I dropped them off then walked to scout out Hijojo Castle and just the vicinity in general. I walkedboht up and down the street going west to east. The castle isn't far from our hotel and will cost 600 yen to get in. Not bad. Kyoto is obviously not gigantic in size and an active walker would not really even need to use public transport to get around it felt. The castle is to the west and I walked to that then went down the main street to our east until what looked like the end major intersection then turned back and went to a small market and bought a couple beers and a few snacks then headed back to the room. I cracked one of the beers when I got in and started writing this so I wouldn't have to get it all done just before bed. I decided that the cheesy snacks I bought last night work really well with beer though. I called their room to tell them to let me know when they wanted to go to dinner.
Ronni didn't call until about quarter to 7 to say that they weren't getting dinner and I checked out the window and it looked seriously rainy so I decided to just hit the Chinese restaurant that i part of the hotel. I had a shredded beef with green pepper dish that also had mushrooms and noodles in it and a bowl of white rice rounded out with a huge mug of Asahi beer. It was all very tasty and enjoyable. I was very happy with the quality of the food. Ithink I fell in love with the waitress but she is most probably jailbait. In any event she was incredibly attractive and very sweet. As with all Japanese women it is impossible to tell age unless they are obviously old.
After dinner I headed back upstair, caught some TV and finished up this.
The pictures for day 5 can be found here.
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