Today I had intended for us to go to Hiroshima but with the 8am start and no prepurchased tickets the earliest non-smoking train cars we could have gotten were at 11am and that would have cost us a non-green car ride to Shin-Osaka. That would have gotten us to Hiroshima at 1:30pm or so. We gathered those tickets and funda Doutour for breakfast and to regroup. I had a cheese toast which was basically an open faced grilled cheese sandwich along with a coffee. Brien ended up with what turned out to be a tuna melt for all intents and purposes and Ronni bought a packaged pastry of some sort. While eating we chatted about the day and Hiroshima and we decided that it would be better to try to do Hiroshima on Saturday if we could get earlier trains in and we would try to get tickets back with the idea that we could always exchange to earlier. With the rail pass anything we do does not cost us extra money.
After deciding to go to Hiroshima tomorrow we went back to the ticket office and traded our tickets for 8:20am rides on Saturday. We also gathered return tickets for around 5pm. From there we found the city bus office and bought an all day pass then took the bus to Kinkakuji Temple which is the Golden Pavillion. It is a temple that is covered completely in gold leaf on the upper portions. The bus ride took a while to get there but deposited us fairly much right on top of the grounds. We bought our way in and took the tour which does not have you going inside the pavillion. Instead it is a tour of the grounds with several very spectacular views of the temple s well as a nicely sculpted landscape garden all around the grounds. I think the visit was moderately short as we did not have anything to go inside and see.
After we finished Kinkakuji, Ronni wanted to Ryoanji Temple which has a zen garden in it. It is in the same vicinity as Kinkakuji but took probably a 25 minute walk to get to. The distances on the map seem to be sort of made up with a handwave on the stuff we had. It certainly seemed further than the maps made it look. This also was a mainly outdoors sort of visit. You do go into the temple to see the zen garden but really you are on the wooden floorboards of the external halls of the buildings. They require you to take your shoes off. I am not very zen or mystical or the like so I don't see much with the zen garden rocks. I assume someone more in tune with that sort of thing will make more of it than I did. All I saw was a few rocks set up on a raked gravel yard. The rest of the grounds were also dedicated to landscape gardens and the views were often very nice if only we had more sun at that point in the day. Still it was a nice visit.
After the Ryoanji Temple we walked back to the main road for about 10 minutes and got lunch at the Jolly Pasta. It was next door to a Big Boy which actually made me laugh when I saw it. The Jolly Pasta did not have any English menus. Only pictures. We all ordered what we hoped we wanted based on the pictures. I ended up with a spaghetti with beef strips, hot dog strips and bacon strips in a mildly spicy tomato sauce. The menu showed a little pepper to say it was hot but I didn't really find much spice in it. The taste of the food was good though. I rounded that out with a glass of red wine and Ronni bought some garlic toast which I had one of. It was obviously a local family type restaurant as there were many unbridled children running amok in the place while we ate at various times. As a note this was a place that had both smoking and non-smoking sections and there were some smokers there but it really does not seem as though the numbers of smokers we are seeing this time around are quite as high as 2 1/2 years ago. People are obviously still smoking but it doesn't seem as obtrusive at this point.
After lunch we took the bus to Hijo Eki-mae which means Hijo Station. Unfortunately Hijo Station is a couple blocks away from Hijo Castle but the ride was shorter than walking the whole way by far and we couldn't have gotten closer from what I could tell on the returning towards city center routes where we were. I believe Hijo Castle was occupied by the Shogun when the Emperor moved to the palace that we had already visited. The grounds of the castle are huge and it appears the place had not been destroyed in recent years so a lot of it is original. The castle is low and sprawling rather than tall with turrets like most of the other Japanese castles we have visited. Entering the castle again required the removal of shoes. There were several bus tour type things going on inside the castle and they made the navigation of the building somewhat unpleasant. I will never be a fan of large slow moving crowds. Especially ones that appear to do their best to intentionally get in your way. At a point I saw an opening I pushed ahead of the two tours that were holding us up so I could get some breathing space. I managed to see what I wanted to see but keep ahead of them the rest of the time. I had to wait for Ronni and Brien to get out because though Brien also pushed forward he opted o wait for her at a point in the building. After the castle innards we toured the grounds outside which got to a wall top at one point which had a nice view of the grounds as well as cherry tree garden that was starting to get into better bloom. To me it looks like the whiter cherry blossoms start earlier than the pinker ones. We visited the gift shop and I bought my first magnets of the tip. Unfortunately the Imperial Palace again did not have magnets. But I was able to find nice ones for Kinkakuji and Hijo Castle.
As the day went on the weather started to clear up so that we were occasionally getting more sun but unfortunately a cooler breeze also picked up to go along with the sun sort of canceling out some of the enjoyment. Still the weather for the next couple days is supposed to be nicer so perhaps it will be better for pictures.
After Hijo Castle we headed back to the room for a rest before dinner. I again used the time to start this up so I wouldn't have to rush it in before bed time. We will need to be at the train station no later than 8:00am I bet to make sure we don't miss our train out t Hiroshima, so getting to bed earlier would be better overall.
They called me a little after 6pm and we walked down the street and found an arcade style mall around the corner. There was a sign board for food for a Cafe Salon. The board showed a burger though when we got into the restaurant I suspect it may have been a lunch menu board or something. They had no English on the menus. Brien and Ronni both chose the very obvious steak and I chose something not being certain what it was. It turned out to be either a pork, chicken or maybe rat curry that was very tasty and mildly spicy though it smelled stronger than it tasted on the spice level. With a drink menu that only showed wines and frou frou drinks Brien and Ronni stuck with the house water and I ordered a coffee which came after the meal was done. The food was good to me and Brien and Ronni both ate theirs so it couldn't have been too bad.
After dinner we foraged a convenience store for snacks for Ronni to have in the morning because we would likely fail to get breakfast with our 8:20 departure for Hiroshima. I took advantage to buy a couple beers for the room and a bag of peanuts to go with them. I also managed to find a bag of the blueberry hard candies I had from the last trip and bought those too. From there it was a short walk back to he hotel to settle in for the night.
As an aside, it is obvious that Kyoto is a muh smaller city than Tokyo. It feels possible to walk from one end to the other though I am sure it would be a long walk. I walked most of west to east and it was a reasonable amount of time solo. The city is longer north to south than west to east and that might be where its size might show. Even with it being an obvious tourist city it definitely feels more run down and lower wealth level than Tokyo. The streets and sidewalks are all well maintained, don't get me wrong, but the buildings and houses look a bit older and the laundry hanging in the balconies is different from Tokyo. The people seem to have their own look to. Less business suits and more regular clothing. The kids also seem to be a touch less stylish but that's a guess because even when I was that age I was never up on fashion.
I've also watched a couple baseball games on TV now and I think that they take even longer than the ones in the US which is mainly bad because they don't have the commercial breaks in between innings. So that means it is just taking a long time by nature. There are a significant number of westerners on their teams mainly from the US and the Dominecan Republic as far as I can tell. I assume they are guys that would never make it in MLB. I should also mention there is a big todo in sumo about an Estonian wrestler who has attained the rank of Yokozuna, which is grand master. That means he's won a lot of high ranked matches. I believe it is the first non-Hawaiian westerner to make it it to that rank. He has blond hair. I cannot tell if they are treating him with respect or not but he is certainly a gigantic media curiosity right now. It appears he has celebrity status. Looking at bit of footage of his matches on the news he seemed to be very good at technique along with having some good size.
Lastly, with his various sets of injuries, Brien has decided to make this a week long trip for himself instead of two. I am sorry to see him go but if he is going to be too damaged to go on maybe it is for the best. We'll help him get out of Kyoto on Sunday where he'll get to Tokyo then on to Narita and fly back to Boston on the same flight set we'll be taking a week later. He will be visting Hiroshima tomorrow with us though, he says.
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