Autumn is the busiest season in Kyoto besides Spring (cherry blossom season). With crowds in full swing at all the hot spots, it can feel like a commercial theme park at times. The key is to begin your day early.
From the elusive world of geishas and Edo era administrative headquarters with secret stairs and trap doors to the serenity of bamboo groves, shrines and temples, its beauty permeates the arteries throughout the city.
Kyoto is crowded for many reasons. Keen marketing aside, you’ll see why in my photo descriptions below.
If you want to get greedy and not share the thousand tori gates with the hordes at Fushimi Inari Shrine complex, 7:30am is a good time to arrive.
Fushimi Inari Shrine
Path to the shrines
Kinkakuji temple (Golden Pavillion) is unique. The top 2 levels are covered in gold leaf. This is as close as you can get to it but the entire grounds are beautiful and has paths and shrines where you can rid some of your many coins weighing you down.
We made a small kitchen/utility knife starting from the forging and shaping process (above), which takes the longest. Then comes the hardening, quenching, sharpening, then polishing. Our instructor is one of the few certified samurai sword makers in Japan using traditional methods, taking months to complete. The knives we made took about 6 hours.
The hardening and quenching process is the most difficult process due to the precise heat, timing and cooling required. He gave us the option of doing this ourselves with his guidance, but none of us wanted to screw this up so we asked him to do it.
Last thing was putting on a personal stamp on your piece. Gifu is the town (and prefecture) where this studio is in; about 30 min by train from Kyoto.
Nijo Jinya was used as administrative headquarters during the Edo period. High ranking dignitaries such as Daimyos will stay here as they tend to their legal business while in Kyoto, which was the capital then. "Legal business" often meant the Daimyo or other official was summoned by the Shogun or emperor for interrogations, but not always. To protect these high profilers from abductions or assassination, the building is equipped with trap doors, secret stairways, false doors and hidden lookouts throughout.
More amazing architecture. I can't remember the significance of this building, but it's adorned with many chrysanthemums, which is the symbol of the emperor.
Dress up time. Did not feel out of place since a lot of tourists do this.
I chose plum color because it was Autumn, but the print is clearly Sakura (cherry blossoms :)
These slippers have no right or left orientation so it makes our toes hurt.
She is the real deal. We were allowed to take photos and share them with family and friends, but they ask that we do not post images on social media that may identify her through facial recognition. She's 20 years old and has been featured on local TV, so she's very popular. Maikos (geisha trainees) train for about 5 years starting around age of 15 before becoming a geisha. In Kyoto, they're called geikos, and are highly sought after entertainers in their craft.
Rickshaw ride through a bamboo grove
We saw these tempura (top photo) at the market and commented how good they looked. They were fake; these (below photo) are the real ones.
Reality. Don't let Instagram photos of this popular street looking empty and blissful fool you :)
Your train journey may have multiple connections where you have to insert three or more tickets at once into the machine readers, in no particular order. These station readers know which tickets to keep and which tickets to spit back out to you for your next connection.
Adopted these lil puppies from the department store's basement food hall.
We considered going to the November sumo tournament in Fukuoka, but it was too far from Kyoto for a day trip so we watched it on the iPad with our favorite local beer.
I've developed a slight obsession with lotus root while in Japan.
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