Kyoto
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Our first full day in Japan we staggered out of our hotel with our umbrellas towards the Heian Shrine, which was quite near our hotel. Click Here to see a short video clip of our first walk in Japan.  We were soon approached by a group of Japanese middle-school children who had an assignment to find a westerner and ask them some questions in English. I had read in a guidebook that this might happen and thus was not surprised. Tony still talks about this first encounter in Japan as a highlight of the trip. "When did you arrive in Japan?" (Yesterday). "How long have you been in Japan?" (1 day). "Have you eaten Japanese food?" (Yes). "What did you eat?" I tried to explain that I had had this so-called Japanese omelet at the hotel, but then gave up and just said "Sushi", which although we had not seen in Japan I had certainly eaten plenty of in the weeks preparing for my trip.Click Here to see a short video clip of these students.

That first day it was raining off and on. We had brought lightweight parkas, and as it turned out because of the heat we soon took them off and never wore them again on the trip.

More or less by chance, not knowing what would be interesting to see, we purchased tickets to admit us to the gardens behind the shrine buildings. I don't even know what these gardens are called (note to self!) but I understand they are quite famous and, again, as it turns out were probably the most beautiful gardens we were to see on our entire trip.

After touring these gardens behind the Heian Shrine we walked briefly through a martial arts center to see if we might happen to find some Sumo Wrestlers practicing (we didn't, but we did see some elderly amateur archers shooting targets) and then to some kind of "craft center" that was a five-story building of souvenir shops. It was quite reminiscent of souvenir shops in San Francisco's Chinatown. Tony saw a lot of interesting souvenirs that he just had to have; it was probably on this occasion that I began the refrain "wait 'til we get to Tokyo" as I didn't want to load ourselves down with samurai swords, t-shirts, and headbands at the start of our trip.

Our second full day in Kyoto we took the subway from our hotel two stops to mid-town Kyoto. I remember thinking that each day we should try something new, venturing out into this strange world. Our goal that morning was to find a new umbrella for Tony, for although we had brought his umbrella it was falling apart. Before we could buy him a new one however we were caught in a downpour.

We took cover from the rain beneath a shopping arcade in Kyoto (note to self: look this up). That morning we stopped in several video game parlors to begin what became an ongoing theme of our trip.

We then took  the "number 59 bus" (I remember this for some reason) to Kinkakuju Temple, the famous "Golden Pavilion".

After walking by Kinkakuju Temple, we managed to find our way to the famous Ryoanji Temple, which to my mind has the most famous tourist attraction in Japan: the seascape rock garden. I must say that although it was not particularly crowded when we were there, the effect is not as moving as I had expected, perhaps because my expectations we so high. Most photographs I have seen of the seascape are at ground-level, and yet you view the garden from a platform a few feet above the sand. To the right of the rock garden there is a marvelous moss garden, shown in the second photograph below. 

People ask me all the time, Tom, what is there to see in Kyoto. I've given this quite a bit of thought, and I think the most interesting thing to do in Kyoto is go to the top of the Isetan department store at the train station, and then walk down the exterior staircase into the station itself. The interior looks exactly like the inside of the death star in the first Star Wars movie. Here is a series of photos taken at the Kyoto train station. Click on any of these for a larger image:

One night in Kyoto we went to eat at what turned out to be a nice Italian Restaurant. Tony had carbonara. I forget what pasta I had but I drank a bottle of Trebbiano d'Abbruzi. As we were leaving the restaurant I reached down into the depths of my memory to retrieve the word "delicious" in Japanese, and commented to the waiter hesitantly, "oishi desita". It was a very odd sensation to recall this word after so many years; throughout the trip it felt as though there were something magical about communicating in Japanese - exactly as though we were establishing contact with a civilization from outer space. I have since learned that what I said was ungrammatical, and although I knew that "oishikatta desu" was another way of saying "it was delicious" I did not recall that "oishi desita" was incorrect.

After dinner I took a picture of Tony standing outside the restaurant. Note the models of the food on display on the sidewalk (we eventually bought a plastic plate of pasta with a fork suspended above it when we went shopping in Tokyo). Walking down the street, I took a quick shot inside McDonald's, where we had had lunch that day. Click on any of the following images for a larger view... (the fourth image shows the banks of the river at night in downtown Kyoto.)

We stayed at the (old) Miyako in Kyoto because the descriptions reminded me of the Cavallieri di Hilton in Rome where Tony and I had stayed a couple of years ago: a large hotel with a pool and private grounds for running around.  The photograph at left is actually a scan of a pre-paid telephone card that I bought from a machine at the hotel and used throughout the trip.

Our room at the Old Miyako cost about $180/night. For some reason, hotel rooms in Japan seemed to be one of the few relative bargains we found on the trip.  One feature of this room was a Panasonic toilet that doubled as a bidet at the touch of a button.

In retrospect I think it would have been better to stay at hotel closer to the center of town, like the New Miyako, because there really wasn't much to see near our hotel (proximity to restaurants, shops, and video game parlors would have been a hit with Tony). Incidentally I made our reservations at the Miyako and at the Holiday Inn in Tokyo using Microsoft Expedia (www.expedia.com).