Day 7: Nothings quite as pretty, as Kyoto in the morning.

Day 7: Kyoto

Quick Impressions: Holy shit look at those women! Are those really skirts? Nice Tori in front of that shrine. Thighs. Look at the roof on that sucker !! I have to take my shoes off Again? How do they go from school girl uniforms to this in just a couple of years. I have never seen so many people reading at the same time in my life. Sushi Go Round !! Kirin !!

We did the Kyoto Morning Tour today. All of these tours have a common element: Tight Schedule. However, the incredible niceness of the tour personal, the really futuristic bus, and the general can do attitude of everyone along the way (the guards, the ticket sellers, the people that make sure you take your shoes off and put them into the rack labeled 17 (not 18 for christs sake, 17)) makes everything must fine. If only the people who are on the tour could keep a schedule as well as the people running the tour then everything would be great.

We ran into our friends from the 3 day tour, the young Italian couple (he of the boy scout knots) from Chicago and they chatted us up again. Our first stop was a budhist temple. Since Kyoto was the Capital of japan for a few centuries, it accumulated a lot of religious centers and shrines. We went to the East Budhist temple. There is a West one just a couple of blocks away. Same sect and all, just needed more space and more big roofs. These temples consist of a massive tatami mat area (like, maybe, half the size of a football field) that faces a shrine. 3 kneeling prayers to a mat. There were two halls like that. This budhist sect was very popular because it was the first one that said that a normal person, without doing years of hard living and training, could go to heaven. Oh yeah, and monks could marry. So you can go to heaven even with a little nookie. No wonder they are so popular and powerful.

I think this one protects from Fire.

This is the oldest relic in the place

Next we visited the Shogun's house. Now, the Shogun didn't actually live in the Capitol (at that time). He lived at his place in Edo (now Tokyo). But he kept a big place in the capital so he could impress and manipulate the Emperor's minions. Because, you see, the Emperor had no real power, but he was still number 1 in the hierarchy. In fact, “Capitol” in Japanese means “Where the Emperor lives”.

The Shogun, however, was a real piece of work. His entire life seems to be built around making sure that no one kills him. What a wimp. He did have nice garden though. His garden is all rocks and bridges. Very Martial.

Oh, and one of his paranoid countermeasure contraptions was sort of cool. The floor around his Dojo was constructed with special metal devices that would squeak when people walked on them. So you couldn't sneak up on the Shogun. Well, unless you were a Ninja. Or a Sniper with a 50mm night scope.

This metal fixture and the shape of the boards above makes the sentry squeak noise.
Of course, the Ninja would be crawling under the porch, like me.

 

Last stop was the Golden Pavilion. I think it is gold leaf, but who can know?

This was done with super digital zoom and hand held.
I am pretty happy with my new camera.

In the afternoon, Dan and I took the subway a few stops out to Dan's new love, the Kyoto International Manga Museum. I had my doubts about this place and was mainly going for Dan, but it turned out to be pretty cool. First impression, there were people sitting down and reading just EVERYWHERE. Spilling outside onto the large astroturf yard. Sitting in all of the alcoves. Men and Women of all ages. Everyone reading Manga. What a remarkable thing. You must pick a Manga from the shelves inside (there are thousands and thousands of Manga), and you take it somewhere, and you read it. I tried one, but they read left to right and it was hard going.

Manga Museum Readers on the grass.

 And, they had a very cool special exhibit whose theme was “Young Sexy Girls in Uniform with Swords and Japan”.

Can I post some pictures without copyright infringement? Well, at least a link: oh my.

For dinner I got Daniel to go to a Sushi Go Round with me. You know, this is the place where there is a conveyor belt that goes around the restaurant carrying plates of sushi. You just grab what plate you want as it goes by. Dan wasn't psyched by this and we almost left, but then I sighted like 3 vegetarian plates in a row, and once I grabbed them, he got into the swing of things and we had great fun. By the way, they figure out your bill by counting the plates and the color of the plate. My math was only off by ¥14,000 !! (where is the Yen symbol? ¥, I went back and inserted it, using time travel)

One last thing,

Kyoto has by far the highest concentration of beautiful young women in short skirts that I have ever seen. Perhaps I need to get out and about in Portland more and do a quality check and thigh count. However, I believe myself to be correct at this time. And the clothes they wear are almost stylistically identical. These are not the school girls, they are in their sailor uniforms. And these roam in packs. Perhaps there is some hunting activity going on here. And the young men, in my opinion, just don't measure up to this level of prep work. Not by a long shot. In fact, I am surprised that I haven't been accosted and drug off into sexual slavery by now. I will have to be more careful in the future, now that I am alerted to the problem.