Kyoto

You'll get the Tokyo pics after I spent my final Japan time there before going on. There are sill many things I need to visit in this tiny 30 million-biggest-city-on-this-planet.

Yesterday I came from Tokyo to Nara but I'll tell you about this place when I move on.

First of all let's start with my (almost not-) departure of Beijing. It all started in Chengdu, where I got the mission to try the roast duck where it is originally from -Beijing- and compare it to the one we had in Chengdu. On my last evening we still had not found the time to go and get. It seemed like the last chance. But it got later and later and we weren't ready to head out. Finally at 10.30pm we made it. But it seems all the roast duck restaurants close early in Beijing. After Mari called about a dozen places we gave up. My flight to Tokyo was scheduled for 2.15pm the next afternoon, that should be late enough to inhale on of those birds for lunch. Somehow it got later again and it wasn't until about noon that we made it to the restaurant. At 12.30 we were served a delicious roast duck, but time was running. When I got in the cab at 1.00 for the one-hour ride to the airport I knew it would be tough. Especially since my cab driver seemed to not have slept the last night and was dozing off while driving on the highway. So we crept along on the right lane and I was getting nervous. When I informed the Japanese ground staff from ANA that my flight was leaving in about 20 minutes I felt like being in a beehive at once. People swarmed out, phones rang and I was hurried through corridors with since like 'Staff only' or 'No admittance' on their previously locked doors. It worked - in a couple of minutes I got to my gate, only to find out in the plane that my seat was double-booked and a Japanese businessman was sitting there chatting with his neighbor. The ANA stewardess taking care of the situation bowed and apologized about a thousand times - gomenasei - and finally she decided that one of us would be flying business class. She looked at me checking out my outfit and shook her head slightly. Then she asked the Japanese guy if he would mind flying business class. Of course he wouldn't mind. Damn - backpackers never get upgraded.
But at least I made it.

After a couple of days in Tokyo I took 123bus' night bus to Kyoto and moved in at Tani-sans old and nit very clean but very comfortable old Japanese-style hostel.
There are about 45832 temples, 871234 shrines and many other things to visit in Kyoto, zen gardens, rock parks, palaces, castles, museums, whatever.
I could give you detailed information about everything I visited, it would look more or less like this for every place:
The fine temple of Daitoku-ji was first built in 1319 by Himura Kenshin for the buddhist sect of battousai. It was burnt to the grounds in the Shogun-war 1665 and rebuilt 5 years later. In the edo-period it was again burnt down and rebuilt. 500Yen entrance fee.

Now you only have to change the names and dates and that's it. I'll only provide you with the wiki links (as far as available) to save my internet time (which is insanely expensive in Japan).

Slight change of plans: abort blogging due to internet and computer in this (f***ing expensive) internet cafe not working correctly. It's a shame. If you look at Japan everything seems to be in perfect order, clean, safe and comfortable. But when you're actually there you notice that many things only look perfect and are actually not working. First thing is: internet. I'm sitting in a posh cafe, polished chrome ashtray, free coke with ice from a crystal glass, quiet jazz-lounge music filling the room around comfy leather chairs, decent flat screens. Looks perfect. But the computer (looking brand new) is so slow it's amazing that the Norton 2003 (didn't happen much in the last 6 years of information technology!) doesn't stop it completely. Now imagine starting up the first generation MS Internet Explorer. Or even inserting your 4GB CF-card. Don't you dare to even think of rotating one of those 10megapixels pictures. Sad, very sad. If I remember China where every McDonald's, Starbucks, restaurant and cafe had free and fast wifi for anybody to use. Perhaps you might say: 'Yeah, but come on, you're in Nara, that's only a small town with it's 350.000 people.' But it's been the same in Kyoto and Tokyo. Shame on you Japan. You are developing all this stuff! Why don't you use it? Perhaps you should try getting one of your Shinto gods to work on this issue.


Wall decoration in the Nijo-jo


The bike I raced though Kyoto


Kinkaku-ji


Kimonos on their way to the temple


street leading up to the temple, one of the most popular sites for the Japanese coming to Kyoto


Kiyomizu-dera, built on some 140 wooden columns, with the famous love shrine


Fushimi Inari-taisha, probably this vast shrine complex stretching over a hill is the most impressive sight in Kyoto with thousands of red gates placed there by families to get a special wish fulfilled and all the kitsune lining the ways and the shrines




it's main gate


I can't even type without having the computer stop. Sad.
Perhaps I'll get lucky in Hiroshima. Got lots more pictures but even this took me more than two hours. That was my dinner money :-(
I apologize for any spelling erros but I'm not able to check. Whenever I start scrolling the conputer freezes for about 3 minutes.