Kanazawa "At Home at Ryokan Service"
Summer Holiday in Japan 2009 – Day 2 – Kyoto
October 12th, 2009
For the second day in Japan, after eating bread, marmelade, banana and orange juice in our awesome hotel, we start the morning at 9:50pm taking the Shinkansen (high speed train) from Osaka to Kyoto, and in less than 20 minuts we reached the destination.
The JR station in Kyoto is a very futuristic structure that remember us another aspect of Japan: a place where the historycal traditions and the technology are fused together. The station is filled of shopping mall and, for more or less two hours we made some shopping in here.
Then we took the “JR Nara line” toward Nara and reached Inari station (is the first stop), where we visited one other particular attraction of Japan: the Fushimi Inari Shrine.
This Shintoist Shrine is characterized by very long routes made of many big red torii (the wood portal showed in the gallery of photos below) that extends in a mountain woods. After one hour of walking, when we reached a small mountain lake, we ate the best granita ever in a little food shop near the Fushimi Inari Shrine… that granita was served in polystyrene cup and the juice was in the inner of all the “crumbs” of ice. No juice has reached the bottom of the cup! Simply very yummy and refreshing!
Then we returned in JR Kyoto station where two of us made some other shopping and in the meantime
I was interviewed by a teacher from Hiroshima and three of her middle school students.
After this we went to the Sanjusangendo Temple (that for us was not so good. Is worth to skip it) and walking for over 7km through the city on foot, from the JR station we reached the Kiyomizu-dera, the most famous Buddhist temple of Kyoto, located on a hill immersed in a wood.
After the 5:30pm we leaved Kiyomizu-dera and (again on foot) we returned in the JR Central Station zone to try the panorama of Kyoto Tower (that is in front of the station).
Then, very tired, we reached the Arietta Hotel and made some shopping (food shopping… we were with an empty stomach all of the day!).
For your holyday I suggest you to eat some things at Kyoto station in a reasonable hour of the day.
