Japan - Day 3 - August 21st

We had to wake up pretty early this morning.

We had to meet to join a day tour at 7:20am from the Hotel Granvia Osaka. The hotel was attached to Osaka Station and the station was about 20 minutes from our hotel via train.

We wanted to make sure we had enough time to find it in case we got lost.

Osaka Station is also known as Osaka Station City because it is huge.

We were going to be taking a bus tour of some of the main sights in Kyoto.

Kyoto is THE place to go to get a glimpse into historic Japan.

It was the imperial capital before Tokyo and, as such, is home to many temples, shrines, palaces and other places of important historic value.

Our breakfast consisted of what we found at the grocery store the night before.

Banana's King

Mikey learned that he loved croissants and that raisin rolls weren't too bad either.

We were able to shove down some breakfast and get out the door on time.

We met our super nice tour-guide-helper lady in the lobby of the hotel.

She shuttled us, along with two other tourists, onto a train bound for Kyoto to meet up with the bus tour.

Upon arriving, we had to wait for our bus to arrive. We had about 15 minutes to wait, so Huzbend and Katie went off to see if they could find a convenience store to pick up some snacks. They came back empty handed. Bummer.

Mikey took this time to use the public bathroom nearby.

One of the tourists we were with pointed out that he was going into the wrong bathroom, assuming he was a girl. I told him he was a boy. I'm not sure he understood me.

Some observations about Japan:

Japan is very clean. Even public toilets attached to train stations, like the one Mikey used here, are clean. The bathrooms don’t smell; they just about sparkle. All of the toilets are electronic and have bidets, rushing water sounds to cover up the sound of your pee (or poo), heated seats, wipes so you can clean the toilets off when you're done, and all sorts of buttons that do other things that I couldn't read because they were in Japanese. The sinks are also all hands-off – you don't have to touch the faucet, the soap and the hand dryers are automatic. And lastly, the stall doors go all the way to the floor. You can tell if it's occupied by an indicator on the door. All of this makes for very clean bathrooms. The one downside to Japanese bathrooms is that the stalls are pretty tight with those fancy toilets. There is not a lot of room for a, uh, bigger person, to maneuver. 

Japan is also very safe. Kids wander around alone all the time. It's very common for you to see kids Mikey's age riding trains alone. So, Mikey used the bathroom all on his own.

The bus arrived at our stop. 

Our tour-guide-helper lady handed us to off to K.C., who would be our tour guide for the rest of the day.

I don't want to swear or anything, 'cause I'll just hear about it from Katie.

"Mom! You ALWAYS swear on your blog!!"

So, I'll just say this.

It was M.F. hot this day.

She can figure out what that means.

Mikey will probably know too, but he'll tell me it means "Major Flamin'" because he won't want to swear.

Really, really, really HOT and really, really, really humid.

The bus became our refuge from the heat.

I know that it doesn't look hot in this picture below....but it was humid.

Off and on all day, it would pour down rain and then the sun would come out and melt us all.

Our first stop on the bus tour was Nijo Castle.

We had to cross over the outer moat to get into the grounds of the castle.

Nijo Castle is where the shogun stayed when he visited Kyoto, back when Kyoto was the Imperial capital of Japan.

And when I'm talking about the shogun here, I'm talking about the Tokugawa Ieyasu and his family.

The same Tokugawa that went to Osaka and took out the Toyotomi family and their castle (see Japan Day 2).

We walked through one of the buildings on site - the Ninomaru-goten Palace.

There are two palaces on site. The other palace is under renovation.

We had to wait a bit outside before entering.

To make Huzbend happy, I had to take a picture of the roof.

He made fun of me that last time we visited Japan because I couldn't stop taking pictures of the roofs.

But, I mean, COME ON! 

They're beautiful.

A lot of these buildings are original.

(I'll be sure to tell you when they're not)

Below, in the background, is a gate that was used to enter the courtyard of the palace.

The bigger and fancier the gate, the more important the people that rode through them.

All of us.

And a roof.

SEE!

This is why I take pictures of roofs.

We had to take our shoes off to enter the palace.

There were no pictures allowed inside.

While we were on the tour, a lady, who had her camera around her neck, tried to sneak some photos. Another woman on our tour caught her and called her out saying, "The rule is there for a reason. It's disrespectful to disobey. Shame on you!"

It was awkward.

The kids favorite part of the tour was the “nightingale” floor. Because of the way the floor was designed, when you walked on the wooden floor planks, metal clamps would rub up against nails and make a squeaking sound. 

Legend says the squeak made it so that assassins and ninja couldn’t sneak into the castle to kill the shogun. Just legend.

The palace also showcased the importance of social status in Japan, even when building structures.

Enemies were only allowed to visit rooms at the outer edges. These rooms were painted with intimidating pictures, like tigers. These outer rooms also included prominent smaller rooms built within them to house bodyguards for the shogun.

Friends and family were allowed into the inner rooms. These were painted with calming scenes of birds and trees. They also included impressive wood carvings that were carved out of one solid piece of wood, but were made super thin. And, get this, there were two different sides to each carving!

We headed back to the bus after touring the palace.

It began to rain.

We broke out the umbrellas and stopped at a vending machine located right outside the complex to purchase two C.C. Lemon's for the kids.

Here's our bus.

Next stop, Kinkaku Temple, aka the Golden Pavilion.

No. This is not it.

It's a roof.

Of course.

We had to wait to get our tickets from the tour guide.

So, we hung out in the courtyard for a bit.

THIS is Kinkaku-ji.

It's visually stunning.

If you can get past the million people also staring at it.

The pavilion was originally built in the 1400's.

It had burnt down a few times in its history.

The final time was in 1955 by a monk with a mental illness.

Do your work super-color-saturation-filter!

It really is quite beautiful.

No one is allowed in the building.

Only world leaders and diplomats and such can enter with invitation.

Mikey was impressed.

You can see that he's just finished taking a sip from his Camelbak.

He never got dehydrated, but he certainly did have to pee ALOT during the trip.

Huzbend and Katie stood back from the touristy throngs to wait for me to take my fill of pictures.

Just one more.....

After the first view of the pavilion, we had to wander our way through the garden to the exit.

According to our tour guide, this is a 500 year old bonzai tree.

A gold phoenix tops the pavilion.

So photogenic....

I bet ya he was wishing he could jump in the pond.

Wandering the garden was fun.

There were all sorts of curious little side trails and things to find.

This curious looking spider had his web in front of that little cave above.

Seriously?

The kids were dying from the heat.

Huzbend took them on ahead to purchase a couple of Coolish from the vending machines at the entrance.

(Side note: There are vending machines EVERYWHERE in Japan)

I took a few more pictures and then went to find a bathroom.

It took me at least 15 minutes just to peel off my pants to pee and to get them back on.

I was that sweaty.

No lie.

Sorry, too much info.

I did manage to make it back to the bus on time.

It was so hot, we broke out the cooling towels.

Bus buddies.

Our next place to visit was the Kyoto Imperial Palace.

As I mentioned, Kyoto was the imperial capital of Japan, before it was moved to Tokyo, and this was the place that the emperors stayed when they were in town.

Below is the official gate that the emperor used to enter the palace grounds.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is huge.

Remember - the fancier and bigger the gate, the more important the people are who are using it.

Check out that roof!

It was super thick.

We learned that these roofs were made from Japanese cypress bark.

The bark was pressed together into super thick layers and nailed with bamboo nails. 

The roofs need to be replaced every 30 years or so.

The rain cleared and once again the blazing sun snuck out from behind the clouds.

Huzbend had all three cooling mechanisms in effect - water bottle, umbrella and cooling towel.

Here's K.C., our tour guide.

He was super friendly, super knowledgeable, incredibly efficient and very easy to spot in a crowd.

Since this was the imperial palace you would think it would be awesome.

Well, it wasn't.

I'd say it was the dud of the day.

It was pretty, but the fact that it was amazingly hot just took away from it.

We just wanted to get back to the bus to sit down in air conditioning.

It didn't help that we couldn't enter any of the buildings.

The fancy thrones that you could usually see in the coronation building were actually offsite in Tokyo for the installation of the new emperor. So, we didn't see them, just pictures of them.

It just wasn't very fun standing in courtyards looking at buildings we couldn't go in.

Mikey's face just about sums it up.

The gardens were very pretty.

And so was the scenery.

But, we were just.....done.

The bus headed back to the train station for lunch.

Poor sweltering Mikey took a quick nap on the way back.

We didn't choose the lunch that was offered on the tour opting instead to find our own.

We would meet the bus back at the station in an hour.

We set off to find Curry House CoCo Ichibanya - a chain restaurant specializing in Japanese curry.

Through his research, Huzbend had found that CoCo Curry had an allergen-friendly apple based curry that was cooked in a pouch so there is no chance of cross contamination. Most curry has wheat and peanut in its sauce.

With the help of Google Maps, we walked a few blocks to the restaurant.

Upon entering the restaurant, we were met with a chorus of extremely loud employees shouting “Irasshaimase!” - pronounced EE-RAS-SHAI-EE-MA-SAY. It means, "Come on in!" or "Welcome to the store!" This is standard procedure for stores in Japan. All employees welcome you in. Some are just a lot more excited than others. 

We were ushered to a seat. They had a menu in English. Yay!

I have never eaten Japanese curry before and it was delicious.

You wouldn't think a stew-type dish with some meat and rice would fill you up, but it sure did!

Katie and Mikey were iffy on the whole curry thing. 

Mikey tried it and decided that he wasn’t a big fan, but he did eat most of his rice.

Katie, it turns out, loved it. 

She ate most of the curry and all of the rice. She even ate the rest of Mikey's.

 It was really nice to sit down, in air conditioning, to take a break and eat a yummy and filling meal.

We now had the energy to tackle the rest of the day.

 While we were waiting for Huzbend to pay the bill - he had to pay at the front counter and there wasn't much room inside the place - we went outside and the kids found a cicada hanging out on the sidewalk. It was turned onto its back. 

The kids were fascinated and wanted to flip it over to “save” it. 

I did and it flew up and just about hit Mikey in the face.

We walked back to the bus stop with time to spare and hopped back on our tour bus to head to Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine.

Inari is a Shinto god of rice and many other things including: fertility, tea, sake, agriculture, industry, and success in business.

Kitsune, or foxes, are messengers of Inari.

They ferry messages from worshipers to Inari.

So, as you can guess, they are well represented at this shrine.

The kitsune wear red bibs and carry different things in their mouths - a key, a ball, a jewel, a scroll - all of which have different meanings.

What's the reason for the color red/orange? The color is believed to block magical powers and ward off evil spirits. It also acts as protection against misfortune, calamity and illness.

Since the kitsune are messengers of Inari, who is the god of agriculture (among other things), it's important that his messengers are warded against bringing illness to crops.

Below, you will see a picture of a torii gate. These gates mark the entrance to a shrine. 

It serves as the demarcation line between, "the mundane and the sacred".

Fushimi Inari shrine is home to upwards of 10,000 torii gates.

They line a path all the way up and down a mountain.

We didn't go all the way up the mountain, as it takes about two to three hours.

We just did a short walk.

It was still pretty impressive.

We learned that if you see people dressed in kimono, they are more than likely to be tourists or teenagers out on a date. 

There are always rental places located near touristy spots where you can "check them out" for a certain amount of time per day.

I still asked these ladies if I could take their picture.

I'm not sure what evil will befall this man who gave me the "pretend you're scratching your cheek but you're actually giving me the middle finger" move at a shrine.

Torii gates and.....

...kitsune are everywhere!

All shrines have a fountain at the entrance so that you can purify yourself.

You wash your hands and also your mouth, if you so choose.

The water you use does NOT go back in the fountain, but is dumped on the side.

You also do not drink directly out of the ladle.

At this shrine, individuals and businesses can purchase torii as a sort of donation to the shrine.

The bigger the gate, the bigger the donation.

The writing on each gate is their name and the date it was added.

The shrine was busy, but not as busy as we thought it would be.

It was nice to be able to walk and not have it be shoulder to shoulder packed.

Taking a torii break.

The shrine was very pretty.

I wished we had more time to wander.

But, it was time to head back to the bus.

We stopped at a vending machine and bought some cold bottled water.

I can't remember when we stopped at a convenience store (After lunch? In the morning before going to the train station?), but Katie made me pick this up.

She was curious as to what it was.

It was a mini lime cheesecake and my afternoon snack.

Our next stop on the tour was Sanjusangendo Temple.

Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed in here.

We also had to take off our shoes to walk through. 

This Buddhist temple is famous for its 1,001 carved wood statues of Kannon . There is one big statue in the center and 500 statues on each side of that. Each one of the carved statues is different.

There are also 28 other guardian statues.

Kannon is a bodhisattva, not a buddha. She/he is the goddess of compassion and mercy. A bodhisattva is a being who is able to achieve Nirvana, but delays doing so because of his or her compassion for the suffering of other beings. 
They have 1,000 arms and 11 heads. 

Why you ask? Well, “1000-armed Kannon are equipped with 11 heads to better witness the suffering of humans and with 1,000 arms to better help them fight the suffering." The actual statues have only 42 arms each. Here's how you arrive at 1,000 metaphorical arms from 42 - "Subtract the two regular arms and multiply by the 25 planes of existence to get the full thousand.” Each of the 42 arms holds something. I am not sure what each thing means, but I'm sure you could look it up somewhere.

The hall that houses all of these Kannon is 64 meters (about 209 feet) long. Each year, during a New Years celebration, an archery contest is held along the length of the building. People must shoot 60 meters to hit a 1 meter diameter target. 

Katie had me make a donation in the hall so that she could light an incense stick.

As she placed her incense stick in the pot, she ended up burning her finger on an already lighted one.

Ouch. 

Huzbend essentially ran through this place. He stopped to check out the long bows used in the archery contest and then waited in the air conditioned shop at the end.

The last stop on our tour was Kiyomizudera Temple, a Buddhist temple dedicated to Kannon, whom we just met.

 Our bus dropped us off in a parking lot. The temple is literally halfway up a mountain. To get up to the temple, we had to walk up a shopping avenue. 

The walk wasn't that bad as there was lots to look at to distract from the heat and sore feet.

We made it!

Here's a look back down the street.

Lion-dogs act as the guardians at this temple.

There is also a lot of red/orange color.

Because the Main Hall of the temple grounds is perched on the side of a mountain, the views were beautiful.

Just some random pictures of the temple.

Katie did some exploring while waiting for Mikey to use the bathroom.

There were many bells at the entrance of the Main Hall of the temple grounds.

We had to walk under hundreds of them to enter.

Behind the temple, there's a spring called Otowa-no-taki that has supposed magical properties. 

The stream has three branches. One that promises love, one that promises longevity and another success. You can drink from one of the streams, if you wait in line. 

No one knows which stream gives which benefit and you only get to pick one.

We did not wait in line. 

There is what I can only call a “stage” on the back of the Main Hall that is built 13 meters (42 feet) above the hillside.

 The main portion of it was under renovation at the time. 

We decided to walk around a bit, as we had some time. 

It was a lovely walk up to a pagoda that was dedicated to - not to hitting ones father, as the picture below would suggest - but to safe childbirth.

It was also not dedicated to superhero poses.

View from the pagoda.

On our way back to the shopping street, we had to wander the temple grounds some more.

Here's a blurry picture of a praying mantis.

And some random temple statues that represent Ojizo-sama.

A protectorate of children - alive and those that have passed before their time.

It was time to head back to the bus.

The kids were so tired. 

It was a long, hot and very walk-y day.

We purchased some frozen sodas for them on the walk back down.

Katie got Coke and Mikey got some melon-y flavored soda.

I ran into a store and bought two fans and little souvenir magnet.

Phew! What a whirlwind visit to Kyoto.

Mikey started making this sound when he sighed, which was quite often.

Like, all day.

It extremely annoyed Katie.

I think that's just part of the reason that he made the sound so much.

I asked him to try to replicate it on the bus ride back to the train station.

The tour bus took us back to Kyoto Station and we said goodbye to our tour guide. 

The same tour-guide-helper lady that ushered us from Osaka to Kyoto in the morning, met us to get us back to Osaka.

We got off the train in Osaka, said thank you to the tour-guide-helper lady and decided to look for someplace to eat dinner. Everyone was exhausted and the options were limited. 

So, we headed to Outback. 

Yes. THAT Outback. The steakhouse. 

The staff was friendly and very diligent about gluten and our other allergies. Our waiter came back to the table multiple times to double check on what Katie could and couldn't have. 

It wasn’t the most glamorous, or even yummy meal, but it was sustenance. 

They gave Mikey a balloon when we left.

Somewhere in the giant train station there was supposed to be a grocery store.

We thought we could pick up more snacks/breakfast items before heading back to our hotel. 

We just could not find the store anywhere. 

The kids didn’t want to move anymore so we sent Huzbend off to find it by himself. 

Huzbend, I later found out, went and stood in front of the giant LED map of the train station for about 30 minutes trying to translate what it said using his phone. He didn’t have much luck.  

In the meantime, the kids and I sat in this giant courtyard entrance.

It was after 8pm at night and the station was PACKED.

As we were waiting, a white dude wandered into the courtyard. He looked dazed and confused. He was wearing flip flops, capris pants and a cowboy hat. He laid down right in the middle of the courtyard. I moved myself and the kids away from the scene. As we moved away,  I turned and saw a lady stop and bend down. She took his pulse. I saw another man stop to ask something. Then, a crowd formed in a circle around the man. One girl gave him her water bottle and another helped him to his feet. The man thanked them (I couldn’t hear him, but he bowed his head), took the water and went up the escalator. All the people who stopped went on their way. I felt like a bad person. A bit later, we went up that same escalator to find Huzbend after he texted us. The same dude had collapsed again off to the side and a police officer or security guard was sitting on a bench next to him waiting, I guess, for someone to come and get him.

We eventually found the grocery store in the lower levels of the station. I think we just guessed where it was and got lucky? I can't really remember.

 It was an international grocery store, so we found Quaker Instant Oatmeal packets! We also got more fruit and more croissants. We were also able to find spoons and bowls to make the oatmeal back at the hotel (the room had a hot water maker for tea). 

We were pretty grumpy at this point and headed back to our hotel.

On the walk back to our hotel, we saw a group practicing some sort of dance and waving a giant flag.

Huzbend and Katie forged on ahead to the room while Mikey and I slowed to watch. 

After doing some research, I found out that this dance is called Yosakoi.

Yosakoi is a style of dance where members of a team perform a choreographed dance with naruko - small wooden clappers - held in their hands. Competitions are held at festivals.

It was a nice way to end our day exploring the traditional side of Japan.