We woke up at the love hotel smelling like cigarette smoke - ick - so left fairly early to head out to the Toei Temple for their famous flea market. The flea market is supposed to be one of the oldest in the world, and takes place every 21st of the month. We bought an unlimited bus pass for the day for 500 Yen ($4) and headed out since there aren't as many trains here. Did I mention that everything around here was packed because of the holidays??? The flea market was really crowded as well. It started out with lots of food items and just general crafts that you could get anywhere, so not that exciting. We walked through rows and rows and rows and saw some cooler stuff, but nothing that we wanted to get. The prices really weren't that great either, but that could be because of all the traffic. Toward the beginning there was a vendor selling dried fruit who gave us some samples. Dave wanted to get some, so we picked some flavors and the guy picked up the biggest handfuls ever. When he weighted it, it was 8,000 yen (close to $80!). We said no way and he kept dumping some out until we got to about 1,000 yen worth. The fruit was good, but what a rip off. We also saw another fruit guy later that cost about 1/3 less. Oh well.
We got out of there and headed over to the Bamboo Grove and Monkey Park area. The buses were numbered to make it easier, but it was hard to tell which side to get on. Some of them had the landmarks written in English, and some didn't, but we figured it out. We had to walk about 1 km from where the bus dropped us off and it was a nice walk. Tons of people and businesses selling gifts and food. The bamboo forest was pretty cool - just rows and rows of bamboo. We grabbed a few photos and then headed out. There were a gazillion temples around here (many of them marked with a swastika since that's a Buddhist sect), but we skipped them since we didn't really care too much about going to temples. Everyone has their thing - that was not ours!
We found the base of the monkey park and they told us that it was about 20 minutes to get to the monkeys. Yes, 20 minutes straight up hill!!! I thought I was going to die because we also had our backpacks on. Not sure how long it took us, but wow, that was a challenge. There were some parents going up with their kids and some of them were tearing up it (the kids - not the parents) and I was thinking they would sleep well later. (But no - there was a kid's playground area up there and they were all running around like crazy!)
We finally got to the monkey area and they were just kind of chilling. In the center of the "park" was a building with bars on the windows. The humans stand inside and feed the monkeys who are on the outside. I was going to buy some monkey treats, but the lady told me that they're probably full by now and might not eat it. I think that they would have, but whatever, I was so hot and tired from the climb and so disappointed with all of Kyoto we just headed out. We watched the monkeys a bit more and took in the view since we were on top of a mountain, and then looped around the mountain to head down. Down was easier than up by far, so we made it a lot quicker. It was kind of scary though because there weren't a ton of ropes/bars and such to keep you from falling off the mountain, so we kept close to the walls. At the top, Dave wouldn't go any near the edge when I was taking his picture.
Next we decided to knock out the Temple of the Golden Pavilion just so we didn't have to do it the next day. We were on a bit of a deadline in that we had to check into our hotel by 7 pm, but had enough time. We grabbed some shaved ice first (it was really good with strawberry - although the mango was the best) and got on a bus. When we got dropped off at the Temple area, the line to the bus station heading out was over 100 deep. There were no trains anywhere, so we'd either need to get a cab or wait for the bus to get out of there. We headed up to the temple and paid our $5 or so to get in. You don't even get to go into the temple. You can see it from the view across the lake (which is pretty), and then walk around the ground a little to try to make it worth the money. I was torn on this because it's a famous temple and you see it in a lot of pictures, but honestly, it might be worth it to just see and not bother to go to. It was very commercialized and expensive for what it was and no one near anything.
I went into the bathroom to go before we left and leaned my backpack on the wall to put the temple brochure in it. A lady cut in front of me! Another lady told her that she cut me off and she just shrugged her shoulders. I was pissed. I was bigger than the lady who cut me off, so I put my hands on my hips as we got to the front and edged next to her. When it was my turn (her turn), she motioned for me to go like she was doing me a favor, but I went. I was so sick of the treatment in this area of town. What a huge disappointment in the people, although in fairness, she could have been a tourist from elsewhere in Japan.
We left the temple after passing many gift shops, as per usual, and the bus line was even longer now. We flagged down a cab to have him take us to the train station so that we could take the train to our hotel, which was also in the middle of nowhere, which I didn't realize. He was very nice and talked to us and mentioned that cities in Michigan were sister cities of where we were. He also said that he had been really busy that day (which we expected). We got to the train station and got on the train. We had about 20 minutes from when the train got in to get to the hotel which was about 1km away. The phone directions were confusing, so we got in a cab again. Thank goodness because there were all sorts of twists and turns to get there and it only cost us about $5.
The hotel was a ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese Inn. The one I picked was a bit more modern from what I thought. The cost was about $435 for the night without dinner (which is traditional in a ryokan to have), so I got without dinner figured that we could get some in the dining room that we saw online in the pictures. There was no dinner though - only ones that you get in your room, so we needed to figure out what to do since we weren't really near anything. The manager said that there was a place next door with 4 restaurants that he'd take us to once we put our luggage in the room.
The room was large but a bit dated and had a Japanese side and Western side. The Japanese side was a tatami bamboo floor with a floor height table and the Western side were two twin beds on a platform. We also have a private onsen in our room on the balcony, which was spring water. There were public baths on the property, but we didn't feel like trying that out. The onsen, which is basically a hot tub with no jets, was a wooden box that looked pretty tiny but had water flowing into it from the springs below. The shower was also connected to the balcony since you're supposed to shower first, and it had a glass door so anyone that was looking on to the balcony could see you. Since we were in a bay and the other side was water, it wasn't likely, but still, it was weird.
We went back downstairs to find the manager and he walked us over to the place he mentioned. When we got inside, there were people all over the place, some dressed and some in robes. We put our shoes in a locker and grabbed the key. The guy explained to us that the key needed to be registered and anything that we bought would be put on the key. We thought it was a casino of some sort, but it turns out that the place was a large public onsen. There were three restaurants - 2 Japanese ones and 1 that was sort of Italian. We opted for the Italian one since we'd had enough culture for the time being. No one spoke English, so we used Google Translate to try to figure out what everything was. Then we left and went back to the hotel. We noticed a Lawson's (convenience store) and some other restaurant in the area, and thought that the Lawson's might have been the better option for dinner.
Anyhow, we went into the tiny little hot tub, which felt great on our feet, connected to the WiFi, which luckily worked, and then conked out.
No comments:
Post a Comment