Sooooo I think I crammed way too much into the time I gave myself to explore Osaka and Kyoto. Now I think it would have been much better given the extra day that I lost in travel, but even then there’s a lot here. So onto my whirlwind of a day!
First off, jet lag. I fell asleep fine my night of arrival, however I woke up right at about 4:00am with no chance of falling back asleep anytime soon. So, I decided to go explore a bit since I wasn’t able to the night before. I found a cool looking shrine on google maps and began the short journey on foot. The weather is suuuuper nice here right now, but you could see a bit of the after affects of the typhoon that passed through a couple days before, with branches and ceramic roof tiles kinda scattered everywhere. It was a nice walk, but of course I forgot to take into account that shrines actually close, so of course the one I was headed to wasn’t open yet at 4:30am. I continued to just wander around to see if I could find any of the uniquely identifying things about Japanese cities, and there were many. I think I passed about three 7-11 convenience stores on my mile+ walk around. I couldn’t even count the number of vending machines I saw everywhere, and bikes, lots of bikes. All fun things I’d heard of being big in Japan but definitely wanted to see if it was true.
After a couple hours I headed back to my Airbnb, and yes, even small dormitory type buildings have fancy toilets. Why cant we have 2 in 1 bidets + toilets in the states?! Ugh I want them so bad.
I also stopped at one of those 7-11s on the way back and bought me a tasty lemon cream bread and orange juice for breakfast, and pretty cheaply too, I think $3 total? Win in my book.
I somehow managed to fall back asleep and woke back up just in time to check out. I looked around on google maps during my morning stroll and thought Osaka Castle would be the coolest thing I could fit into Osaka, given that I only had about half a day to spend there. Needless to say it was pretty neat. Classical Japanese architecture (sorry, I’m not well versed in the differences between the Japanese historical periods) with a huge moat and a neat museum inside. They even let you go to the top of the castle where you can see most of the city.
I then made my way back to the rail station to head to Kyoto, where I would be staying the night. I also wanted to head over early-ish because one of the big spots I wanted to go to was there, the Fushimi-Inari Shrine. It was huge! I expected a decent sized walkway with the Torii gates and a central shrine. No. The walkway up to the shrine actually only had a couple Torii gates, but then you entered and area with what seemed like 5 or 6 different shrines, all fairly large, where you could do the ritual washing and prayers at the shrines. Past all of these buildings were the well knows Torii gate paths. It’s not just one either, it’s like 5 different, I’d say about ~50 yard paths you could walk through. Unfortunately, I think because of the typhoon, about half were closed, but the 2 paths that were open were super neat. I took a bunch of videos that my sister is going to help me compile together later, so look for that eventually.
[Sorry for all the selfie photos, one of the downfalls of traveling alone…]
At this point, I kinda just expected to walk over and check in to my hotel, which was more of a walk than I initially expected through Kyoto. I ended up making I think 3 separate stops at awesome landmarks along the way.
The first was a Buddhist Temple, the Higashihonganji Temple. I should learn by now to expect these temples and shrines to be a lot bigger than expected, and this was no difference. At first you see the gate and think that’s the entrance to the temple, but no. It’s just the gate. You then walk inside and see how huge the whole temple grounds are. Although not quite to scale, it reminded be a lot of the Vatican, where you walk past the gates and there’s a bunch of arranged buildings, all enormous of their own right. I got to step into the main building as well right when I think they were doing a prayer, so I got to hear some of what I believe was a prayer and a little bit of the ritual around it which was pretty neat (I apologize for my lack of understanding the the religion…).
[It’s hard to capture how big the whole temple complex was, hopefully the video will do it better justice]
Moving on, I decided to take a detour through the fish market in Kyoto. It was pretty dang packed, but surprisingly not too fish smelling. It’s evidently attached to a larger shopping area, so there wasn’t only fish throughout the market, but a lot of other vendors as well. I managed to check in to my hotel and run back to catch some fish market dinner before it closed sadly early for me, about 6:00.
[Squid!]
Speaking of my hotel, I’m sleeping in a capsule hotel tonight! Haha this is one piece of Japan that I had to experience while I’m here, and not to mention makes for pretty cheap accommodations, $30 a night total! Pretty modern as well so they don’t skimp, even given the cheaper price.
Since the fish markets closed early, I again started wandering around town to see what I could find. As it was getting to be dusk, I wound my way around to the Gion Ward of Kyoto, known for it’s Geisha. I walked around for a bit, not knowing what to expect, and only saw one geisha, and it was so brief that I couldn’t pull out my phone and take a picture without being super obnoxious and most likely very rude. I don’t much much about geisha, just what I’ve read up online, so I didn’t really know what I’d find heading to that side of town but it was extremely nice and pretty uppity, with a lot of expensive brand name shops and nice restaurants.
[Red-light district? Haha don’t know but there was the same red lantern in front of all of these doors.]
There’s also a small river that runs right through Kyoto that makes for nice scenery that I spent a little time at just lounging around and taking in the sight and sounds.
Also, one more shrine! This one happened to be open at night as well which made for some pretty cool pictures (Yasaka Shrine)
[Also, lots of kimonos, you can see a few in this picture]
That about sums up my first full day in Japan, and boy was it full. Part of me definitely wishes I could spend a little more time here but I’ve got a hostel booked up near some onsen hot springs south of Osaka that I’m headed to tomorrow! Check back in tomorrow to see if I manage to get lost on the way down there and if Japanese onsen are everything they’re cracked up to be!
FROSTED TIPS 