What a wonderful place Kyoto is! Hazel and I took the bus down there Thursday night. It was a really comfortable bus. They had slippers to put on and a blanket to cover you up while you slept. The bus left Kofu at 10ish and got to Kyoto around 6am ish Friday morning. It was too early to even get a cup of coffee or a piece of fruit so we just went to the bathroom washed up and walked around the train/bus station checkin' it out. It was a pretty big station too and around 7 we finally were able to go to the information desk, get a map and try to find our way around and map out our plan for the day. We bought these 2 day bus/subway passes for about 2,000 yen which turned out to be really good investments because the buses go all over the city and come quite often.

Day one we went to Ginkaku-ji (the silver temple), Eikan-do, and Nanzen-ji. We went to lunch at this wonderful little restaurant that was recommended to us by Lonely Planet Japan called Hinode. They saw our Lonely Planet book on the table and got excited. The owner was so nice! We asked him for directions on how to get to our hostel and he didn't know so he took our book and called the place to get the directions. Then he proceeded to draw us out a map from the restaurant to the place which he said would take about 20mins walking. After we left the restaurant and had probably walked for about 5-7 mins, the owner pulls up next to us and offers to drive us to the hostel!!! It was such a nice thing to do. Just when some Japanese folks piss ya off, you find folks like the man from Hinode (who's name we never even got) who do such benevolent things. The place we stayed was kinda shaky. It was a dorming house for foreigners. Some long stay as well as short stay. It was fine because we only had to stay there one night but longer would have been a problem. It was an 8 mat tatami room with a small balcony and a kitchenette, if you can call it that. I refer to it as the dungeon and am glad we only had to stay there one night!!! After we found the place we unloaded a few souveniors we bought and set back out to the rainy streets of Eastern Kyoto. We headed back up towards Maruyama Park where there was supposed to be a festival of lights and some stage performances. We were most excited about seeing the Geisha women dance. Its funny because I never knew how important Geisha were to Japanese society. They are actually like the highest level of feminity that a women can be. They are very well trained in Japanese art of tea ceremony, dance, ikebana (flower arranging) and many others. The women who train to be Geisha area called Maiko. I think I was told some begin as Maiko at the young age of 15! Anyway it was really nice and so cool to actually get to see them dance and sing. The kimono they wore were beautiful!! And their make up was flawless. After that we walked around and took pictures of the scenery and the way they had lit everything up. It was a great atmosphere. Nice date spot too! Then we left to go find a onsen type bath. The only thing is the water wasn't hot spring mineral water. It was just regular water. We did that and then set out to find dinner and go back to our hotel. The dinner thing was hard because it was late when we got done bathing. It was about 10ish when we got back down to Gion, which is the hot spot night area. The other thing is Hazel is a vegetarian which in Japan is hard in the first place and especially if you are just eating out and don't really know where to go. We finally found this one Asian restaurant that I throughly enjoyed but Hazel ended up not being able to eat much. She's very accomodating so it wasn't bad and she would never complain but we had to eat soon because I was turning into the mean hungry E which isn't a pleasant person so she didn't mind eating there. What a whirlwind first day and the second proved to be just as busy.

We got up pretty early and planned out our next day turned in the keys and set off into Kyoto. Today we planned to hit a few spots we'd missed the day before and a bunch of new stuff. We took a bus down to the Station so we could put our heavy stuff in a locker and set out for the temples. We grabbed a bite to eat at the station which ended up being much more suitable for Hazel. Then we took the subway up to Nijo Castle. This was probably my favorite next to the Park. It was so tight!! It was the home of the famous shogun Tokugawa. Inside the castle there are "nightengale floors". This means that whenever walk the floor boards have a distinct squeaking sound. The floors were contructed for that purpose that wherever you walked squeaks to protect him from intruders and so he always knew when someone was coming. Since the builiding is so old they don't allow photos to be taken inside but I'm trying to hold on to the mental images as much as I can. We saw the room where he held his cabinet meetings and they had these doors that were roped with this bright orange cord. Wherever this cord was on a door there was a bodyguard behind it to protect the shogun in an emergency. I think there were some peep holes in the door too, but we couldn't get up close enough to see it. This castle is surrounded by a moat which is the first time I've actually seen something like that NOT on TV. There were beautiful Japanese style gardens that I did get a few pictures of. It was just really nice and peaceful. I enjoyed it throughly.

Next we went to a dragon processional at Kiyomizu Shrine. No one told us about the 15 min uphill climb to the temple, but the walk and fatigue was WELL worth it. We walked around once we got to the top and I spotted a group of Japanese folks standing around so naturally we went up there. I told Hazel that anytime you see Japanese folks in a group just waiting...you go then! Because it is usually something worth waiting for. Shortly there after, piles of people just seemed to come out of NO WHERE pushing and shoving to get to the front. We held down the front line though and Hazel got some really good movies with her digital camera. Mine takes the movies but there isn't any sound so its no good to take movies of that kind of thing. It was awesome though. First 8 buglers came down dressed in this heavy green and orange gear. The buglers were playing conk shells (not sure about the spelling) but when you blow in them an amazing sound some out. Next the soliders came down, then the priestesses and the high priest and finally the dragon! It was carried by about 10 -12 men and they really moved it like it was a dragon body! I was so impressed. They came down and the priestesses put something over the crowd out of their bowls using a wand of some sort and then the whole processional went down that hill we'd just come up! It was sooo cool! After they left some of the people standing around followed them down. We took another hill cause we didn't want to be in the traffic. We came across this shop where this 80 year old woman had made these gorgeous little paper Japanese women folded into bookmarks. They were only like $3 a piece so we both bought a few. After that we went to this place called Sanjusan gendo. It was a temple that had 33 something or others but I'm not sure what. It also had 1000 budda statues with over 10,000 arms. They say that all the faces of these statues are different and one looks like you. You just have to figure out which one it is. We got there when it was almost closig time so we didn't get to see much. We left there and went back up to the park and saw a wonderful taiko drum performance. After that we went to another bathhouse. This one was much better than the first but harder to find. Both of us were craving to go back to Hinode where we had lunch the first day but couldn't justify going all the way back up there until that is we found a subway near the bathhouse! So we took a subway and then a short bus to the place and guess what!!! They were closed! I couldn't believe it. We had wasted so much time getting there too that we didn't have time to get to a nice restaurant before time to catch the bus home. So, we just caught a cab back down to the station picked up our packages from the lockers, went to McDonalds for some fries and an apple pie and then to this quick beef bowl shop. I think Hazel got rice and a tofu soup. We rushed back across the street in time to catch the night bus back home to Kofu

Admist the heat and slight snoring I had a pretty enjoyable and restful ride home and a great weekend. I'm looking forward to New Zealand even more now because I know that Hazel and I can and enjoy traveling together so that's a relief. I'm pretty much down for whatever and so is she so it wasn't stressful at all. It was cool. I'm glad we got a chance to go together!!!