Another travel day today – we were sad to leave hip and happening Hiroshima, and to make things worse we had to take the street car to Hiroshima’s main train station. Normally I love trams – but they ain’t much fun if they’re crowded and you’re lugging a 30 kg bag. You can feel the locals politely sending beams of hatred your way as you “su mi ma sen” (excuse me) and “go men na sae” (sorry) your way along the crowded carriage rolling over toes and pinning old men to the walls. You enter via the centre door, but you MUST depart via the front door – all very logical and Japanese – but as I say – not much fun with baggage.
Before we knew it we were on the Shinkansen (bullet train) bound for Kyoto once more. We had decided to stay in a different part of town on our return to Kyoto. This time we were staying in Gion which is on the eastern side of the river and a far cry from the centre of town where we stayed last time. Gion is old Kyoto. If you imagine your stereotypical ancient Japanese street, with lanterns, cobble stones, ryokan (traditional Japanese guest houses), tea houses, shrines around every corner – then you are probably pretty close to imagining Gion. It was a lovely labyrinth of tiny streets, if a little touristy – and the tourists include the Japanese who obviously love to come and stay. The other thing tourists in Gion love to do is dress up in Kimono (complete with fans and little handbags and those clonky wooden shoe things – you know the ones) and get their photographs taken in front of traditional settings (shrines, ponds, waterfalls, vending machines etc). Typically the Japanese men/boys photograph their girlfriends/wives in the full outfit – but you occasionally see Gaijin (i.e. foreign) tourists doing the full kimono trip – which always looks a little off to me – but hey globalisation is a thing amirite?
Anyway after arriving at Kyoto station and jumping on another overfull bus with overfull bags, we arrived in the general vicinity of our accomodation (another Air BnB thing). But could we find it in the maze of streets? Of course not – what we did do was wander blindly and piss off the locals and other tourists with our trundly baggage – we sounded like rolling thunder. Which pretty much matched our moods after half an hour of high humidity random walking. In the end I simply sent our host a photo of the ice cream shop we were standing outside of – and she came and found us. The accommodation was ace – two stories – connected via a very very very steep staircase and two actual separate bedrooms. Lou was sad not to be sharing a room with his parents again – but he made the best of it.
The rest of the day was a blur of strolling past temples and shrines (not sure what the difference is – but there seems to be one), streams and ponds and the occasional actual geisha. How much picturesque beauty can a single tourist stand? It was all too much so we retreated to a Sake Bar for a little sake sipping, then we headed over for a return visit to the excellent Hachi Record Store and Bar. By then, we were dead on our feet and not at all prepared for the long walk home – or for the fact that both of the restaurants we tried to visit were inexplicably closed – first world problems I know. In the end we settled for a beer and ramen (they even had vego ramen) at the local ramen shop. Ta da!
flyeelookee 