Kyoto, Kimonos and C-C-o-o-o-l--d

Kyoto is well known for beauty, history and for very tourist-friendly. It is one of the  few places on our "Must Do" list to visit while we are stationed in Japan.

We recently visited this amazing city. I have been oh.so.anxious to tell you all the details.

A little bit of knowledge before we start our tour. (What can I say, once a teacher- always a teacher.)

Kyoto (京都, Key-oh-toe) served as Japan's capital and the emperor's residence from 794 until 1868. It has a population of 1.4 million people.
In Japanese Kyoto is written as 京都.
Tokyo, the current capital, is written as 東京.
Notice the same kanji '京 is used for both?

Tokyo means "eastern capital"  while Kyoto means "capital city". Tokyo is also called the 'new capitol' since it has 'only been the capital for 140+ years'. 

We live near Tokyo. First we had to decide how we would get to Kyoto, which is about 330 miles. Normally, with a large family, we find that driving is the most economical way to travel. That all changed when we moved to Japan. 330 miles could easily turn into 20 hours on the road and over $400 in tolls. The tolls were actually the least of our worries. We simply don't get a ton of days off to travel and hated to spend our time sitting in traffic.

I researched taking the "normal" train to Kyoto. It would have been an okay option. A ton of stops, not too comfortable and not cheap.

Then, I looked at the shinkansen. For those of you who don't know what the shinkansen is by it's 'real name', I bet you will recognize it by it's slang name- the "Bullet Train".

I have been looking forward to riding the bullet train. The train travels right at 200 MPH and makes very few stops. It is incredibly safe, having never had a fatality crash. When you can travel far and fast it comes at a price. Each ticket is about $300 round trip. However, if you know me at all you know I found a deal on our travel :)  Bonus: We got to pass right by Mt. Fuji as the sun was rising. It was breathtaking. (The train goes too fast for pictures! I got this one online.)

There is an amazing amount of things to see in Kyoto. Even the kids got into planning our trip. Our oldest was excited to try out his new camera, and the other kiddos wanted to see the sites they had heard about in Japanese class. 

We started out with the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社, foo-she-me in-our-e). There are said to be over 10,000 torii gates here!!!!


Fushimi Inari is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari's messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds.

The toriis are all the same orange-red color. It is called vermilion, but I surely didn't know what color that was until I looked it up.  The toriis are mostly the same size standing at 8 feet tall. You can easily walk through them with a few thousand of your closest friends.

On the back of each torii gates are various "good wishes" and "blessings" messages.  The torii gates are in various conditions. Some are brand new and perfect. Others are quite old and damaged.


Hubby wanted to see Every.Single.One. I heart that man of mine. I really do. He just gets a little compulsive competitive about seeing ALL the sites when we travel. I am more of a 'hit the highlights type' gal. We try to compromise. The 10,000 torii gates is a classic example. 

Here is the map ----->  Now unless you like our crazy friend. cough. cough. Joel, then you don't have to climb the entire thing! In an hour of climbing, we got to where the big red dot is about halfway up before this wife won the battle of climbing. 

This was just our first site of the day. We were trying to get to more sites this day, so- thank you Jesus- I convinced hubby we didn't have to climb ALL.the.WAY.up the massive hill.

Then, IT happened. It started snowing. Now this normally would not stop Matt us from doing anything. But, as is typical for my 'murphy's law', we were not ready for snow. I had checked the weather before we left. It was supposed to be in the low 50's our entire trip. It does not snow in the low 50s!

We had packed sweatshirts and umbrellas. We had packed swimsuits for the pool. We had even packed snacks, drinks and breakfast foods- I told you we hubby is frugal. The boys had packed shorts. They want to wear shorts all the time.  I had insisted the each pack one pair of jeans. We had NOT packed big winter jackets. 

How were we going to tour if we didn't have  jackets? Of course- we had to drive on. We are Army Strong, after all. 

We ran to Daiso (which is like a classier dollar store) and bought gloves, hats and random earmuffs. We put the kids in every shirt they packed. Seriously, every shirt. Over that we put whatever sweatshirt we had. We would have just bought sweatshirts or raincoats if we were in the States. The Japanese people are so tiny that we just can't fit in their clothes. That is why we are wearing the same clothes in all of our pictures. They are-literally- ALL the clothes we had!


We were looking pretty... eclectic. Oh well. No one knows us here.

Next stop: Gion. This is the district where most of the gieshas live, train and put on nightly shows. Beautiful wooden tea houses lined tiny alleyways and 'hid' the traditional  women away. We just wanted to see the women with costumes on. (Obviously we weren't going to see the shows. They can cost about $3000 a night to watch! And, no, geishas are not prostitutes in case you have heard that.) We didn't see any geishas. Not one.  Oh well, it was on our way home anyway. 

Near the Gion district, there's a lot of SHOPPING. I'm talking about high end brands like Dior, Chanel, LV... clearly too rich for my blood, but we looked around. We enjoyed the area, but only after we found some normal priced shops. It ended up we had stumbled on Nishiki Market. This famous "fish market" was already done selling fish for the day.  It was full of cool shops under a dome-like awning. We casually walked around and took in the sites, smells and sounds of Kyoto.

After grabbing dinner, we went back to our fabulous Kyoto hotel. For those of you who will never get to stay in a Japanese hotel, let me point out a few of the cool features. We stayed out at the New Mikayo Hotel right by the Kyoto train station. The hotel is large, very clean and has impeccable service. We had reserved two rooms, each sleeping three people. The hotel had pulled out the couch and made it into the third bed for us. 

Japanese hotels have a ton of goodies for the guests. In the 'bowl of goodies' there are bath sponges, razors, hair bands, brushes, combs and cotton swabs. The shampoo, conditioner and body wash are in large bottles that get refilled every night. They think the small little bottles are a complete waste and harmful to the earth. 

The hotel had the funniest brochure on how to respond in an earthquake.

Come on, did you know you had to put your cigarette out if there was an earthquake?

We slept well and awoke to an even colder day. Ugh! Who write those crazy weather reports anyway??? I mean they were off by 20 degrees! We bundled up in five or more layers and headed out to enjoy ancient Kyoto.

Even a rainy day could not dim the brilliance of the Kinkaku-ji Temple. This temple is better known as the "Golden Pavillion". Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, Golden Pavilion) is a Zen temple in northern Kyoto whose top two floors are completely covered in gold leaf. Five layers of gold leaf actually. It is meant to "shine forevermore".  Kinkaku-ji is a very popular site. It was crowded! 

For the record, they are cuddling with me because it is THAT cold! I knew it was bad when with six layers on I thought about buying a blanket to wrap around me. Luckily, it warmed up after awhile. Or I went numb. I'm not sure which. 


One of the strangest things was that several younger visitors kept taking 'selfies' without even getting the temple in their picture. Most people were trying to get the temple in their pictures and then you would turn and see this chick. The temple is the opposite way, but she was to into getting her own picture to realize. Oh, selfie sticks are everywhere here. It was ridiculous to see! 

After a few more pictures of the Golden Pavilion, we walked around the grounds. There is, of course, a temple. That means there are incense burning and bells to ring. The worshiper rings the bell "to awaken the god" . Then, they clap, bow and pray. 

You can purchase 'fortunes' at the Golden Palace, and many of the shrines and temples throughout Japan. After you read your fortune you tie it to wire racks around the shrine area. They have fortunes in several languages. (We have never bought one, just observed.)

We headed back to the bus. Or was it a train? 

We decided to head off to Sanjusangendo. No, I cannot say it. I just know how to get there. What am I saying? I don't know how to get there! I know how to follow my geography master hubby. First rule of travel, always let the "map man" do his thang and find the way. Second rule: smile while you say that to him!

Sanjusangendo houses 1001 Buddha statues & Hindu deities that are in front of the statues. 

Time Out: I see this type of sites in two ways. We are not in a Judeo-Christian country. We live in Japan. It is not America. Christianity is a tiny percentage here. The Japanese are primarily Buddhists and Shintos. They honor, worship and adore these statues. My family and I do not. However, we believe everyone should have the right to worship the way they want. We will not step on their beliefs. We will not change our beliefs. We explore these temples, shrines and religious places but we do not bow, pray or honor their gods. We pray to a living Jesus and that doesn't change depending on our geography, our mood, our age or audience. Back to the blogging part. Oh, and photo bombing a bit. 

You have to take some mental pictures though because photography is forbidden. Shoes are also forbidden. Which is only funny because you have to put on this slipper things. Not a single pair would fit anyone in my family over the age of 12. Our size 14s were so large they hung off the ends of the shelves!  Like I said, we are large- let's just say "Southern Grown"- people. We had to slip the slippers on and never lift them off the ground. If we lifted out foot the slippers came off and we had to bend down to put them back on. All of that is just disrespectful when people are praying and bowing. So, this large ol' group of white folk were walking through the very long hall trying not to lift their feet or giggle at the situation. Yep, we are that easily amused. 



I was able to find some professional pictures online to show you what we saw. (Why is it okay for professionals to take the pictures but not me?)


After seeing 1001 Buddas we were hungry. We headed to lunch at McDonalds. I know that sounds silly, but we are a large family eating two meals out a day. We have to watch our funds. Mickey D's costs us under $30 to feed 6 people. Then, we eat great Japanese food for dinner. That costs us about $50 a night. So, french fries were our friends on this trip.

Hubby wanted to head to some temple names Kiyomizu-dera next. I had not heard of, but okay. You know what to do...Follow the "map man". Now you are learning! 

Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺, literally "Pure Water Temple") is one of the most celebrated temples of Japan. It was founded in 780! That was many centuries before the US was even founded! Kiyomizu-dera (key-oh-me-zoo) turned out to be a simply stunning Buddhist temple on a very steep hill. In order to get up to the temple you have to walk up with a ton of tourists. 

Here's the twist. A ton of the visitors are wearing traditional clothes. The are stores that "rent the clothing" at the bottom of the hill for $35 a day. You get dressed and have your hair done down at the base of the hill. Then, you climb up to the temple and enjoy the amazing views of Kyoto. We had no idea that was done or we would have brought all of our kimonos and yatakas. I am glad we didn't have to climb in our nice Japanese clothes clothes though. Mainly because they wear socks with wooden sandals that resemble flipflops. I would not want to climb a steep hill in wooden flipflops! 

After a steep climb we arrived at the steps of Kiyomizu-dera. This temple was not only built in 780, it was built WITHOUT nails! What? Yep, no nails in this baby! This temple is best known for its wooden stage that juts out from its main hall, 40 feet above the hillside below. The main hall, which together with the stage houses the temple's primary object of worship, a small statue of the eleven faced, thousand armed Kannon.

The views were worth every single step we took. The kids will always remember this temple simply because we were in awe of how it was built.

Our bodies were exhausted so we headed back to find some ramen and miso soup. (Maybe if Americans slowed down long enough to drink some hot soup before they ate, it would help us not eat as much.) Train stations are a great place to find ramen so we knew just where to go. 

On our way back we came upon a fun surprise. The Kyoto train station is a very modern building with some amazingly cool sections. Almost all of it is 'outside', but under an awning of sorts that keeps the weather at bay. The "stairs" are over 8 stories of quite steep outdoor steps. On either side of the stairs are escalators that run constantly. (There are elevators inside the building. 

Earlier in the day we had seen hundreds of people lined up around the stairs. They were cheering on athletes who were "running the stairs". There were news cameras and announcers. Well, we thought it was neat, but we didn't really understand what they were saying so we moved on.  Chalk that one up to another random thing we have seen in Japan. 

We went about our day and returned that night to eat. We arrived to see some random lights coming from across the station. We decided to walk toward the lights are see what they were. Well, lo and behold, the lights were coming from the stairs! The stairs turned into art the minute the sun went down. It was Valentine's Day, so that was the theme. There were bears giving each other gifts, a bunny eating a Kyoto chocolate bar and random other designs. The kids ran the stairs and "oooed and aahhhed". It was a creative, fun surprise and typically cute Japan.

After a few donuts from Mister Donut, we headed off to dreamland in our comfy beds.

We woke up early the next day to head out to another temple. Do you see a theme here?

This time we hit Toji Temple (toe-g). This temple was close to our hotel and we only had a few hours before our next train.  The Zen gardens were peaceful and relaxing. The area made for some great pictures as well. There were red buckets filled with water at every temple we saw. Apparently, if a fire starts you can are supposed to grab the bucket and put out the flames. OK. I think we made need some more buckets?

Finally, we shuttled off to our fabulous bullet train. Did I mention that the train only stays in each stay for 65 seconds! The car we were supposed to get on had so many people getting off that the 15 second bell went off. Luckily, Matt yelled, "Jump on the next car!" We did and barely got on the car before the buzzer went off. It was nutzo!

Kyoto was an education, a joy and a pleasure. It may be one of my favorite cities ever. It is that cool to see the mix of new and old Japan. We saw so many foreign tourists in this town! It has over 15 million visitors a year, but only about 500,000 of those are non-Japanese. Japanese love their own history as much as we do :)

Off to Hiroshima my huge crew goes. Trying to teach these kiddos about the world is exhausting. Good thing they are so cute! Back on the train we go!

Stay Tuned, we're not done yet ~

Aggie Amy