KYOTO

My old friend living in Nara prefecture mailed me and asked if I would have liked to see the cherry blossoms in Kyoto. Kyoto is very famous place. So I decided to go one day trip to Kyoto.

I headed for Kyoto at 8:20 by Shinkansen with my friend. We were so excited and actually she was more, with her first trip to Kyoto. When we arrived at Kyoto station at 10:37, my old friend waited for us there.
All of us took a local bus to Ginkaku Temple. 15 mins later, we arrived. When I went to Ginkaku Temple first, I was an innocent teenager. I expected very much to see this historical arichtecture I had seen on a text book at history class. "Gin" as in "Ginkaku Temple" means shilver. Ooooops, I'll stop telling you now. Don't be desappointed when you see it. That's all I want to say.
Then we had lunch that seemed like a vegetarian food monks eat for their ascetic practies. The plate I ordered was not like that though. After enjoying with healthy lunch, we took a walk from Ginkaku Temple to Nazen Temple on a path named "Tetsugaku no Michi (Philosophy's path)" as seeing loads of beautiful cherry blossoms planted along the path. We got a shower of cherry blossom sometimes when the wind blew up. It was brilliant view and it made me glad I was in Japan.


After 1.5Km walking, we got to Nanzen Temple and saw an old cannel created ages ago by only human power -it means no electricity used. It's still worked since then.

We walked around for one hour since we had lunch so we took a break at a small tea shop with a beautiful Japanese garden. Needless to say, we had a bowl of Japanese tea and ate a small traditional sweet.


We got on a subway to go back to city center. Then walked along Kamogawa-river and walk through Bontocho Street.There are lots of conventional Japanese restaurants that is told that they don't accept a customer who visit with no information form from its regular customer. Without care of this rumore, this area got me set for a time trip.


After I was away on a time trip, we went shopping to Nishiki-Koji Street, as to speak, it is a kind of market street. There are many greengrocers, fish shops and well-known pickles' shops.




At 18:30 in front of gate of Kyoto station, I said "thank you and see ya" to my old friend and my another friend who was a partner of this one day trip left for Osaka to see her friends. I got on Shinkansen to go back to Tokyo on my own, with a can of beer "EBISU" and Niku-man "Chinese Poke Ball (?)".




Normally, people will stay a couple of night in or around Kyoto because there are lots of ancient artichectures and beautiful scenary to see. It means it would be hard to carry out a schedule you fix if you want to see lots of place.
However I went to there just one day, it was much nicer and more enjoyable than it woud have been. If you have strong strength and energy to walk all day along, I will rememend this one day trip.