Tales from 京都!

Originally called Heian-kyo - "The capital of peace and tranquility", Kyoto served as Japan's capital for over a century, from 794-1868. Which means that Tokyo, as a capital city (and a sprawling metropolis), is actually a fairly recent development in Japanese history. In fact, the name Kyoto means "capital city", while Tokyo means "eastern capital", thus all but ensuring that I will never, ever keep their respective characters straight.

But while I may stumble over kanji, I will always jump at the opportunity to explore ancient capital cities, and the past four days were absolutely magnificent.

Six of us traveled together, all Americans, via the two-and-half-hour highway bus from Nagoya to Kyoto JR station. Our hostel was about an eight-minute walk from the station, and was as clean, welcoming, and cozy as we could have wanted. For 2500 yen/night (just under $25 USD), we got dorm-style bunk beds, clean sheets, curtains to hang for privacy, and staff who knew pretty much everything about sightseeing in Kyoto.

And we tried our damnedest to see everything, including:

Kinkaku-ji - the famed "golden pavilion" at Rokuonji temple.
Ginkaku-ji - a temple on the other side of the city with a "silver pavilion" that was never actually gilded.
Kiyomizu-dera - an enormous, beautiful temple on a hill overlooking Kyoto, with streams of water that are supposed to grant long life and wisdom if you drink from them.
Fushimi Inari-taisha - a famous shrine featuring a series of bright-orange torii gates, stretching for miles up a mountainside, which we climbed for a while, and through which local sports teams like to run for training.
Heian-jingu- a shrine established in 1895 to celebrate the 1100th anniversary of the city, and the first and last emperors to reside in Kyoto.
Nijo-jo - an enormous castle built by the Tokugawa shoguns.
Sanjyusangen-do - a temple famous for its hall with 1000 gilded statues of the thousand-armed Kannon (a Buddhist deity) and 28 statues of the heavenly guardians of Buddha.
To-ji - a five-story pagoda which we never actually went to visit, but walked by several times on the way to and from the hostel.
The Museum of Kyoto - a museum established in 1995 to celebrate the 1200 year anniversary of Kyoto, featuring a beautiful exhibit of the work of Kaii Higashiyama, my new favorite painter, as well as a hall detailing the history of Kyoto.
The National Museum at Kyoto - I only bought a ticket to see the collection, but it was staggeringly old and lovely.
Gion - formerly the geisha district, narrow wooden streets filled with teahouses, and a wider stretch lined with shops and bright lanterns, with the Kamo river at its edge.

I saw five UNESCO world heritage sites, six national treasures, one maiko (girl studying to be a geisha), and nearly half of the middle-school tour groups in Japan. We sang karaoke; I ate sweet-potato flavored soft-serve ice cream, I took over 500 pictures, rode city buses from one corner of Kyoto to the other, and the six of us even trekked to a nearby sento - public bathhouse - to soak, much to the amusement of the women who regularly bathed there.

As if the trip hadn't been joyous enough, as we walked to the station on Saturday morning, it had already begun to snow, hard, which it continued to do for the rest of the day into the evening. I woke up this morning to bright, hard sunlight, and snow-covered rice paddies stretching off into the distance.

Hurrah for strange holidays and freak snowstorms!