Japan: Kobe to Kyoto

John:  Japan is our last stop before heading home to the US; after here, we head across the Pacific to San Diego, stopping only for a day in Hawaii to refuel. So there is some melancholy attached to this port, a sense of a good thing approaching the end. And there is some fatigue as well; if Japan were our first stop rather than our last, we would surely be more excited and prepared with plans for what to see and do. As it is, after being in Singapore, Vietnam, and three different cities in China all in the course of the last two weeks, we are a little wiped out and need to dig deep to summon the energy we need to explore this new place.

Still, Japan! A place that we have never been, never realistically expected to visit, and that has much to explore than we could possibly accomplish in a year, much less a week. That is more than enough to overcome our tiredness. And, too, we are arriving right at the peak of cherry-blossom season, which is a special time of year here. The Explorer is set to dock in two ports, Kobe and Yokohama. We arrived in Kobe on Tuesday morning to some fanfare: the city sent out a fire boat, and we were greeted by a brass band:

Arrival in Kobe, 7 am. That's the fireboat ahead, its plumes of water leading us into the dock. 

We ended up not seeing much of Kobe, though, in the two days that the ship was docked here. And that's too bad; it's a nice city, a port city with a dramatic backdrop of mountains, and it has completely recovered from a very powerful earthquake that leveled a big part of the city and killed thousands of people about fifteen years ago. But the kind of historical monuments that we wanted to see were more in Kyoto, which is not far. So we booked a hotel in Kyoto (about which more later) and took the train there. Not a bullet train this time--such a thing does not run between Kobe and Kyoto--but a regular fast train, which is still a lot faster and more efficient than anything we are used to in the US. We crowded in between the commuters, many of them men in what seems to be the business uniform of dark suit, white shirt, tie; clearly business dress here is pretty conservative. Overall, people dressed here a lot like Americans, although occasionally we saw women in beautiful traditional kimonos.

(Editorial warning: yet another history lesson ahead.) Kyoto was the capital of Japan for centuries until the middle of the nineteenth century, when Japan was forcibly opened to foreign trade (by American gunboats), the shogunate fell, and the capital was moved to Tokyo. The city was never bombed in WWII, so there are still some older structures here, though most of them are on the perimeter of the city; the center of Kyoto is often fairly drab, cherry blossoms notwithstanding. But it's all laid out on a grid, so it's navigable, and in fact we had very little trouble traveling around the city by bus; Kyoto has a good and efficient bus system, and, crucially for us, the best bus maps I've ever seen.  Every stop is announced in Japanese, English, and Chinese, making the bus, for once, a better choice than the taxi cabs we have often been taking.

We headed out to the Kiyomizu-dera temple complex, a Buddhist temple dating to the eighth century that enjoys a stunning situation on hills over the city, and right now is decorated beautifully with cherry trees in full bloom:

The "hondo" or main building at the Kiyomizu-dera temple. This was built in 1633, and apparently it's considered a remarkable example of this kind of construction.

Aidan purifying his hands before entering the temple.

We walked from there as it started to get dark to the Gion neighborhood, which has shopping and nightlife, including Kyoto's geisha district, which is one of the last of these in Japan. And we saw a geisha! She was being led to a black car by an older businessman, and there was a row of similar black cars with drivers outside a building that we took to be a geisha house, a premise confirmed by a check with Wikipedia; there were tourists outside waiting for other geishas to come out with other rich guys. Mostly, the street consists of older buildings that are now restaurants with eye-popping prices. We found a delicious and more affordable dinner a couple of blocks away.

Our hotel in Kyoto was billed as a traditional Japanese-style hotel, which was sort of true; rather than Western-style beds, it had futon mattresses laid out on tatami mats. The clientele, though, was Western backpacker-types attracted by the (for Japan) cheap prices and proximity to the train station. We all uncurled our mattresses and went to sleep together:

Our room in the Sparkling Dolphin Inn, so called, we realized when we turned out the lights, because of the glow-in-the-dark dolphins and stars on the ceiling.

The next day, we went to the Golden Pavilion, another famous temple on the periphery of town. And gold here is not a metaphor--the Pavilion is covered in gold leaf:

The Golden Pavilion.

From there, we went to the Nijo Castle at the center of town. This was the home base of the shogun, who really had the power in Japan. There are no pictures allowed of the interior, and it was pouring rain, so we could not get good pictures of the exterior, but it's a remarkably beautiful and serene building inside. It's easy to see here why and how modernist architects drew inspiration from traditional Japanese buildings--the spaces are somehow impressive without being showy, and the use of natural materials--wood, bamboo, matting--creates a sense of warmth.

On to Yokohama!