Kyoto - Day 1

The good news: The rain held off most of the day.

The bad news: My memory isn't all that good at 5:30am

I got up at 5:00 and finding there was no rain decide to go for a run before Sumi got up. When I run in Japan I just pick something that looks interesting and run by/around it. This morning I wanted to run by Nagoya Castle, because the grounds were quite large with lots of greenery that is absent from a lot of Japanese cities. It also would be a good 6 mile run. With that in mind I left at about 5:30, making a point to remember what our hotel looks like and off I went.

The run was great. It was still in the 60's and overcast with a light breeze. During the run, I stopped to capture some pictures of the wild life roaming the mean streets of Nagoya

OK, maybe not-so-mean streets

Looking rather well-fed for wildlife

When I reached the castle, I was very surprised to find the moat...full of water.

This was yesterday

And not just some water, but, like, a full moat, complete with swans and koi...

That's a lot of water

I can see the swan, but where the hell did the koi come from?!!?

I had seen water running into the moat when we left yesterday, but there's no way it filled the whole damn moat overnight. We must have (somehow) missed an entire section of the moat yesterday. Stranger things have happened. Anyway, it was a great run, and I returned to the hotel ready to get going to Kyoto.

Well, almost. You see, I couldn't find the hotel.

My running app does a good job of tracking where I've been and has a map with the entire route, which is what I usually use to find my way back when running somewhere unfamiliar. Well, I walked a few blocks to warm up before stretching and running...and didn't start the app until I started running, so I ended my run about 5 blocks from the hotel. And by the time I got back an hour later, I had no idea where those 5 blocks were. I had no internet (I don't carry the wifi when I run), and it was 6:30 in the morning, so no one was around. I then spent the next hour carefully checking each road in an expanding spiral until I finally found the hotel.

This is the Noritake neighborhood. I am now very familiar with it.

After that auspicious beginning, we headed to the station for some breakfast at to catch the shinkansen to Kyoto. A few places that were NOT McDonald's were open for breakfast (McDonald's is one of the only restaurants that opens at 6:00am). We opted for Doutour, a coffee shop chain that has decent food, and had Set A.

Grilled Ham and Egg on the whitest of breads

Japan has yet to discover whole grain anything. Outside of a few European bakeries, Japan's loaves make Wonder bread look like the heaviest of multigrain bread. Of course that means Sumi loves it.

After a quick 30 minute ride to Kyoto we dropped off our bags in a locker and took a subway up to the Imperial Palace. We've been to Kyoto twice and never seen the palace, so we decided to rectify that. The palace grounds are immense, and there's numerous shrines, gardens, and buildings that surround the palace proper.

The palace itself is absolutely huge. We tried to take a picture of the walls that surround the many buildings that make up the palace, but you can't even see the end of the wall.

This wall is roughly 1300m long.

The area inside the walls is about 1300m x 700m and contains several large buildings with various purposes. The palace was the residence the emperors of Japan from about 1150 until the Meiji Restoration in 1869 and was used for all sorts of official business.

A Carriage house for visiting dignitaries

There were apparently three important pieces of sacred imperial "regalia" for the empire: A mirror, a sword, and a seal (think a hanko pattern). The latter two are housed in the imperial residence. The mirror is housed in a rather ornate building set apart from the main palace. It sounds like a bad quest from an old RPG (Collect the three sacred relics of the ancient emperor....) but at least in this case, it's real. 

The world's largest, most expensive, mirror box.

Several gardens surround the main palace buildings

The scope of the palace is very impressive, using ancient Heian architecture to impart a sense of legacy and tradition. It also, due to using traditional bark rooftops rather than ceramic tiles, caused the palace to be susceptible to fires, and it burned down eight times and had to be rebuilt. You would think they would have learned from their previous seven mistakes...

After a long time at the palace, we grabbed lunch, once again, at Coco Curry. I will state for the record that BOTH times it was Sumi who brought it up. Also, we tried to eat at the station, but the two good looking restaurants there (an Udon/Tempura place and a Ramen shop) both had long lines. The Udon restaurant had a line that went out the door and around the corner. I'm going to vote for getting there early for lunch on Friday to give it a shot.

At that point the rain finally arrived, and we decided to just head to the hostel and get settled in. Fortunately, like many cities in Japan, the subway system is so extensive, we were able to walk almost the entire way to the hostel underground, avoiding most of the rain. Tomorrow will likely be a few shrines and temples around Kyoto, which has dozens of them. 

One side note. During my run I came across a construction site that was growing plants while they were working, so by the time the building is completed, there will be a bunch of greenery already part of the structure.