I recently went to Japan as we had an extended break at
work. Having been in Korea for two-and-a-half years, I kept on thinking I
should take advantage of living so close to The Land of the Rising Sun. It’s only an hour flight
from Seoul. After being lied to by the check-in lady and laughed at by the man
at immigration I made it to Kyoto and dropped my bags off at my hostel.
My first stop was at the Yasaka Shrine (founded 656), I hadn’t
planned on visiting this place, but as it was at the end of my street it would
have been rude not to.
The shrine accommodated a main gate, a stage, many statues
and, of course, a crab stick stall. All other shrines I visited didn’t have a
crab stick stall and thus failed to compare.
Soon after, I headed south to the Kiyomizu-dera, a Buddist
Temple (founded in 778, with the current buildings built in 1633). All of the
buildings in the complex are assembled without a single nail. You can tell an
Irishman wasn’t assigned to that particular job.
I made my way further south to the Fushimi Inari-taisha.
This is a compound of shrines all connected by trails. Along the trails you
walk through thousands of torri, or gates to you and I. The trails are about
4km long and take up to 2 hours to walk.
It was a pretty cool place, but if truth be told, I wasn’t
in the mood by that point. I’m British and a little rain won’t deter me, but
there wasn’t a little rain on that particular day, it was pissing it down. It
starts to take its toll after a while. Walking for hours in the heat and
humidity and my umbrella could only protect me from the thrashing rain so much.
My shoes and socks were soaked through. Ultimately, I was braving it all to look
at some orange pillars with Japanese and Chinese scrawl on them.
The one joy I got from sightseeing that day was laughing at
the other tourists who were wearing traditional Japanese kimono. Not all that
funny, but the idiots decided to wear the complete outfit with wooden zori (essentially
wooden flip-flops). Walking down a hill in varnished wooden shoes in the rain
is possibly one of the worst ideas out there. I started to forget about my own
troubles as I watched oversized American tourists dressed like fools repeatedly
stumble down hills.
Back to the hostel, showered, in drier clothes and in a much
better mood I headed out into the Gion district to find me some geishas.
Geishas are “hostesses who mainly entertain male customers”. Not my words, but
the words of Wikipedia. After walking around for a while, I think I only saw 1
geisha and about 30 prostitutes.
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| They didn't have many customers. |
I’m not too sure why the geisha look is still desired. If
you were going out on the town with your missus and she had that much white make-up
on you’d have to have a word with her. Not only that but they’ve got thick,
almost plastic-like hair. It’s not a good look. If you put a bit of red lippy
and a plastic black wig on an albino girl I don’t think they’d get the same
amount of interest…but probably more stares.
Day 2 in Kyoto and I headed for the Tenryu-ji Temple and the
bamboo forest.
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| Someone at the Tenryu-ji Temple has a sense of humour. |
The bamboo forest was very cool. It was here that I realised
the amount humidity that I was due to face that day. It made for some rather
unsightly pictures. Still, at least I’m not Joachim Löw with massive sweat
patches AND getting caught adjusting one’s self live on TV and then sniffing
it. I did that too, it just wasn’t televised.
Finally, I headed for the Kinkaku-ji (The Golden Pavilion).
This was a beautiful place to visit, the building itself was quite incredible,
but I couldn’t truly appreciate it as I was being pushed around by inconsiderate
Chinese tourists (the only people worse than them are Brexit voters). After
only a short while I made my way out and went for a pint.
Kyoto is a pretty cool place. It’s everything you imagine
traditional Japan to be. Apparently there are 1,600 temples and shrines, and I
think the only one I didn’t see was Shirley. There was just too much of it and
the weather didn’t help either. Oh, and too many people. I don’t like people.
