Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Kyoto
A few years ago we visited Milan and found that there seemed to be a church on every corner, if the local tourist board here in Japan's old capital don't have a catchy line for their advertising they could always use "Kyoto... It's like Milan... but with Buddha", there are quite literally hundreds of temples here. The temples are also quite spread out, around a city that seems to get larger every time you try to walk anywhere, so we quite quickly took to the buses! It was well worth all the trekking about though as there are some quite fantastic buildings here, many of which probably appear on the front of guidebooks and holiday brochures, and it seems as if half the town has World Heritage status for one reason or another. I'm sure you won't want to hear about them all one by one, but there are of course many photos to tell the story (Golden Pavillion, Kiyomizu-Dera, Fushimi-Inari, Ryoan-Ji, Nijo Castle, Koryu-Ji).
Kyoto will also be remembered for (so far) the strangest place we have stayed on our trip. We had been in hotels for over a week so we were looking forward to getting back to a hostel environment, however even though we'd booked a week in advance all the places we'd seen recommended were full. This left us with a hostel that we'd seen advertised on the notice board of the place we stayed in Tokyo. It looked OK(ish) and they had a nice little map to help you find the place. It still took us a while to track it down and it was dark by the time we arrived, it looked like quite a nice place although there was a notable absence of anyone resembling a member of staff. After a few minutes of waiting we figured out the little poster which explained that we should pick up the telephone and hit a speed dial button to summon assistance. Nobody answered the phone but after a few minutes someone turned up, he didn't speak any English but we eventually figured out that he was telling us that we were in the wrong building. Oops. Conveniently though it seemed to be owned by the same people and we just needed to be on the other side of the (very) narrow lane. So, relieved that we'd eventually found the place, we wandered across the road...... and into a building that didn't actually appear to have been finished yet. Lovely. There was however a black and white printed piece of A4 taped to the wall announcing that we had indeed found the fine establishment for which we had been searching. Fortunately the lady at 'reception' (a small side room with a steel door) knew who we were and was expecting us, so things were going well. Things got even better when she showed us the common room, which had free internet access (look, you get to be grateful for these little things after a while!).
Then she started to show us around and it started to get a bit scary again....... The kitchen, oh the kitchen. About the only thing that looked safe to use was the microwave, although it might be better to leave the room when it was actually on unless you needed an X-Ray. The toilet, that's THE toilet, the one and only toilet for the whole building. Also, it was a Japanese toilet, not a 'Western' toilet, I won't go into details except to say that these things are tricky to use unless you've been trained in the art of crouching from a young age..... It was also technically the GENTS toilet, the ladies were given the use of a Western toilet but that was, um, in the other building.... back across the street! The single shower room was also designated as the mens shower, the ladies had a much nicer shower, but that was..... er..... yup, you've guessed it, back across the road again, and it was only open between 9am and midnight!!
But after all that it really wasn't such a bad place (honestly!). The room was quite large, the sleeping mats reasonably comfortable, and there was a fridge outside our room where we could store drinks. There was no laundry as such, but there was a household washing machine which was free to use. We had the company of some interesting guests (inmates?), a solo American traveller, a Scottish bloke (whose wife never appeared), a Japanese man who seemed to be a book salesman, and a monk. The monk was quite a character, quite an achievement considering that he never really spoke a word to anyone, but every night he would cook himself an identical and impressive looking meal (he was the only one actually using the kitchen) and proceed to sit in the middle of the room, apparently oblivious to everyone else, and eat..... whilst listening to his iPod (this is the 21st century after all).
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