Vacation part 3: Kyoto day 1

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed being in Kyoto. I often heard about how Kyoto was the home of many a temple and shrine, offering a glimpse into the Japan of centuries past with its traditional architecture and famous tourist spots. It was, after all, the former Imperial capital of Japan, where the Emperor was once seated. It makes sense that Kyoto would have a great deal of history. But I had my doubts about whether Kyoto was all that it was claimed to be, or if it was just a tourist trap. 

My family and I ended up enjoying it a lot, so much so that I'd call it one of my best experiences in Japan thus far. Despite being one of Japan's larger cities, it felt much more accessible than Tokyo, and despite its size painstakingly maintains some of the most beautiful, historical places in Japan. But before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this story (I hope someone gets that reference).

Our first day in Kyoto wasn't that long; we arrived in the early afternoon and didn't have much of a plan, so we were able to go out on our own as we pleased. My dad found out about a spot called the Bamboo Forest, which we decided to check out after lunch. 

Unfortunately, we never found it, because I had the map and my sense of direction is unfortunately not the best. But we did find some unexpected and incredible places, all in the area of Arashiyama, a district in the west part of Kyoto. The first thing we noticed when getting to Arashiyama station was the abundance of colorful, patterned tubes. It was almost like walking into an artificial forest of sorts, and was fittingly called the Kimono Forest. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because the tubes contained patterns that would be found on kimono.

The tubes form a pathway that leads to a small pool of water that has a sphere with a dragon design resting on the top. 

Compared to everything else we saw in Japan, I wouldn't really describe it as spectacular, but the fact that we were able to stumble upon something this unique and interesting without even really trying was a pleasant surprise. The more we travelled around Kyoto, the more we got that feeling that there was something unexpected and exciting waiting at every turn; the city offers its massive, touristy famous spots, but at the same time there are so many smaller spots that are less known by no less wondrous, and that's truly what made our time in Kyoto so great: the things we didn't expect or know about.

Speaking of things we didn't know about, while walking around trying to find the Bamboo Forest in vain, we happened to stumble upon a UNESCO World Heritage site: Tenryu-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple. While we didn't see that much because it was going to close to the public soon after we found it, we did do some exploring, and just the fact that we stumbled on something as important as a World Heritage site while wandering around Kyoto was amazing enough for me.

Keeping with the theme of stumbling onto the unexpected, that night we also stumbled upon our dinner. As we were walking back to our hotel, I noticed a noodle restaurant and so we ate there. On top of having delicious noodles, it was also nice to eat there because it was one of the few experienced we had that, I felt, weren't particularly touristy. We weren't eating in some big restaurant, or something in a train station or somewhere that's heavily populated by tourist traffic. It was just a low-key noodle place; it had maybe ten or so tables in total and was pretty small, and just had various noodle dishes. Granted, the menus were in English, but it didn't feel like a place that went too far out of its way to appeal to tourists, just a typical Japanese restaurant. The only other person who came into the restaurant while we were there was an older woman. It reminded me of the local  restaurants I've been to back in America, ones that don't feel like they're made with the intention of catching as wide a clientele as possible but are just there, run by local people for other local people, without being made with loftier expectations in mind. It was a nice change of pace form the more crowded places we usually ate at, and we had some good noodles to boot!

Then, came the second day...which I'll go into in another post because a whole lot happened that day and I think it's got enough material to stand on its own. Plus, since classes haven't started yet and I've just been hanging on campus aimlessly the past few days, drudging up motivation to do anything is kind of hard. The first day of boredom feels like a nice release from responsibility, and it's fun to actually be able to literally do nothing of any importance whatsoever, but when the second day rolls around the appeal fades, and the boredom just becomes routine. And when boredom comes, apathy is close behind. But I won't delay too long because I need to write this stuff down as soon as possible before I forget anything! Already, I feel like I've forgotten important details in these posts that I should have posted.