Kyoto

I headed to Kyoto for a long weekend (skipping class already) while the Gion Matsuri was on. It's considered one of Japan's biggest festivals and involves preparing 32 huge floats to parade around the city. This festival started 1000 years ago while a plague swept through Japan. The floats were thought to enter the spirit world during their course around the city, which allowed the people to pray for the dead. It has continued every year and is supposedly the original Festival of the Dead (or Obon).

My first trip on the bullet rain:

Breakfast of Japanese champions! You can get really cheap takeaway meals like this sushi platter for $3, but there is rarely any chairs to sit on to eat, and since it's considered taboo to eat while you walk in Japan it makes it really difficult to have a cheap brekky on the run. Buying a starbucks coffee was the easiest solution. Too bad it cost more than the sushi.

After 4pm the major roads were closed and pedestrianised to allow food vendors, musicians and many other stalls to open up for the evening as part of the celebrations. The best part was that about half the city was dressed in yukata (summer kimonos) with their hair up in buns and the pretty hair pieces dangling down the sides. It made the whole festival feel so much cooler.

These girls were so happy when I asked if I could take their photograph!

Kyoto is just beautiful. There are thousands of shrines and gardens, and most aren't even signposted if they're not considered top notch. So I went to a few of the popular ones but for the rest I just explored on my own and stumbled across a few of these places:

Kyoto is situated in a valley and up one of the mountain is a hiking path covered with bright orange Torii gates. I've heard about the bus loads of tourist that get dumped here every morning so I got up bright and early at 6am to make the hike by myself. It was so surreal, especially when the early morning sun shone through the gaps between the gates.

There are shrines along the way called the Fushimi Inari shrines (fox shrines), and there are statues of foxes throughout which guard each shrine. At the end you could buy a fox template, decorate it and leave it at the shrine for good luck. 

To finish off the trip I wanted to go somewhere nice for lunch to trial some typical Kaiseki ryoori food. I stumbled across a restaurant with a large queue out the front, so of course I decided toe at there. And of course I got the deluxe meal that had a little bit of everything. After 30 minutes I was led inside to a beautiful wooden bar with only 5 seats facing the chef's and their working bench. They all worked so quickly putting the meal together and placed it in front of me.

It looked incredible, but unfortunately I had no idea how I was supposed to eat it without doing something offensive. Luckily the people next to me had just received their meals so I just copied them. There was some sweet, grilled fish/eel dish, then some amazingly crispy tempura, and the softest sashimi I've ever eaten. All accompanied by pickles, dried seaweed (which you're supposed to eat dry with rice, we're doing it wrong in Australia), cold green tea, miso soup, a tofu dish, rice, and I think dried shrimp? The verdict: one of the best meals I've ever eaten, especially when considering how unique and intimate it was!

I finished off my trip to Kyoto with a walk around Gion, and was lucky enough to see a geisha hurry past with an entourage of girls holding her umbrella and bag. The photos are on my camera so they'll have to wait.

The festival was so incredible that I decided to return mid week (and skip yet another day of class) to see the actual parade. Photos of that to come soon.