Sunday, April 15: Kyoto

Our breakfast - yum!

We began our day by heading to the banquet hall in our ryokan for a Japanese style buffet breakfast. There were tons of options! My favorites were the creamy, crab-esque mashed potatoes and also the slice of Japanese sweet potato. Mark's favorite was the salmon, of course. They also had fruit cocktail - which is similar to ours except there are colored and clear gelatin cubes in it (firmer than jello). Intriguing.

Japanese fruit cocktail with gelatin cubes

Japanese toilets are awesome. Heated seats, built-in butt squirters and bidets, clever use of tank lid as a faucet to wash your hands,  and option of a fake flushing sound to cover up those more embarrassing bathroom visits.

Then we headed to church. We only got lost a little getting to the subway station, but we had allowed ourselves time for that and still made it to church early. The missionaries were all from the U.S. and they swarmed us. Apparently they don't get English speaking visitors too often. A nice younger guy who had served his mission in San Francisco and attends BYU-Hawaii translated for us. Everyone was extremely friendly and gave us some good travel tips.

On the way to church

Mark likes getting his picture taken with trains

It was a gorgeous day. About 70 degrees and the sun was shining. We headed to our hostel after that, put down our bags, and rented bikes to go explore more of Kyoto. We rode up the river on the trail right next to it. Apparently this is a very popular spot for Kyotians on a Sunday afternoon. Again, people lay out on their blue tarps and enjoy food, fun, friends, and family. What amused me most was an old man sitting by himself singing old-style Japanese songs into a microphone. The river was lined with blossoming cherry trees, so this made for a great ride. I hadn't been on a bike for 5 years, so my poor butt suffered the consequences of a long ride afterward.

A pretty blossoming tree along our ride.

Every summer, these symbols in the mountains get lit on fire. Yes, the Japanese are so hardcore they set their mountains ON FIRE.

We took a detour from the river to visit a site that had been highly recommended to us, The Golden Pavilion. Thusfar, we hadn't paid to enter any of the temples, but our guidebook said this was a very popular site and we couldn't see anything from the outside, so we went ahead and paid the admission fee. And wow, was it worth it. I think I said "wow" at least a dozen times as we walked through. It is a gold-plated temple situated on a beautiful and picturesque pond. There were herons and gorgeous scenery. The pictures describe it better than words can, but being there in person was simply amazing. At that point of our trip, this was by far my favorite thing that I had seen.

At shrines, tying your fortunes to string-lined poles is pretty popular

Afterwards we headed back to our hostel but decided to stop for a very late lunch/early dinner. Unfortunately for us (good for them!), most restaurants are closed on Sundays aside from chains. We ended up grabbing a bite at a cheap Japanese fast-food joint (we had thinly sliced beef over rice with miso soup and pickled salad). It was very mediocre. We took another detour on the way back to bike through the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park, which is quite extensive. Lots of grassy areas to enjoy picnics and again, lots of cherry blossoms. I am so glad we hit Kyoto during peak cherry blossom season.

This was a sign advertising a beauty salon. Probably not the best English word choice.

In Kyoto Imperial Palace Park

We got back to the hostel (By the way - this hostel was great! It is called K's House and we would highly recommend it to anyone traveling in Japan. It was better than all our hotels except the ryokan. We had a private room (bathrooms are shared but this wasn't an issue), everything is clean, extremely friendly and helpful staff, great location.) and crashed. I fell dead asleep around 7. I really wanted to stay asleep and neither of us wanted to go out but we decided to go out anyway to try to conquer our jet lag. We just walked around near the Kyoto station and Kyoto tower areas. I really wanted to hit up the 100 yen store (equivalent to our dollar stores), but it was closed. We will be back!

An entire row of toy vending machines in Yodobashi Kyoto - and it continued in the next aisle!

Then we walked into the craziest store I have ever been to - called Yodobashi Kyoto. This is a chain store than can be found in all the major cities in Japan. It was a store with 8 stories, each floor about the size or a large Safeway or Kroger. I described it to Mark as Amazon.com in the form of a store. Electronics, toys, kitchen items, beauty/drug, clothing - they had everything except groceries. The top floor was like a food court. We were stupefied. There were so many choices for each item - an entire row of iPad covers, at least 6 aisles of rice cookers, at least 200 bike models, an entire section dedicated to camera tripods, etc. It was unbelievable. We will probably go back there before we leave Kyoto to get food at the food court.

Then we basically sleep-walked back to our room and crashed.