Tuesday, April first, found us traveling from Japan’s current capital, Tokyo, to its former capital, Kyoto.
The day was sunny, and we received a pleasant surprise in the morning: we could see Mt. Fuji from our hotel room. Not well, mind you, but we could see it (the view is actually a little better than my picture indicates). In addition, Tokyo Tower was clearly visible.
Looking at Mt. Fuji became a major part of our morning, as the Shinkansen (bullet train) route brought us very close to the famous mountain. We are both saddened that this was our last trip on the Shinkansen, but we will still have a number of local trains to take before we can truly miss Japan’s rail system.
Naturally, we took pictures, a large number of which feature beautiful views of telephone poles, buildings, trees, wires, tunnel walls, and other miscellanea. Believe it or not, it is actually a challenge to take a picture of something when you’re traveling at 250+km/hour, even something as big as Mt. Fuji. Though I know you’re dying to see some, I will save those for another time.
On the same trip, we also saw several fields of tea, a crop that is grown in abundance in Southern Honshu, but which we haven’t seen at all in the Northern parts.
Oh, and here’s a special shot for Amanda’s nan. I think she’ll appreciate it.
After arriving in Kyoto, we made our way to the hotel to drop off our luggage. We ended up resting for a few hours in the new (tiny) hotel room before heading out to a museum that is literally around the corner.
The Museum of Kyoto is, ostensibly, about the history of Kyoto and its development. It is tiny, however, and its exhibits are minimally translated, so I really can’t recommend it to anyone who cannot read Japanese (by comparison, the Edo-Tokyo museum is at least 4 times the size, and everything is labeled in English). I think it took less than an hour to look around the Kyoto Museum. Regardless, there were a few cool looking exhibits, so a few pictures were taken (and there was an exhibit about the development of film in Japan, which included some of Kurosawa’s work and Gojira; it was cool, despite having no English).
After the museum, we wandered around a covered shopping district (Teramichi) for a while, picking up a few souvenirs and whatnot while marveling at some amazingly pricey things (that we didn’t buy, but often wanted to). There were also a few shrines in the area, so we popped in to look at those as well.
I would like to draw special attention to two things. First, a cannibalistic crab, and second, the Japanese view of what Colonel Sanders’ would have looked like if shrimp had taken over the world.
truth9
Amanda