Wednesday Day 4 – We go back to downtown Osaka on a direct subway and roam around until we find Osaka Castle. It’s a little difficult to find historical landmarks because there are so many large buildings developed around them. The Osaka castle is breathtaking – imagine a square the size of two football fields with a 20 foot high stone wall built behind big and deep moats. It’s amazing that this 16th century castle could ever be constructed. We tour the inside of the castle (reconstructed of course to meet modern building standards) and see many of the same artifacts like suits of armor that we saw in Hiroshima’s castle. From Osaka we wanted to go to Kyoto to meet Miye for lunch. We could take the 1 hour subway trip, but instead decide to go on the Shinkansen (an awfully expensive luxury afforded by the fact we get unlimited use of the Shinkansen with JR rail passes). We take the bus to Osaka’s train station and a JR train to Shin-Osaka (New Osaka station where the Shinkansen stops) We then take the Shinkansen to the next stop, Kyoto a 15 minute journey. We didn’t save all that much time but it’s much cooler to ride the Shinkansen. While making connections on Japanese subways can be painful because of navigation thru stations, the trains run so frequently – every 2-10 minutes typically, you never have to wait long. Once we were at the Kyoto station we could lock our overnight bags up in a locker – banks of them are found in every train station. We were tired from carrying them around Osaka castle and were happy to dispose of them.
In Kyoto, we wanted to see the Sanjusangendo temple. We walked for a while and reached a religious appearing structure but found it to be a different temple (the opposite direction that we were supposed to go – there are a lot of temples in Kyoto, many with big corporate sponsors like Hitachi). Rather than make another long walk, we tried a taxi – many of which were lined up at the temple. In Kyoto, a taxi is about $7 minimum and after a mile or so the meter starts increasing. Taxis rides are expensive but then again, gas is about $4 a gallon. After the short $9 cab ride (but you don’t tip drivers!), we got off and visited the temple. This particular temple had rows and rows of golden statues along with larger statues from Buddhist history. You can buy candles for $10, write your requests on the candle and have them burned in the temple. Traci didn’t think a 2004 World Series for Seattle was an appropriate request so I passed on the opportunity to enhance our chances for a pennant. We again hopped on a cab and called Miye and met her downtown. We found a nice hole in the wall restaurant Miye knew about where I ordered a $14 Shrimp Yakisoba. I met a traveler from Idaho who was visiting his wife’s relatives and we shared our impressions of this country – 2 x the size of Idaho with 120 times the population! After lunch, we wandered around downtown and went to a shop that sold crepes. I had a crepe with a banana split in it – I basically at the inside and left the crepe outside until we finally found a garbage can (they are hard to find outside in Japan). I realize its considered impolite to walk outside eating something but I don’t quite get why there are so many shops that serve ready to eat food and have no seating area inside, and then to have no garbage cans to dispose of the containers.
After saying goodbye to our Kyoto host, Miye, we took a cab to the Shinkansen station. We had a minor problem in that the locker wouldn’t open when I put the key in. I figured out that you pay in advance 200 yen (about $2) but after two hours you have to pay an additional 100 yen per hour to get your stuff back. We had some time to wander around the shops before our Shinkansen left (They run every half hour, but some go straight to the Tokyo Station and some stop at Shinagawa which is much closer to our hotel, so given it will be rush hour in Tokyo when we arrive I wanted to wait for a Shinagawa Shinkansen). Another lesson to pass along – no matter how much planning you do, you always end up rushing around to catch the train as the stations are so massive that window shopping inevitably leads to you disorientation as to where you need to go to get on your train – Always give yourself time so you are waiting at the gate for the trains. The Shinkansen trains ALWAYS leave on time, so you better not be late! We got on the 3:40pm train and reached Tokyo at 6pm. Rush hour in the Shinagawa was interesting – lots of people milling around but fortunately we only had a couple of stops before reaching Ebisu and the Westin. After re-checking in and having our stored baggage brought up I went to the Club at Yebisu to see what their health clubs are like (more on this later) and we finished the long day by finding department store takeout food nearby.
Continued
