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Tōkyō is cramped for space — and you can tell this with the packed together buildings, multiple-layer expressways which are built atop rivers and canals, and the tiny little cube vehicles that seem to be really popular in the middle of the city. Rush hour traffic is more akin to a sea of people flowing down the streets into shops and subway stations alike.
Kyōto, however, feels completely different.
Kyōto is the old capital of Japan — the Emperor's family lived here between 794 and 1868 — and it definitely has a more traditional feel to it than some of the other places I’ve been while here. That said, Kyōto doesn't really feel Japanese at all, when you’re standing in the major shopping precincts around the central station. The major streets in the centre are lined with boulangeries, patisseries, supermarkets and coffee shops emblazoned with western names. It feels more like someone plucked an area out of Paris or New York, and mixed it in with a bit of Japanese culture — so much so that if you had been randomly teleported to the centre, the only way you could tell this was a Japanese city is the way there's the occasional shop selling novelty tourist merchandise, the lines of vending machines, and the traffic signals.
Before I continue, let me speak a bit about the latter two from that list.
Vending machines are all over the place in Japan. They’re a quick and incredibly convenient way of purchasing a whole variety of goods, including drinks, flowers, cigarettes and instant noodles — and, according to the official Japan Guide there’s approximately 5.52 million of them, raking in about 6.95 trillion yen annually. Drinks vending machines are the most common, being found on almost every other street corner, park, station or middle of nowhere with a lamp post. The ones I’ve seen stock iced teas and coffees, energy drinks, Pocari sweat* and other assorted soft drinks. Some are even dedicated to beers — something that is unimaginable in places like the UK. They all look identical, save for the markings and company logos on their sides, and the prices for items within them are usually pretty consistent.
While there have been instances of vandalised machines, the low crime rate in Japan means that vending machines live long, healthy lives and can be quite “technologically advanced” compared to the ones we see in the west. These machines are so ingrained into Japanese culture that most people living there don’t question why there are so many of them; they question why other countries don’t have as many as Japan.
Traffic signals in Japan are horizontal compared to the UK’s vertical layout. They’re also marked on Google maps for some reason, but they’re generally found at every major intersection in a city. Pedestrian crossings can usually be found at every light, as well as crossing some smaller intersections which don't have lights or much traffic — turning traffic must give way to pedestrians if the green man is shown, leading to weird tailbacks in rush hour.
Pedestrian crossings are usually accompanied with a loud crossing siren. These come in two sounds which were pretty standard in the cities I visited, so north-south and east-west signals on the same intersection sound different. One sounds like a 7-11 “customer entered” sound – a sort of “bing-bong” – and the other one is an electrical “chirp” sound.
Anyway. Back to Kyōto.
The hotel I stayed at in Kyōto, the Gran Ms Hotel, is situated right in the middle of what seems to be a shopping district. The streets around it are wide with plenty of places to park and the pavements covered with permanent canopies that gently play obnoxious “muzak” as people bustle along them.
Take one of the side streets away from these main shopping streets, however, and you’re transported to a much more rustic city. The busy hustle of the high streets dies down to a gentle rumble and small Japanese-style buildings line the backstreets — some even with traditional wooden façades. It’s easy to get lost down these little streets, as Kyōto’s heart is based on a grid layout, and they all seem to be pretty sameish.
Kyōto has a plethora of famous shrines scattered around it; the most notable of them being Kinkakuji (the golden pavilion) – and its spiritual successor Ginkakuji (silver pavilion) — the Daisen-in (and others in that area) which is known for its Zen rock gardens, and the Fushimi Inari Shrine — the fox shrine — which has Torii gate tunnels snaking through the mountainous forests. The area around Kyōto is famous too: Kobe (famous for its beef steaks), Nara and Osaka are easily reachable by train and offer further endless day trips if you ever get bored of Kyoto.
When you first arrive into Kyōto by train, you’ll enter the ridiculous rail station. This structure is 15 floors high and is packed with shops (the two basement floors are shopping malls!) entertainment venues, cinemas, offices etc etc. The first three floors are the station platform floors, as you go up there appears to be floors of restaurants and the weird skeletal structure that makes up (or possibly “holds up”) the roof.
Outside of the station stands the Kyōto tower. I didn’t personally visit this — in fact, I didn’t even see it due to travelling away from the station when I arrived in a small taxi in rush hour, and using the subway system when I returned to Tokyo.
During my first day in Kyoto, my parents and I visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine — a shrine dedicated to Inari, the Shintō god of rice. This shrine is known as “the fox shrine” as Inari’s messengers are supposedly foxes. It stands atop the sacred Mount Inari, and is famous for its thousands of torii gates, which build tunnels that snake up the hillside. The top of mountain is at 233 metres and can be visited by walking along the torii gate pathways.
I didn’t climb all the way to the top when I visited, due to the huge amounts of people there and the excessively hot weather which brought us to a standstill about ⅔ of the way up. Instead of going to the top, we instead made our way back downhill and took a train to the Higashiyama district.
Higashiyama district is one of the city’s best preserved historic districts, and looks very much like “old Kyōto” — narrow alleyways, wooden buildings and traditional-style shops selling handicrafts and souvenirs. Renovation is also currently underway to remove or hide modern structures, such as telephone poles, and repave the streets in a more traditional style.
The district is located along the slopes of Kyōto’s eastern mountains, and it seems that the higher you get, the more traditional it feels. The main part of the district is a short, approximately 2 kilometre walk between the Yasaka and Kiyomizudera shrines.
On the second day we were in Kyōto, we continued our shrine-hopping tour. The first one visited was Kinkakuji, or the Golden Pavilion.
Kinkakuji is the only remaining building in the retirement complex of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. It has burnt down several times in during existence — both by accident and on purpose. The upper two floors are gilded in gold leaf, the bottom floor uses the traditional wood and plaster walls. Each floor of the pavilion is styled with a different architecture: the ground floor is built in Shinden style, more commonly used for palaces; the first floor is built in Bukke style that was traditionally used for samurai residences; the top floor is built in the style of a Chinese Zen hall — and is apparently gilded inside as well as out.
The pavilion is probably one of the most famous tourist attractions in the area, regularly appearing in pop culture such as anime. Here's a frame from the anime *K-On!!* which aired a few years ago:
The gardens around the pavilion are very pleasant and there is a route that you can take to explore them. If you don’t mind being pushed around by other tourists, you can follow this route to the main part of the shrine behind (and slightly above) the pavilion. There's a few interesting features, such as the traditional tea houses and coin toss, which will catch your eye as you walk around.
After Kinkakuji, we walked to the Daisen-In temple. This temple is famed for its legendary Zen rock gardens — although, it’s a lot better to visit it in person than to read about it.
Cameras are not allowed within the temple, so I can’t upload a photo to show you. The area around it has several other temples with competing Zen gardens, all part of the same parent temple, Daitoku-ji. If you’re ever in the area, visiting at least one is a must, however Daisen-In is one of the quieter ones and you may even get guided around it by one of the monks.
From Daisen-In, we trekked to the Kyōto Imperial Palace park, stopping briefly in the Nishijin Textile Centre. This was more of a huge shop, so we moved on quickly.
As with all parks in Japan’s cities, the Imperial Palace park offers a break from the hectic bustle of the outside city life and you can find locals and foreigners alike strolling through it. While the emperor lives in the Tōkyō palace, the Kyōto Imperial Palace stands in this park — albeit significantly smaller than the original one from when Kyōto was the capital, as that palace was moved around the city plenty of times and eventually burnt down. The current one was built in 1855 and you need a permit from the emperor in order to visit.
The third day was marred with rainfall. We visited the Silver Pavilion, Ginkakuji, which boasts both Zen and moss gardens, but a more traditional style pavilion — which, despite its name, has no silver gilding. Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s grandson, built this pavilion in the style of Kinkakuji. Since the shogun was a fan of art, the Silver Pavilion became a centre for arts and culture.
Leading from Ginkakuji is a canal side walk, famous for its cherry blossoms in spring, called the Philosopher’s Path. The path is named this after one of Japan’s most famous philosophers, Nishida Kitaro, used to walk this route while meditating on his way to the Kyōto university. On the way back from the Philosopher’s Path, we stopped at the Kyōto Handicraft Centre — also a big shop, however unlike Nishijin it actually contained locally-produced items at reasonable prices. I picked up a small wooden box and some gifts for my colleagues back home.
The final day we spent in Kyōto we spent time in the botanical gardens and browsing the shopping district around the hotel. The botanical gardens were nice, however since it was early autumn, most of the flowering plants were not in bloom. There’s an interesting observatory which includes a night garden and some odd modern art outside the building, however as far as botanical gardens go, once you’ve visited one, you've probably visited them all — and I’ve been to many.
Kyōto is a great place, and it definitely feels different from Tōkyō — in fact, each city I visited in Japan has its own unique character and culture. I would like to return in the future to see the Philosopher’s Path in bloom, as well as visit the surrounding cities. Unfortunately, this time I’d run out of time — adding yet more things to my Japan to do list.
> * Pocari sweat is a “Ion supply” sports drink.
