Tag Archives: japan

Bicycles

So far I’ve only noticed this in Kyoto, but a lot of people ride bikes, and all of them ride on the sidewalk. Riding in the street would probably be suicide. Some of the wider sidewalks have bike lanes, but both cyclists and pedestrians completely ignore them and go wherever they want. It doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Even if some of the riders look a little shaky.

All of the bikes look like girls’ bikes circa 1960. They have fenders and baskets and little bells. a lot of them even have center kickstands like in this photo.

Incidentally, most of those bikes are unlocked. People rarely lock them, even in downtown Kyoto, and when they do, they never lock them to anything.

Arashiyama Bamboo

Along the Hozu-gawa

Down Hozu River

Raging torrents and breathtaking ravines at times dousing you with water, at others passing in calmness.

So my brochure says. Arashiyama is a very touristy town just outside of Kyoto and from there I took a tourist train up the Hozu river gorge to Kameoka.

I think Kameoka means “turtle orchestra,” although my Japanese is not strong.

On the bus ride (almost as long as the train ride) from the train station to the dock, I talked to Mike and his son Shane from San Clemente. Mike had lived in Japan as a child and this was his first time back. Apparently it’s changed some since 1967.

We finally got to the boarding site and took off down the river.

The rapids were fearsome!

Okay, they really weren’t. Pirates of the Caribbean is probably scarier. Still, a person could do worse than floating down a lushly forested river gorge, even if a person is having a little trouble keeping the camera dry.

This guy was offering photos for ¥1575.

Near the end, another boat pulled up alongside us and offered food, including beer, sake, and grilled squid.

I opted for walking into town and getting chicken skewers and anpan instead.

There’s a famous bamboo forest there too. It’s a short walk, but impressive. I skipped the associated temple.

Nara Manhole Cover

Nara Street Scene

Nara

Stop the presses! According to some of this blog’s more persnickety readers, the creature in the previous post was in fact a deer. Your blogger has never claimed to be an expert in taxonomy, and did not even know that deers and yaks were related.

Point being that you can find darn near anything wandering the streets—deer, yaks, moas, poodles, you name it—so it pays to be careful.

Anyway, these friendly mammals are all over the place in Nara, and they’re friendly mainly because people keep feeding them, which they’re able to do because there are stands everywhere selling crackers to feed to the deer. And it will not surprise you to learn that there is a temple involved.

So people flock to Nara to see the deer (and the temple) and spend money to feed the deer.

This also provides jobs for industrious citizens.

The temple, Todai-ji, is billed as the largest wooden structure in the world, even though it isn’t anymore. And it contains the largest Buddha statue in Japan.

I haven’t seen any other Buddha statues to compare it to, but it does indeed seem pretty large. There’s another statue next to it, which is not as large, but is still pretty large. You would probably comment on how large it was if the Buddha statue weren’t even larger.

Also, there’s a gift shop In the temple.

The Yaks of Nara

The streets of Nara seem to be populated by a local species of yak.

Mt. Inari

Two train stops south of Kyoto is Inari, home of the Fushimi-Inari shrine. Although I’m pretty much templed out at this point, this seemed worthwhile because A) I was on my way to Nara on that train line anyway and B) it sounded sort of weird.

Just across the street from the train station is a large torii gate and a path leading up to a fairly standard looking temple. Beyond that, however, are more torii gates. A lot more.

There are long tunnels of these snaking up the mountain. Every now and then there’s a break in the tunnels, with a shrine or group of shrines off to one side. The shrines have piles of gates on them and next to them.

And there are extra gates around in case you need them.

There are thousands of these things, and they fade over time, so they have to keep painting them continuously, like the Golden Gate Bridge.

Many of the gates had a pair of dogs in front: one with a ball in its mouth and one with a stick. Here, boy!

Most of them had those red bibs. This one had a hat.

The whole thing looped to the top of the mountain and back down again. Mt. Inari is only about 700 feet high, making it more of a hill than a mountain, but there was a lot up and down. I was glad to get to the observation point with a view of Kyoto.

As I was standing there, a group of school kids came running up the steps.

One girl of about eight decided to practice her English on me.

Girl: Hello!

Me: Hello. How are you?

Girl: Hello!

So that was as far as that went. I went back down the mountain, said hello to some British tourists and German backpackers*, and got on the train for Nara.

* Different ones.

XK Red 27 Technique