We got up relatively late in the morning and saw that the sun was shining, much to Becky’s delight. I had found out the night before that the front desk had bus maps so I had gotten one and that they also sold single day bus passes so on our way out we bought a couple. We headed toward the train station to catch the bus we needed to go to Nijo castle, our first stop of the day. On the way there we grabbed some breakfast at a little cafe. We got on the bus and sure enough it dropped us right in front of the castle grounds so we headed in to look around. After buying our tickets we were going through the main gate when 3 college aged girls stopped us to ask if we would mind them giving us a tour in English so they could practice. We of course accepted gladly and we went off to tour the castle. Nijo castle is known for being the location where the last of the shoguns ceded power back to the emperor in the late 1800s and it also has a unique floor where as you walk it squeaks like birds chirping and is know as a nightingale floor. Oh yeah almost forgot to mention this is one of 2 places we tour today that we had to remove our shoes before entering. After our tour we took a few photos with our nice tour guides and thanked them before going to look around the gardens on the grounds.

We didn’t realize it but there was another castle on the grounds so we went through it as well before coming across a place that would let you do a sort of mini tea ceremony. This was not the full tea ceremony where they do all the preparation of the tea in ritual fashion in front of you but was kind of a touristy version. It was neat though in a little tea house by a beautiful garden. The highlight was definitely either the faces Becky made when eating the little sweet made of bean paste or our dilemma of how to get out of the tea house, being the first in and our entry path blocked by others that followed. We did finally get to leave and finished up looking at the grounds and caught the bus for our next stop.

Kinkaku-ji is the “golden” temple I mentioned in yesterday’s post and is a rebuilt version of a much older temple and is obviously know for being covered in gold leaf. We got to our stop and hiked up the road to the entrance where we saw an ice cream stand that also sold mochi balls (little rice confections) so Becky got some green tea ice cream and I got some chocolate mochi balls. They were very good if a little chewy and in that area we also saw a vending machine selling cup noodles! We would run across several other cool vending machines today (batteries, SD cards, sake, wine, whiskey, and neckties!). We headed up to the entrance and bought our tickets and walked through the very crowded (we kept forgetting it was saturday so more people) Kinkaku-ji gardens. You will have to wait and see the pictures but it was pretty spectacular.

After finishing up there we headed to the bus stop again and on to our final stop of the day Ryoan-ji which has a famous Zen rock garden. We got there without much issue (other than debating which bus stop to wait at) and got our tickets. When you get to the main temple building we once again had to go shoeless and we went through and saw the garden which was much smaller than I had pictured but very immaculate. We then walked through the rest of the temple and retrieved our shoes, both places had very, very smooth wooden floors.

We finished walking through the pretty gardens and got back on a bus for what we thought would end up back at another stop in town that would get us to the JR station but we ended up at the end of the line and had to reboard another bus heading back. By the time we got to the stop we needed traffic was very heavy and it was slow going but we eventually made it back to the JR station and headed over to a theater dedicated to the creator of Astro Boy, Tezuka Osamu, where Becky waited while I watched a short Astro Boy film.

We were pretty hungry by now and we went to the big mall under the JR station to browse the plastic food until we saw something we liked. We picked a place that sold fried soba noodles (yaki soba) and okonomayaki (and a few variants). I chose pork yaki soba and takoyaki (fried octopus balls – no not that kind of balls kind of like octopus nuggets tentacles and all) and Becky had pork yaki soba and squid okonomayaki. The tako yaki were interesting and definitely Japanese I first bit one in half and sure enough there were tentacles staring at me. After the first on I popped them whole trying a variety of sauces. I am not sure I will get them again but they were so bad that I would be afraid to try again. Everything else was very good and I finished of my meal with an ice cream. We then walked back to the hotel for our baths and then started packing for our early morning departure for Matsumoto and eventually Tokyo tomorrow night!