Kyoto Redux

Long Entry Ahead!
I’ve been to Kyoto a couple of times before. This will have been my fourth visit. And there’s so much around here and in the City that I haven’t seen yet (like Nara) that I’ll probably have to come back here yet again.
My first visit, I stayed in Osaka with Schu and one of his “friends”. The person in the quotation marks requires a separate entry to explain. I’m pretty sure that if you poke around in the archives, you�ll find an entry or two that tells the story. My second visit, I stayed in the Ponto-Cho district near Gion. That was pretty fun. My third visit, I stayed at J-Hoppers, which is now the preferred lodging of me and the Walking Ixus.
On this visit, I was actually able to reserve a room at Tour Club. On my previous three trips, Tour Club was sold out. It’s easy to see why. Tour Club also serves as a gaijin central, with plenty of other tourists to meet. Staying at a place that has been written up as much as Tour Club pretty much guarantees that you, english speaking traveler, will meet many of your own kind if you stay there.
Which we did and we did.
Once we got settled in and grabbed some dinner, waffles for dessert and a wet night tour of Gion, we came back and hung out in the common room. We met a lot of people including Gen (an Ozzie girl teaching english in the ROK with a soldier boyfriend), Kyle (a Houston native who teaches in Sendai, in southern Kyushu) and people from the UK, Ukraine, Slovakia, France, Japan and Singapore.
The default lingua franca was English, much to the chagrin of the french speaking duo staying there.
Kyle was arranging a early morning trip to the Golden Temple. It requires a walk to Kyoto Station and a bus ride. We left the Tour Club before the owner was up and stashed baggage in the lockers at the station.
They still have lockers here. How civilized.
The bus ride was boring until about 40 high school students on a field trip to the shrine boarded the bus. Then the bus became a lot more lively, loud and navy blue.
Besides the attraction of the Golden Temple, the grounds are gardened to within an inch of its life. Which means that it was absoultely beautiful.
I wish my backyard could look like this. =p
Then we went to the temple with the famous zen rock garden that is supposed to be the world in metaphor. Much of these grounds are devoted to the concept of zen as you can see with the clensing sink, lake and lots of souvenir shops.
Or omiage (oh-me-yah-gay) as they call it over here. Remember, you�re not buying for yourself, you�re buying for peoplel you know that couldn�t make the trip.
Kyle continued on his temple trek, while Gen, me and Schu headed back to downtown for lunch at the Misoka-an Kawamichi-ya. It�s been around since the 1700s and for me, this is a return engagement. I thought it would be a neat place to bring Gen and Schu to. And I was right. It was good food and fun. We even chatted up the woman at the next table, winding up taking a lot of snaps.
After lunch, Gen went on to the Imperial Palace and Schu and I left for Beppu. Two changes of train (Shin-Osaka and ) and 4.5 hours.
I call this “nap-time”.