Mike Williams

 

/ Kyoto

Kyoto

Pics from Kyoto

That's no Pepsi... that's a Pepsi Twist!
Beer vending machine just sitting on the street. Not that they have strict alcohol laws there, but I'm pretty sure that they exist.
Oh hello train conductor. Of course you wear white gloves.
Sadly, we didn't have time for the Steam Locomotive & Piano Museum. I bet they made a great combination though.
Basically tourist row in Kyoto
Biggest car in Japan.
Somewhat unrelated: we definitely noticed the most tourists in Kyoto. Not sure why. Most popular tourist city? Less dense with locals/business vs. other cities?
These guys kept popping up in pictures
Wild tourist in his natural habitat. He noticed us!
We were really wishing this picture would become reality. Common theme in Japan: hot+humid.
Bamboo Path. We wondered how much it would cost to pay one of those cart-puller guys to drag us up Mt Fuji...
The power lines didn't really help the scenery unfortunately...
Thought this was a cemetery, but the ground looks like it's all paved, so not sure. All to the left and right is bamboo forest.
Bamboo is cool
Experimenting with flash
I swear, it popped up at the last second.
Turns out, using flash on something this close makes everything else pretty dark. It was actually kind of dark the whole time we were in there (trees --> shade), but camera did a good job of collecting light while I tried not to move and make the pictures blurry.
Don't we all?
The sumo wrestlers wore pikachu tails just like these around their belts sometimes
Tiny bridge
Oh yea, there was a large railroad running right through the middle of the bamboo forest. Seemed out of place (and very loud when a train went by).
The Matt Kawahara love taxi service.
Creepy critter. This is the first time we noticed him, but after this encounter we started to see him all over the place.
I bet they spoke English in there! (maybe)
Good idea
Corner of the Kyoto Castle wall
Hey Nagoya, maybe you should take a lesson from Kyoto and fill up your moat.
As usual, we started about as far away from the entrance as possible.
Decoy entrance with no bridge. Allowed those inside the castle to come out and taunt their adversaries by, for example, calling their mothers hamsters and telling them their fathers smelt of elderberries.
Surprise. It's closed. Japan is really intent on us not storming any of their castles. "Sorry enemies, come back tomorrow and pay us 700 yen and we'll let you storm the castle then"
We got there at 4:15pm
Corn Potage, my favorite soup.
It rained a lot in Kyoto, so we joined the umbrella culture of Japan! Everyone seems to have an umbrella all the time, either for shade from sun or for the rain.
About to (cook and) eat some ridiculously awesome beef.
First round: beef sushi. Probably my favorite. Only hard to say because it was all so good.
Here's the lard (or similar) they gave us to rub on the grill periodically. He did it for us the first time, which is the only reason we had any clue what to do.
Pretty sure this qualifies as a salad in Japan. They don't do much in the way of greens (or we missed them).
Very jiggly dessert. Good though! Some sort of clear jiggly substance (mint leaves floating on top of it) with some creamy cold pudding stuff below it. I don't know what any of it was, but it tasted good. Also happy to eat something chilly after sitting in front of a grill for the past hour.
Just one direction of the massive late night pre-festival gathering.
Tomorrow is the biggest festival of the year in Kyoto, so they prepare by wandering aimlessly around the streets and apparently not actually doing anything? Maybe we missed it. It was still very cool, we just couldn't figure out if there was supposed to be an event?
This is actually an outdoor street, it's just covered the whole way. Probably around a mile long? Mostly closed shops at this time though.
Big crab
Waiting for the start of the Gion Festival.
Too bad it was raining, it meant I had to use phone for pictures and also all the umbrellas obscured the view. I should mention that the view would have been fine because I am tall in Japan.
This is the main "float" (they are actually called Hoko or Yama, Hoko being the large ones and Yama are smaller). In the seat of honor is a chosen boy from Kyoto. He can't touch the ground for days leading up to today.
The floats are all turned by manpower alone, so they hung out at this corner for quite some time. There were a ton of people on the float, so I guess it's not surprising it's tough to move. Wikipedia says ~12,000kg.
Have fun storming the castle!
Button didn't work. No matter how many times the lady who came up right after us tried pressing it.
Too bad it wasn't raining back in 1750 when the original castle was struck by lightning and burned down. Maybe should've saved some of that stone from the massive wall and moat for the castle part, eh Japan?
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We found out when going in here that, while the Japanese rarely lock their bikes, it is not uncommon to lock your umbrella! That white box to the left of the entrance is an umbrella lockbox.
So much rain. Cool garden area though.
Yes, there was an inner moat and wall contained entirely inside the outer moat and wall.
Inner moat.
The rebuilt castle, as seen from the corner tower.
This stuff was pretty delicious. Probably tea with condensed milk like Thai Iced Tea? Also of note, tea juicebox.