Strolling in Spring-time Kyoto.

Experiment, data analysis, sleep, experiment, data analysis sleep. Yeah the long silence is definitely due to the lack of much other than work of late. Not that I’m not enjoying it but it doesn’t make for very interesting writing. Other than that I have mostly spent my weekends on snowboarding trips or just generally hanging, but that's not so interesting. However with our final experiments of the financial year are over and I have my weekends back. Nicely enough this coincides with Japan’s most hospitable time of year. Spring.

So with nice weather and a bit of free time on the side it can only mean one thing. It’s adventure time. Or at least get the hell off of the mountain time. Fortunately Spring is also the time of year when many students are graduating and the Japanese Rail company run a special discounted ticket known as the Seishun Ju-hachi kippu (青春十八切符). This baby costs 11500 yen and grants unlimited use of non-express JR trains for 1 day. The cost gives you tickets for 5 days, or 5 people depending on how you want to split it.

So how to use this wonderful magic ticket? Thankfully there was an interesting event to get to, albeit all the way out in Kyoto. Armed with my discount pass and a few friends we headed out to a light up event in the Higashiyama district called “Hanatorou” （花灯路) . Basically, as per the Kanji, the streets were lined with little paper lanterns. Being a light up event we would need to wait until nighttime but with the weather being so nice it would have been a waste to not make a full day of it.

As I mentioned earlier spring is the best time of year in Japan, shortly followed by Autumn. I’d advise any one wanting to visit to come around those times. In winter it’s pretty damn cold and in summer…well let’s not mention summer. So after a good 2 hours on trains and a quick look around a nearby electronics store we set off to go for lunch in an area of Kyoto I’ve never been before. I can’t remember exactly where it was, just that it was north of Gion.

At any rate it was a gorgeous place for stroll. The streets where lined with many little boutiques and cafes and all other kinds of delights. I wasn’t so interested in shops and in fact our target was lunch. The said restaurant apparently had ‘Vegetables outside’. That’s it. Wonderful directions ey. Somehow or other we found the place, or somewhere like the place, and in my friends defence it was delicious. A lovely set menu of traditional Kyoto foods with lovely fresh vegetables.

After a meal like that there is something that is vitally important. Cake. We headed over to supposedly very famous cake shop close to the river. Famous didn’t cover it. Whilst the shop front wasn’t particularly big it was most definitely rammed. The quoted wait time to eat inside was over 2 hours. Not going to happen. The cakes however looked incredible. Shelves were lined with amazing tarts of all shapes and descriptions with some incredible fillings, sadly of course none of which were edible by me, damned milk allergy. Instead I just amused myself with the wonderful inconsistency of the namings and translations of the names from Japanese (for some reason they were translated to French or English but not both, and there seemed to be no realisation that Tart and Tarte mean the same thing).

Cakes purchased we moved on to do one of my favourite things in Kyoto, lazing about by the river. Now I know Ratty said “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”, but I disagree. Simply spending time by the riverside is good enough for me. The river runs the length of Kyoto and slightly to the east and is very aptly named. 鴨川 means duck river and there are definitely a lot of those and all variety of water fowl. The weather was fine so I could just kick back and do a bit of bird-watching, spring time means there is plenty of courting behaviour on display and watching Japanese Kites swooping and twirling through the sky is really relaxing.

 

Gradually the sun began to set and we progressed over to Gion to the start point of the lantern road, Yasaka shrine. We progressed through the grounds after seeing a short display from some Maiko, Geisha’s in training, and on into Maruyama park just behind. Within the park were of course many small paper lanterns lining the streets but there were also many other light up displays besides. On of my favourites was an installation from students of the various Kyoto art Universities. The artworks were created with the theme of ‘traditional light’ and were very pretty.

The total light up course was about 5km so we spent a decent amount of time walking down from Maruyama park to the end point at Kiyomizudera. It was a very nice evening and something I doubt I’ll see again, maybe. Either way Kyoto is such a cool place to walk around that bathing in the light ambience of lantern light only enhanced the experience, the nice weather helped a lot also. We finished off with dinner at a restaurant serving traditional and contemporary tofu dishes including ‘yuba’ which is the skin that forms of the top of boiling soy milk. It was an experience to say the least though I’m sadly not so great at pulling Tofu.

Well that's it from me. With the rents up from now I’m sure I’ll get a bit of travelling done and have something more entertaining to write about.

Ja mata ne.