Day 11: Kyoto Crazy

Having decided that we are going to be returning to Tokyo for the last week we sort of have to cram everything in as quickly as possible. Day 10 we were able to hit a few places on our list which was great. Today however is going to be a test of our will, stamina, and sanity!

After dinner last night Chrissy mapped out a plan to see if we could hit as many of our top spots as possible in the time allotted. This city is a little smaller so it may be doable. Well, here goes nothing...

Southern Kyoto

Our first stop for the day was to be at the Fushimi Inari Shrine. If you have ever seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha you will recognize this place.

We decided to get up really early and get out before everything started picking up too much. The trains do not start as early here so we got started around 6am. We were not really 100% sure of how to get where we were going. Our JR rail passes allow us free travel on any JR line so we wanted to get there asap. Well, this was not as easy as one might be led to believe. In Tokyo you can get on just about any train going in any direction and use the same card (PASMO) to pay. When it comes to Kyoto they do things a bit different. Did you know that when the car you are riding in passes outside from underground you are now on a train and not a subway? We do...now.

In our attempts to make it to a JR line we accidentally rode the subway/train car one stop too far and they would not let us out or let us pay to get out. We had to turn around and go back so we could switch some more trains. The trains here also do not run on the same time schedule as they do in Tokyo. If you miss a train in Tokyo you wait another few minutes and another one will be there. If you miss a train in Kyoto you better settle in because it will be 15-20 min.

So after about 2 hours of switching and waiting on trains we made it to the Inari stop. It was worth the wait:

The first of many

A young Japanese girl took this for us...I might have to ask her how to improve my camera work

This thing goes on forever

We stopped at a noodle shop for lunch

             


Western Kyoto

Now that we sort of had the train thing figured out we headed back to the main Kyoto station and off to Arashiyama station. As we were leaving the platform in Arashiyama we saw another train available called the "Romantic Train". This train takes a scenic route through mountains. The windows and the sides are open so you can see some really neat stuff. We got some tickets for this but had to wait an hour so we decided to walk to our original destination:

There is sort of a walking path that you follow to see all of the grove so we followed that up for about 30 min until we came to the end. Having no other way back, we had no choice but to walk back through and back to the train station. It was a very nice walk!

We only had to wait a short time before we were able to board the train. IT WAS AWESOME! There were some really great sites along the way. Unfortunately our seats were on the side that had the great views for only the first half of the trip. The rest of the trip was spent attempting to peer over the heads of the people sitting on the other side. It was great though.

Eventually the ride came to an end at a platform full of Tanuki. There was a small station there and signs informing us that we now had a 10 minute walk to the JR station. The route did not actually feel that long and there were a lot of cool things around to be seen.