Author: Sonia Stephens

On our trip to Japan, we visited three main areas: Kyoto and surroundings, Niigata and surroundings, and Tokyo. We started in Kyoto, which was the capital of the country for about 1000 years before the government relocated to Kyoto in 1868. It has a large number of temples and other historic structures. There are city policies in place to limit development, and it was not extensively bombed by the U.S. during WWII, so there are still some pre-war neighborhoods standing.

Our hostel was located pretty close to the central train station, which made it pretty  convenient for exploring the city. We primarily walked and used the bus, and used the local trains to get to outlying sights. There’s also a subway system.

On the first two days we were there, we mainly went sightseeing along the eastern edge of town- the Higashiyama area. Kyoto is surrounded on three sides by mountains, and naturally many of the temples and older neighborhoods are snuggled up against the hills. I’m sure this helps in the summer, when it supposedly gets really hot and humid.

On the first day, we went sightseeing in southern Higashiyama (actually, this is the part of the mountain range within the actual Higashiyama district). Since this was our arrival day, we basically walked- both to get a feel for the area and because  we were a bit too tired to make elaborate logistical decisions. One of the things that is really helpful when getting oriented in a new city is actually walking around- one of the reasons I think New York’s always seemed so disorienting to me is that we’ve always spent a lot of time traveling on the subway. It’s just hard to get your bearings when you have no sense of the spatial relationships where you are. And on this trip, we did a lot of walking.

We visited two big Buddhist temples, Sanjūsangen-dō and Kiyomizu-dera. The main deity of Sanjūsangen-dō is the “Thousand-armed Kannon,” a bodhisattva associated with compassion. We couldn’t take photos within the primary temple hall, which holds a giant statue of Kannon, plus 1,000 (!) smaller Kannon statues and about two dozen statues of various gods and bodhisattvas.

This was our first introduction to the crowds of schoolchildren that we’d consistently see at every major temple or tourist site.

Kiyomizu-dera is a large complex that’s linked to a waterfall and stream. It’s known for its steep veranda, and it took a bit of a walk to get there. There was an anti-nuclear power protest going on when we got there. This was a pretty significant issue because of the Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011.

While at Kiyomizu-dera, we realized that we hadn’t brought our daypack…and therefore had no way to carry our umbrellas (which we’d left in the hotel room anyway). Luckily, there were plenty of shops on the way down the hill, and we found a cute bag that was a good size for a daypack.

We also did some wandering around in the well-preserved historic area in Higashiyama, unfortunately after a lot of the shops had closed for the evening. It was a pretty walk, though.

On our second day in Kyoto, we took the bus to Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion. This is a Zen Buddhist temple that contains a famous pavilion and sand garden. The moonlight reflecting off the central sand cone is used for moon-viewing ceremonies.

After sampling some green tea ice cream and custard, we headed south along the Philosopher’s Path. This was a nice walk through a residential neighborhood that went along a canal.

The southern end of the Philosopher’s Path is pretty close to another large Buddhist temple complex, Nanzen-ji. One of the temples on the grounds is the primary temple of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist sect.

This ended up being a major walking day for us, and a big impetus to buy a bus pass the next day. We were pretty footsore by the end of the day, and decided not to visit the Gion district (the traditional entertainment district) just yet. Though we did make it back there in the evening a few days later.

Gion is also very atmospheric, though it definitely has more of a mix of modern buildings than Higashiyama. It comes complete with a lot of bars- hostess and otherwise- but this is part of the traditional character of the area, in a way.

Overall, the Higashiyama area in general (and that’s loosely including the northern area that’s not technically part of the district, as well as Gion) probably had the highest density of temples and shrines and just general traditional atmosphere of any of the places we visited on our trip.

I thought I’d start talking about our recent trip to Japan by making a list of some of the things that were (or would have been) really useful to know about ahead of time. This is, of course, from the perspective of first-time visitors to the country, so is probably not very profound. Also, these will be mostly practical types of things, not cultural observations and the like. I’ll post about what we actually saw/did in the future.

First, I’ll start with a list of things that took some getting used to. We’d mostly heard about these things ahead of time, so were prepared.

• Lack of paper towels in restrooms, and napkins in restaurants. For the former, people seem to carry around handkerchiefs, and for the latter you’ll typically get a wet wipe before the meal to wipe hands with- this is generally the only napkin. In some “messier” restaurants (burger and pizza places), more napkins were often available – maybe as part of the foreign dining experience?

• Lack of soap in public restrooms.

• Squat toilets. Actually, the juxtaposition of these with some of the most technically sophisticated toilets on the planet was really interesting.

• Few rubbish bins, though there was very little trash on the ground.

• Few places to sit in public. This is probably a “big city” issue and not confined to Japan, but you really notice a lack of benches when you’ve been walking around all day. This extends to eating in public – it’s not done much, so there weren’t many places to sit and do so.

• Entering buses from the back, and paying when you leave.

• Lots of sticky white rice, and very few fresh fruits and vegetables. Also, very runny eggs. (And bonito flakes, but we were expecting that.)

• It was really hard to find postcards.

And here’s a list of things that were extremely useful to have. This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list; it’s really the things that stuck out as being useful nearly every day. You’ll also need a bag to carry these things.

• Japan Rail passes. These were fairly expensive (we got 2-week passes), but we did enough traveling so that they were worth it. On local trains, seats were unreserved and you just had to show the pass at the turnstile entering and exiting. On the shinkansen, you could either sit in unreserved cars or use the pass to make a reservation for no extra charge. This is highly recommended for the Tōkaidō Line (Tokyo-Osaka), especially if you’re traveling with someone and want to sit together, or if you want a window seat.

• Bus passes in Kyoto. The bus system is very easy to navigate, and is very convenient for most sites of tourist interest.

• Handkerchiefs. As noted above, paper napkins are rare.

• Hand soap. See above. We brought camping style “paper” soap, which didn’t work as well as we’d hoped (stuck to our fingers in the cold water). Next time, we’d probably bring a mini liquid soap.

• Ubiquitous bottled beverage vending machines. Not eco-friendly, but very handy. They generally had recycle bins next to them, which assuaged some of the guilt.

• Notepad to write down train reservation requests. Since our Japanese-language skills are very limited, this came in handy. Also, this came in handy for jotting down the kanji for bus/train stops that we needed to remember. In Kyoto and Tokyo and on the shinkansen, these were announced, but not in Niigata (nor, presumably, in other non-Western-tourist oriented cities).

• Umbrellas.