We were so fortunate to have visited Kyoto when we did. We managed to catch the beginning and end of cherry blossom season in Kyoto. Cherry trees lined the streets, parks, temples, and mountain sides of Kyoto. It was beautiful.
Within about 5 days of being in Kyoto, the shock of being in a foreign land had subsided, and the feeling of relaxation took over. What an amazing feeling you get after traveling for a week or two, when it sinks in that the following weeks will bring yet more great adventures.
When we arrived in Kyoto, our first challenge was to find our hotel, in a neighborhood where small streets only have japonese characters (and we only wrote down the romanized spellings of the street names). We made our way to the general vacinity of the guest house, found a convenience store, and struggled with our lack of Japonese and their lack of english to get directions. They ended up calling the number that was in our revervation details that I stored on my palm pilot, and the owner came over by bike to fetch us. Japonese people seem to be very hospitable and helpful.
Our guest house was a small Ryokan, with traditional japonese rooms: tatami mat floors, roled up futon beds, wooden construction, sliding windows made of wood slats and glass that looks like paper. Very clean and quiet. Shared bath and toilets. It's actually better than we expected, for the price, considering everything else was booked due to the Cherry Blossom festivals.
We spent 8 days in Kyoto, relaxing, touring the neighborhoods, visiting Budhist temples, Shinto shrines, and castles of old emperors, and enjoying their amazing diversity of cuisine (and o-sake). "Japonese food" is so much more than sushi, tempura, and terriaki. Every day we tried something new, and were never dissapointed (except perhaps that one time we had miso soup that had been supplemented with a slimy ingredient which we hope was raw egg). We were also pleasantly surprised to discover delicious sushi for as cheap as $1/plate of 2 pieces.
Clothing styles and shopping in Kyoto were superb, but luckily our small bags enabled us to resist the urge to buy $200 pairs of jeans or $2000 pairs of shoes. So, while the locals walked around in graceful shoes, and beautiful dresses or funky jeans, we stuck to our wardrobe of 1 pair of hiking boots, and 2 or 3 different synthetic pant/top combinations.
While it was very challenging finding our way around (and interpreting plaques and signs) due to the lack of english used in Kyoto, we loved its extremely efficient transportation system (once we figured it out). We loved how clean the streats were, and the balance old and new architecture. We were in awe over how people would line up, single file, for subways, buses, tickets, etc.
We'd love to spend more time here, and were sad to leave, but more adventures await...
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