We travelled onwards by train to Kyoto and another Airbnb apartment. In the middle of the visit we had a day of Typhoon (apparently just another word for Hurricane), which was impressive. We hunkered down in the apartment and watched the storm. It lessened enough briefly for me to forage for food at the local Seven Eleven. There was a bar on the second floor of our building where we had dinner and I got a gin recommendation (more on that next post).
Kyoto is the city of shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhism). I may mix these up in the descriptions below, apologies if I do. In the central area where we stayed, there were significant shrine/temples all over. Here is an example, but I am embarrassed to say I forget the details (shrine? temple?)
One shrine complex further away on a hill featured hundreds of vermillion (described as a shade of red but I would call it orange) gates. This was to a Shinto god of rice (and sake) and prosperity, who had magical fox emissaries.
You can pay to add a gate as a corporation, family, or individual. If you were on more of an average budget, you could buy a mini-gate to place on a side shrine:
When they were passing out religious affinity, I missed out, so I could not appreciate the spiritual connection from these sites, but the aesthetic aspects were impressive. On other side trips we saw a local bamboo forest:
and another temple that had been the retirement estate of a local lord:
One interesting thing in Japan, new to North Americans, is the multi-use buildings. These are multi-story buildings where different shops and restaurants are on every floor. I saw this first on a visit to Hong Kong, where I had lunch at a waffle restaurant on the sixth floor. Such a place would never get customers back home. It makes it hard to find places with google maps: you get to the location on the map but still have to figure out what exact building the place you are looking for is in, and what floor (and it could be in the basement, or in an underground mall at that location). This is not specific to Kyoto but this is where I got pictures of a good example:
Then it was on to Hiroshima. We only spent a few hours in the city, visiting the atomic bomb dome (ruins of a building near the epicenter of the blast), peace park, and museum. It is a reminder of the horror of war. The human race should have moved past this long ago but recent events have shown it is still with us.
We moved to a suburb of Hiroshima near Miyajima, an island with a shrine and a nature reserve. The shrine had an associated gate in the water:
The nature walk had some excellent scenery:
There were local wild deer. This was a mixed experience. It was popular to feed the deer, and the population had grown to an unmanageable level. The government now discourages feeding to let the deer return to a level where they can exist in the wild. The transition period involves a lot of starving deer, painful to witness.
The hotel we were staying in had gender segregated mineral baths. We dressed up in the yukata provided by the hotel and tried them out. I know of this tradition from anime bath house episodes, where the characters bond and the men try to peek in at the women. I missed out on both these things but it was still enjoyable.
Then it was back to Tokyo for the last leg of the trip.
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