6:00am JST

Up bright and early and getting ready to meet Eric Cooper and tour the Ishiyama Temple outside of Kyoto. Lady Murasaki Shikibu began writing The Tale of Genji, the world’s first novel, at Ishiyamadera. We tried to get in to see this temple five years ago but the main halls were closed to the public, probably for repairs. This time for sure!

10:00am JST

I have an early lunch at the corner “kippu” noodle place: an order of beef bowl and udon noodles in spicy soup combo, and for only Y540! Ticket machine restaurants are a god send for tourists and restaurant proprietors alike because we don’t have to listen to each other mangle each other’s languages. Oh man that was some of the best food I’ve had in Japan… soooo good!

10:00am JST

Picked up the number 17 bus bound for Kyoto Eki-mae. This is my first time experience with the City Bus so I just pay the Y220 for a one way trip. The hotel provided me with a very informative bus map, so I should be ok.

Arrive at Kyoto Station with no problems and begin by scoping my destination station, line, timetable and ticket cost. This is all standard JR ticketing procedure so no problems. I have tons of time to kill, so I head downstairs to (where else) the gift shop and book store. Found a wonderful box set of Wagashi sweets made from green tea and azuka bean paste filling as a gift for Eric and his wife.

11:00am JST

Purchased my ticket, followed the signs to the proper platform and now waiting for the train. This is usually overwhelming to first-timers in Japan but once you get a sense of the order and logic behind how JR works, it becomes much easier.

[ First-Time Travelers Tip: Always verify that you taking the correct train line and that it actually stops at your destination, many trains do not stop at all stations on the line. Also know the names of the stations before and after yours that way you can be ready to bolt off the train or panic when you’ve passed it! ]

My train arrives and boy is this thing a wonderful throwback to the 1950’s. A sleek Shinkansen it is not, and to tell you the truth I like it that way.

12:00am JST

My train arrives at Minami-Kusatsu, a small town with a small rail station. I’ve built plenty of time for mistakes into my trip so I’m early by a full hour and there isn’t much to do but wait. I buy a Match from the news stand and settle in for some quality boredom and people watching with my camera.

12.30pm JST

I’m now so bored, I wish I had bought a book at the huge Japanese book store in Kyoto Station. I couldn’t read it but at least I could look at the pictures.

I watch as families come and go, students, businessmen, a few tourists. Japan’s population is indeed aging, so many old people hobbling about looking much like my mother in her old age. Some with families, most alone but very independent.

1:00pm JST

Eric, my friend who teaches at Ritzumeikan Daigaku arrives with her daughter in tow and we head off by car to the Ishiyama Temple. I recommend the small but significant Murasaki Museum at the top of the hill where you can view (but not photograph) haiku and illustrations by the great haiku poet Basho, and Edo period renderings of Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji. We’re basically looking at Edo period comic books, collectable cards and manga. Some of these items include illustrated Tale of Genji folding screens, an illustrated folding book, poem cards (the collectable trading cards of their day), and a gorgeous maki-e laquer writing desk.

3:00pm JST

The wind is rustling in the trees and creating lovely patterns of light. Sunlight, now getting low at this time of the day, streams across the temple grounds. We descend the mountain passed the temple, a torrii gate, pagodas, stone lanterns, and down to the koi pond and main path to the temple gates, imposing and beautiful in the golden, late afternoon sun. We pass a garden which I recall from the visit five years ago as well as the local post office where Eric had to mail a letter.

5:00am JST

Watching the sunrise over the mountains through my hotel window and rolling out the media from yesterday’s photo and video shoot onto disk to make way for more material today.

8:00am JST

Successful photo shoots always start by tanking up: fish, eggs, rice, vegetables, sausages, miso, orange juice, tea and natto! I wouldn’t mind the taste of natto if it didn’t look so awful and wasn’t so damned hard to maneuver about.

[ First-Time Travelers Tip: Natto is good for you, mix it with rice and wash it down with miso soup! ]

10:00am JST

Kiyomizudera Temple, within walking distance of my hotel, is a natural place to start the “First Time” touring. Although, Kiyomizudera is picturesque in the Fall when the leaves turn, it’s too early in the year to catch the Fall leaves this trip. The backpack is loaded up with camera gear, batteries are charged, memory cards are empty and we’re off!

[ First-Time Travelers Tip: Always make sure your batteries are charged and your equipment is prepped and tested BEFORE going out on a photo shoot! ]

11:00am JST

Wow, that was no leisurely 25 minute walk, and it was uphill the whole way. You know your journey to a shrine or temple has come to an end when you run the gauntlet of food and souvenir vendors. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff and found some very nice fans with ryo, usagi, tora and uma motifs. Visiting a shrine or temple can have a festival atmosphere and nowadays can be a good place to take a date.

11:30am JST

Made my way to the pagoda and entrance to the temple. Before entering the temple I stand in line waiting to ritually cleanse myself of earthly evil before I enter the place of Buddha. Offered prayers (and some coin for the offering box) and joined the rest of humanity in enjoying the view of the grounds from the temple veranda. After enjoying the view, visitors can walk along an elevated path for a good view of the veranda and temple against a blanket of Fall leaves (even though its too early in the year for anything but some Japanese Maples to turn color).

The popular expression “to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu” is the Japanese equivalent of the English expression “to take the plunge” but decided to take photographs instead…

http://www.kiyomizudera.or.jp/lang/01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu-dera

[ First-time Travelers Tip: Plan your photo shoots and vacations with specific seasons and events in mind, this proved critical in my visit to Sawara and failed me with Kiyomizudera! ]

1:00pm JST

Although I brought both a DSLR and video camera, I’m focusing mostly on using the video camera, its light, portable and not very intrusive. Toured the temple grounds and got some good video footage of pagodas, natural surroundings, and the Otowa waterfall, where three channels of water fall into a pond for visitors to catch and have their wishes fulfilled.

1:30pm JST

Just had an amusing “conversation” with a women at the local area street map. We tried to understand each other but had difficulty getting passed the vocabulary and grammar of our respective languages. After struggling for a few minutes with the total lack of commonality in language, we laughed and said goodbye… one of the few words we did have in common.

The dancing bear might not be proficient but he’s damned amusing!

The neighborhood that surrounds Kiyomizudera has a few other temples and feels like a nice place to live, although not flossy. There are plenty of beautiful images to be made along the Komagawa and in the Higashiyama area of Kyoto. These hills are a killer, though, especially for the elderly which explains the parade of taxi’s running up and down Matsubara-dori. Kyoto is jam packed with taxis too, but that’s to be expected in a dense, metropolitan area with so many attractive cultural sites and tourists to photograph them.

5:30pm JST

Decided to wander about the neighborhood again. Found a take-out bento box place that also serves food by the pound, deli style. I ordered the egg on beef with rice, cheap and good! Also stopped at the nearby 7-Eleven for a Match and chocolate eclair. Tested the credit card, which did not work but the more preferable debit card did work. Using a card on the Visa network is probably the most convenient and cost-effective way of getting money overseas.

On the way back to the hotel I also found a “kippu” machine restaurant. I hope to have lunch here tomorrow…

1:00pm JST

The Nozomi Shinkansen speeds into Kyoto after only two and a half hours of travel time! Too bad the stations don’t seem to have many escalators, because I had to lug all of this luggage up and down several flights of steps before arriving at the ground level and a taxi. The cab driver hadn’t a clue as to where the hotel is located, and silly me of course he can’t read the address of the hotel in romanji which I had thoughtfully provided.

Kyoto streets can be very busy and the hotel is much MUCH farther away from Kyoto Station than it appears on the map. Total taxi fare came to only 970 yen – worth every yen considering the distance I would have had to have walked. Had I known, I could have taken the bus from Kyoto Station because two bus lines stop right outside the hotel.

My hotel room is perhaps slightly larger than the typical Japanese hotel room. It is very nice and includes a good size modular bathroom, decent size bed, window and a black leather couch (because I got the semi double). A perfect arrangement in a nice section of town with easy access to bus lines, which I only reserved at the last minute. Win!

But after settling down to some needed video editing time, I discover that this hotel has no three prong plugs, so now I need to find a “Type A” adapter and quickly. There can only be one place in all of Japan to go for that kind of gear and that’s Yodabashhi Camera and there’s a Yodabashi near Kyoto Station! So I hoofed it down to the Kyoto Station area under a magnificent twilight sky to one of my favorite stores of all time… Yodabashi Camera!

6:30pm JST

Incredibly, the greeter at the front door understood exactly what I meant when I babbled at her about “denki mono”, and directed me to the section of the store that stocks a vast array of power converters, plugs and adaptors mostly for travel purposes. Having found my power adaptor, I proceeded to the sixth floor for dinner: tonkatsu and miso soup. Yes, Yodabashi Camera is a little expensive but I still love them.

Walking the streets at night also gave me an opportunity to discover where everything was in the neighborhood, the conbini, vending machines, restaurants, temples, subway and bus stops. And even at night you feel safe walking the streets as you watch families with children riding their bikes, playing in the neighborhoods, and elderly people out for a stroll. The stream of bicycles ridden by all ages and all walks of life is endless. Kyoto has two forms of transportation: 1) the taxi and 2) the bicycle, both can run you down if you aren’t mindful of the road.

I get a very real sense of neighborhood and community here.

8:00

I now have my Type A adaptor and am up and running again!