The Golden Temple - 16/2/'14
An early morning sun rises in Japan as our alarm clocks ring around 7:30. Today is the last day in the old capital: Kyoto. The program for today: Traveling to Kinkakuji Temple in the morning, and after lunch visit Toei Kyoto Studio Park. In the evening, we will have dinner all together to celebrate our first period in Japan with Jan Broenink and Hugo Westerveld, as they are leaving tomorrow. After the party, we still need to go to Osaka by train at night.
We finish our breakfast as usual, but rush to get all our luggage downstairs, check out and take the bus to Kinkakuji Temple. As we are driving down the road, it appears there is a marathon taking place. A more detailed examination learns us that today the big Kyoto marathon is taking place, luckily we didn't get stuck in traffic! We arrive at the temple sight. An english guide book then tells us it is actually not a temple, but a vacation home and pavilion built for shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu! It has been burned down many times, but the sight was exteremely pretty. The weather, for the first time since our visit, was nice and sunny. This made the beautiful gardens even more attractive. At the Kinkakuji sight, there was also the posibility to join a tea ceremony, which some of us did. Others went out to see some more sights along the way walking to our next destination of the day.
Kyoto really harbours so many beautiful, interesting and curious places, it could have taken us weeks without boredom.
By chance, we found a restaurant that had the capacity of over 20 people, and we all enjoyed a nice Japanese lunch. A little stroll lead us to Toei Kyoto Studio Park.
Toei Studio Park was quite expensive, but really cheesy attraction park. It showed buildings and people of 'old kyoto', and the park was used by film and movie companies for shooting their scenes. However, it was really tailored for children. There were some unattractive small museums, boring attractions, a very funny live action show with great special effects, but just walking around was quite interesting.
After a couple of hours, it was time to take the train back to the city center.
There, we had a great party dinner: Traditional japanese low tables, sashimi dishes (raw fish) and lots of beer! After speeches from Jan and Hugo, we decided to get wasted quickly, because we still needed to take the train to Osaka. We had to run hard, but it was worth it!
The train ride was not very hectic, as mostly people were really tired.
We checked into the hotel in Osaka, and even the manager really didn't want to see all of our passports anymore. The rooms are mostly traditional style Japanese rooms. Ouch, no mattres. Well, we are too tired to complain anyway.
By: Jelmer Kosters