Pre-Thanksgiving and Beyond to Kyoto

Part of being a parent is experiencing life through your children’s eyes and ears, and thus we found ourselves transported back in time to the place where we first played musical instruments. Alex is in the Rookie band and has enjoyed the experience quite a bit – he even has remembered his music and percussion sticks without much prompting on the part of his parents. We went to his band performance and were struck by what can be done with a bunch of motivated kids and two months of practice time as well as how much they can improve with a year or more of playing.

Alex celebrated by going on a Boy Scout campout the next day with Japanese Boy Scouts while his sister attended a friend’s birthday party with an Indian motif – saris and Indian food – what a creative event.

Thanksgiving in Tokyo was a bit odd – first of all this is the first year that we have not traveled to DC to see all of Jonathan’s relatives so we did miss our family. We also greatly missed the food. The other oddity was that there was no mention of the holiday outside of ASIJ so it was possible to forget that it was approaching. Our celebration was very tame – we went out to eat at a restaurant with a buffet – plenty of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, salad and veggies and we each had a piece of pie before leaving. One of Jonathan’s colleagues was able to join us which made the evening a bit special.

The next morning we took advantage of the school holiday to travel to Kyoto for a long three-day weekend. We traveled by Shinkansen so the trip only took 2.5 hours and we arrived by lunch to have our choice of eight ramen restaurants on one floor of the train station. A tasty lunch was had by all and then we traveled out to see the most popular of the Kyoto temples before the hordes descended for the weekend. Kyoto was so popular that we had to stay ten minutes away by train at Lake Bifu. Otherwise, trying to get hotel rooms at a reasonable rate was impossible.

Kyoto has 17 world heritage sites and we did not see all of them, but we had a good overview. Kyoto is a very large city and has the traffic to prove it. We visited during one of the prime tourist seasons. The Japanese understandably love to see fall leaves and we agree that the nature show is quite spectacular. I am not sure that I have ever seen such brilliant red and yellow leaves as they have due to the Japanese maple and ginko trees. The children found something to enjoy at most of the sites we saw, whether it was filling cups with water from the overhead spring at the Kiyomizuderu Temple, or making cricket floors creak at Nijoji castle. They observed a priest ring the closing bell for Chion-in Temple and climbed though over 500 vermillion toris, part of a collection of over 10,000 at Fushima Inari. They were even able to see all 15 rocks in a rock garden from one position at Ryoanji Temple - indicating wisdom (or, more likely, sufficient height). They were also questioned in English repeatedly by Japanese school children on class trips. (We decided that the next time we run into a school group with an assignment to question foreigners in English we are going to give very interesting answers and see what reaction we get).

We averaged two shrines a day, which proved enough to be interesting but not overwhelming for the kids. The cold weather was a bit challenging, as were the crowded buses. Kyoto was very well organized for tourism, which was well because the tourists came. Bus routes and streets were well marked and well traveled. The abundance of souvenir shops and sweet stores testified to the importance of the tourist trade. Kyoto train station was an incredible hubbub of action and movement as the huge flow of visitors mingled with the residents going to the architecturally impressive train station to shop and eat. Definitely not an experience for those fearing crowds.