Japan | Pt. 3 | Kyoto Days, Osaka Nights, Fukuoka Stopover

Over the past few months we have been detail­ing our trav­els across Japan that took place just over a year ago. In Part 1, we arrived in Tokyo, and in Part 2 we made our way to Fujisan and Yudanaka’s hot springs. This, is Part 3.

It had been six hours worth of train rides from Yudana­ka to Kyoto and we arrived just as the sun was start­ing to set. We hopped off of our train and walked under and through Kyoto Station’s mar­vel­lous archi­tec­ture, rush­ing over to the taxi stands so we could acquaint our­selves with the city in the lit­tle bit of day­light that was left.

In our time there, we came to real­ize that Kyoto is a city don­ning many dif­fer­ent hats, and at its core, is the melt­ing pot of Japan’s past and present.

Kyoto is prob­a­bly most famous for its over 1600 tem­ples — the very rea­son we found our­selves in Japan’s for­mer cap­i­tal. But in our time there, we came to real­ize that Kyoto is a city don­ning many dif­fer­ent hats, and at its core, is the melt­ing pot of Japan’s past and present. The result is his­tor­i­cal land­marks sur­round­ed by mod­ern archi­tec­ture and sophis­ti­cat­ed shop­ping dis­tricts, a dual­i­ty that makes for some always inter­est­ing, occa­sion­al­ly jaw-dropping walks. For us how­ev­er, it was the city’s intri­cate net­work of alley­ways that real­ly stuck out and where we spent most of our time explor­ing. The truth is, if you’re not on a main street in Kyoto, you’re prob­a­bly in an alley­way, lit­tered with hun­dred of bicy­cles, res­i­dents, shop-owners, and the occa­sion­al mini-truck try­ing to make its way through.

We checked into the Mit­sui Gar­den, a sleek lit­tle bou­tique hotel off of one of these very alley­ways. Like Kyoto, it blends mod­ern design with Japan­ese cul­tur­al ele­ments to cre­ate a real­ly unique aes­thet­ic. Small warn­ing: if you con­stant­ly flip your pil­low to the cool side through­out the night, you won’t be doing that here because they fill the under­side of their pil­lows with a thin lay­er of rocks. It’s an inter­est­ing concept.

The fol­low­ing day, we went on a tem­ple run. We took a bus up Gojo-Dori to south­ern Higashiya­ma, a bustling tem­ple dis­trict with­in the city that’s also home to Gion, Kyoto’s tra­di­tion­al enter­tain­ment dis­trict (com­mon­ly referred to as the Geisha Dis­trict). The first thing we did was vis­it the Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

Now, full dis­clo­sure: despite of how amaz­ing the sights and struc­tures in Higashiya­ma were, we’d be lying if we didn’t men­tion that there was a pret­ty dras­tic dis­con­nect between our expec­ta­tions and the real­i­ty that await­ed us. The tem­ples them­selves were over­ly com­mer­cial­ized to the point of feel­ing like a major attrac­tion (there’s some­thing very wrong about vend­ing machines in ancient Bud­dhist tem­ples) and it gen­er­al­ly felt like a giant tourist trap. You pay a fee to get into dif­fer­ent parts of each tem­ple and are usu­al­ly walk­ing amidst swarms of tourists and natives com­ing out to admire the foliage. Per­haps the fall tran­si­tion may have been too busy of a time to vis­it, or maybe the area is sim­ply too close to the heart of Kyoto to ever be peace­ful, but we’ve vowed to head straight to the more remote tem­ples just out­side the city the next time we’re in the area.

Nonethe­less, we explored every­thing the area had to offer and, with­out real­ly mean­ing to, stum­bled into Gion, where we spot­ted a geisha-in-training.

The next day was one of our favourite from the entire trip. We made our way to the Arashiya­ma dis­trict in the out­skirts of Kyoto, rent­ed bikes, and rode around the small town the whole after­noon, even­tu­al­ly reach­ing the infa­mous bam­boo groves.

It wouldn’t be a suc­cess­ful day if we didn’t man­age to cram as many activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble, so as we returned our bikes, we decid­ed (last-minute) that we couldn’t leave Kyoto the next day with­out see­ing the Fushi­mi Inari Shrine. It was already late in the after­noon and being 40 min­utes away, we were risk­ing hav­ing the sun set on us while on the train. Regard­less, we took a chance and arrived with just 15 min­utes of sun­set left to take some pho­tos inside the tun­nels com­prised of hun­dreds of torii gates.

We reward­ed our­selves with green tea ice cream and amaz­ing coffee.

The fol­low­ing day we left for Osa­ka. Being just an hour away from Kyoto, we should have had time to make the most of our one and only day there, but we may have par­tied a lit­tle too hard the night before and instead found our­selves zombie-ing our way through the trains, just mak­ing it to our hotel before sleep­ing the after­noon away. It’s a sad tale of cau­tion: when your friend­ly wait­er at Sum­ibi Tori­to keeps bring­ing you drinks, you should stop while you can still count them.

Either way, we rose just as the sun was set­ting and went on to have an amaz­ing night in Osaka.

Our first stop was a much-needed cof­fee at graf. Beyond being a per­fect lit­tle cof­fee shop, graf is main­ly a design stu­dio spe­cial­iz­ing in fur­ni­ture. Look to the oth­er end of the space and you’ll like­ly see the group sketch­ing away at new designs. The atmos­phere here is unmatched.

From there, we took a cab over to Nam­ba Parks — the most elab­o­rate mall we’ve ever set foot in — for a quick din­ner before strolling through the packed streets of Osa­ka and end­ing the night at the Gli­co Man sign. Well, tech­ni­cal­ly it end­ed with some unex­pect­ed yet very wel­come crepes on the walk back.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing we walked over to graf for more cof­fee and yet anoth­er round of crepes before our 3‑hour bul­let train to Fukuoka.

Fukuo­ka would be our last and fur­thest stop on the south­ern coast of Japan. It was anoth­er night of walk­ing through crazy malls and wind­ing side streets, but we were exhaust­ed from all the trav­el­ing and took a night off of pho­tos to take it all in. BUT we did break out the cam­era for one very wor­thy cap­ture at an owl cafe we came upon.

By this point in our trav­els, we had tak­en a total of 20 hours worth of trains since we had left Tokyo. We look back at all those hours fond­ly — each and every one of those rides yield­ed some of the most awe-inspiring sights that we had had the plea­sure of jet­ting past. We can hon­est­ly say that one of our favourite things to do in Japan is grab a few beers, load up on snacks, sit on a train (prefer­ably a Shinkansen) and stare out the spa­cious windows.

As we rolled our lug­gage over to Fukuo­ka sta­tion and car­ried it up the long sets of stairs lead­ing to our ter­mi­nal, we came face-to-face with the last bul­let train we’d take for the remain­der of our stay. It was with heavy hearts that we entered it and found our seats. It was a sad moment, but we took solace in the fact that our adven­ture was­n’t over yet- we had three more days left in Tokyo. As beau­ti­ful of an idea as that was, we could­n’t help but sim­ply stare out of our win­dow for the next 5 hours.