By the way, with these little everytrail route maps you can click and zoom and stuff (or even view with a fancy pants flash animation that shows a dot moving around the route at the same relative speed as we did). Make sure you’re viewing this post at http://www.colourandlight.co.nz/blog and not just via facebook or something and give it a try. Today’s route kept within Kyoto but did involve some underground transport (hence the blank spots in the route map)
Gates, Grocery, Gion and Geisha at EveryTrail
Map your trip with EveryTrail
And a reminder, if you click any of the pics in this post you will be taken to my flickr where you can view them larger (worth it, but I am biased).
Gates
These are the hundreds of Torii Gates that line the paths around the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto.
I think I got some quite nice photos of the gates and shrines in the area, so I’ll save them for a later post when I can look at them on a proper screen. So for now, just the snapshots:
Why are there so many gates? Well… Inari is the god of business. Each Torii is donated by a Japanese business. So, you could say that it’s just a great big series of advertisements 
And on that cynical note, here’s an East meets West situation:
Apparently it’s the Japanese character for West, but Nicola could just be screwing with me and it might be a dirty word…
Anywho, more photos of that magical place to come. For now it’s back to transit. The Kyoto station:
Janette on the subway:
Nicola leading us off the subway:
(can you see how I’m channelling Japanese tourists here with all the snapshotting??)
I can totally read that:
After all that temple/gates walking and subwaying we needed coffee. And Japan isn’t good on coffee, espresso culture is only just starting to seep in. So, we committed a sin. We went there, Starbucks…
American as don’t ya know like whatever.
Grocery
The Nishiki markets. Corridors of non-american goodness. This sanitised us again after the Starbucks experience. Even though it is a bit of a tourist trap, there had to be some locals buying all the fresh produce that needed preparing and cooking.
(had one, was yum)
And washed it down with a Green Tea icecream for dessert:
Gion
Kyoto’s centuries old entertainment district. Entertainment district, not red-light district, but you can google that up yourself if you’re confused.
This scene could actually be anywhere in Japan as it’s fairly typical – people everywhere, messy above ground power lines littering the skyline, cluttered narrow streets and tourists. We do have a lot to be thankful for in New Zealand ya know…
But then round a couple of corners and cherry blossoms were out in full force:
People playing dress up and photo:
Crow/blossom juxtaposition:
Then Jason wanted to hang around till it got darker to see if there were any better shots of the district to be had, so we had to kill time somewhere… And we stumbled across a Kiwi themed cafe.
Mata:
Speight’s:
Then back out into it to try for more photos in the fading light:
Geisha
But the real treat of the day was a chance encounter with two authentic Geisha (as opposed to tourists playing dress up). Ok, well strictly they’re a Maiko and Geiko, but click through to flickr for the story in the comments there…
Phew, long one. Still running a few days behind on the posts, we’re currently in Hamamatsu.