Japan October 2014: Day 8 - Templed out in Temple Town

Ok, so here's the deal. You get a fancy schmancy travel agent to organise you a holiday to somewhere you know next to nothing about but want to explore in a genteel manner. You flick through your itinerary somewhere above Russia at 35000 feet and completely disregard the note in the itinerary that mentions they've organised a tour of a certain city for you. A walking tour to boot if you'll excuse the pun dear reader. And then, in the middle of the night when you need a wee, you suddenly wonder whether the new day ahead is that day, and blow me down, it surely is. A full day walking tour of Kyoto. Yikes. With my foot in the state it's in? Insanity that I should have put a stop to if only I'd woken up a day or two sooner. However, it's the worst manners in the world to not show up to a reservation in Japan - be it restaurant or appointment or whatever, so dutifully like the polite people we are, we presented ourselves at 9am sharp to reception to meet Yoshiko who was our guide for the day. What a lovely charming lady and hey! she had near perfect English! I would have been happy to just sit and talk to an adult (sorry Carlos) for the day let alone be shown bits of historic Kyoto about which I knew next to nothing. Yoshiko was organised, spritely and very earnest. Off we set to 'do' the major temples to the west of the city.

A good luck talisman on a subway train, a gift from a train driver in Tokyo

I can't do a recital of facts. I really can't. I can't even tell you the names of the temples/castle we visited because the tickets and brochures are in my bag and I'm sat here with a beer on unable to walk even as far as my bag. So you'll just have to pester me with your thirst for knowledge at some point in the distant future when all I want is to share a cup of miso soup and a tofu sandwich with you and to pore over the volume of useless information I have collected. I just know that shoguns and emperors lived in palaces and temples and the shoguns fell out with the emperors and took control of the regions and the nation, and the shoguns in Kyoto were quite aggressive warlords and there were ninjas involved and they do exist, and one of the shoguns banished the emperor from Kyoto then got sad that the emperor died of the indignity and the shogun felt bad. Oh and the current imperial family is 125th of their line and they planted trees a lot at one of the (many) world heritage sites we visited today - what a boon to Japanese society don't you think? There you go! Japanese history from the 8th century to the present day. Easy huh? But what I did learn is the following:

Japan is a democracy with a consitutional monarchy that they wheel out for special occasions. Sound familiar? Dunno if they're as expensive or useless as ours...
Japanese people are born into Shintoism and die in Buddhism
There are 96 characters in the Japanese alphabet - two sets of 48 characters each, one written by a man and one written by a woman. The characters have the qualities of softness and roundness for the ones written by a woman and squareness for the men's.
Japanese people also have to learn a minimum of 3000 chinese characters as they're all combined. The chinese characters came to Japan with the buddhists from China.
Udon noodles are thick, oily and remind me of worms. The Japanese diet is seriously starting to pall
Japanese people are CRAZY about blossom in the Spring and leaves in the Autumn
It's another country where shoes are clearly a problem inside. There must be a critical school that deals with why this is.
Temples are Buddhist, shrines are Shinto.
Kyoto has 42 universities and 2000 shrines/temples
Kyoto was 4km across when it was founded in the 8th century,it's now 43km across
Dragons are benign in Japanese lore
Cranes and chrysanthemums are imperial symbols
Phoenixes are very auspicious. So auspicious that no one has ever seen one in the flesh (and no, Harry Potter doesn't count)
In 50 years of operation, Japan Rail has not had one fatality caused by a train accident.
Japanese people dress and behave modestly, and do not like their pictures taken in public. Even at their weddings.
Most temples in Kyoto seem to have burned down, if not once then at least three or four times. It was not explained why this phenomena had happened, Carlos and I wondered whether they were just, you know, very very unlucky. The symbols that they had on the roofs and stuff to ward off fire (shhhh) didn't seem to have worked. Is that something to do with religion being a load of old cock do you think?
Shinto has some 8 million gods (whilst we're on religion) and these are related to everything. So just imagine - whatever you do right or wrong in Shinto, there's a god already there...

So, having scintillated you with that (now not so) little summary of things Japanese/Kyotite, I'll leave you with some pictures. And yes, I am tired, and yes, my heel is killing - running for a randen tram did not help and effectively wiped me out mobility wise at about 1:30pm, and yes, I can take no more eastern inscrutable food and I've unearthed a Tony Roma's rib place and boy am I going. Meat, recognisable salad and no eyeballs. Whoop de do. Pics are captioned-ish but I've seen that many temples and that many gardens today your guess is as good as mine. Oh and we saw maiko and geiko in Gion this afto. They looked about 12 and I have serious concerns about them. But I didn't dignify this with photos as that would have been touristy and crass.... Enjoy the contemplative nature of just some of the 94 pictures I took today. Oh and did I mention we're going to Tony Roma's for Ribs tonight? No eyeballs, no miso, no nothing except recognisable western style food. Although Carlos reckons there'll be a miso soup course. Grrrrrrrrr...