Long time, no see...Nara and Kyoto (久しぶり...奈良と京都)

This past week, we had a day off in the middle of the week, and so, I decided to take a trip out to Nara for the day. I was trying to figure out the last time I'd been there, and after some thought and checking my photos, I figured out that it had been about a year since I've been there. Really? That long? It's hard to believe! I had actually been debating whether or not I should go there or go to Arashiyama, but I figured that there would be less people to deal with in Nara than in Arashiyama (last year around this time when I went, it was really pretty, but really hard to do anything because of the sheer number of people who were out there...for example crossing a bridge took 15-20 minutes when it shouldn't have taken more than 5...)

Anyway, I took a walk through Nara Park, got some senbei to snack on, saw the deer, visited a small garden, and took some nice photos of the fall colors. The garden I went to was Yoshikien Garden. It's a really small garden (right next to a much larger one), but foreign visitors get in for free, whereas the other one is rather expensive to go into. Having been to both before, I know they're both nice, but I decided to stick with the small one this time around. When I got there, I thought I would have to pay the 250 yen that normal adults have to pay because I'm not a tourist, but the lady told me it was fine and I could just go ahead and go on through. Lucky!! And as a side note, she seemed really surprised, but happy when I started talking to her in Japanese. She complimented me on it and made some comments about it to the Japanese lady who was standing behind me. I took a lot of pictures in there. On this particular day, the day started off kind of sunny, but it got quite cloudy and chilly after a while, so I didn't stay in Nara too long, but it was nice to get a change of scenery.

Here's a few photos from that trip out to Nara:

One of my favorites from this day out!

What these leaves are sitting on is actually a type of moss!

 

Can't go to Nara without at least one photo with deer in it...

 

And, on Saturday I took a trip out to Kyoto...again there was an internal debate about Arashiyama...but just thinking about all those people was making me tired so...

 

It has been even longer since I've been to the city of Kyoto than since I've been to Nara.  More than 2 years, in fact. The last time I was there was around when I first started living in Japan.  The reason behind that is because although Kyoto has many pretty places, temples and traditional things and famous sites, there are so many tourists there, that I don't like it so much as some other places.  When I went out there this time, I didn't really have any set plans about what I wanted to do -- there were a couple places I was thinking I wanted to go for sure, but the rest I felt flexible about -- a kind of see how it goes and how I feel kind of day.  It was a really nice day at the start but in the afternoon it seemed like it was threatening to rain (although, luckily for me, it did not).

 

Started the day out just taking a walk -- this is a temple near Kyoto Station

 

The following photos are from Kyoto Imperial Park. It was actually my first time to go there -- I didn't have time to visit the other times that I'd been to Kyoto. Also as a random point of interest, when I got to the far side of the park, I could hear some music playing, and it turned out that across the road, in another park area, they were having some kind of music festival, so I checked that out for a little bit too...

 

 

My highlight photo of from the day -- this family was playing with the leaves under a giant ginkgo tree

 

The Imperial Palace entrance

After visiting the Imperial Park, I took a bit more of a walk around, and headed off to the Kyoto Handicraft center, where I may or may not have done some Christmas shopping.  Before getting there though, I took a brief detour at the Heian shrine...

 

Before leaving Kyoto, I also wanted to make a brief stop at Kiyomizu, for a couple of reasons, one being they have some nice shops in that area, and another being that it's supposed to be really pretty for taking pictures of the autumn colors.  The only problem with that second reason being it had already gotten dark.  But, I told myself that wouldn't be a problem because they were also supposed to be illuminating it for November, and that would be interesting to see, right? Don't you think?  I'm sure it would be, and from what I saw, it was.  However, I may have temporarily forgotten this is Japan, and events such as this, mean ridiculous numbers of people.  On the walk up there, I figured there would be lots of people there (there always is) but the walk there was particularly slow and congested this time around.  Once I finally got up there, I was shocked.  SO MANY PEOPLE!!! They were saying that it would be AT LEAST a 20-30 minute wait to get up those stairs.  At that point, I was getting kind of hungry and was already rather tired, so I just took a couple photos, and then headed back to make my way home.

 



So many people...

So many people in the shopping street too...

And that concludes these two episodes of day trips to places I haven't been in a while...