Literally. The Kyoto Municipal Museum had a huge scene screaming "BOSTON." Apparently they were hosting a show of selected European works from the MFA. Good thing I didn't bother with that last MFA visit before I left Boston.
Kyoto, the ancient capital, is about ~3 hours by high-speed train from Tokyo. It is a beautiful, low slung city situated between mountains and a river. It feels much less touched by the west in many ways than Tokyo. The small Japanese-style houses with their teensy entrances (something about minimizing tax bills) have not yet been replaced by the screaming office towers of the larger city. Kyoto is also much greener than Tokyo, naturally fading up into the hills as you leave the station area and head east or west from the city center.
We arrived Sunday, and after some confusion with the hotel shuttle bus (we missed it), made our way to the hotel. The Westin Kyoto Miyako is a massive conference center built into the side of a hill on the city's Eastern side. Our little balcony gave us uninterrupted views over the city to the mountains beyond, and a breathtaking sense of calm after Toyko. For dinner, we wandered out past the zoological garden to a homemade noodle shop. There, we inhaled soba and udon while trying to master sitting on bended knee over a low table (we couldn't).
Monday, we got out of bed early (as opposed to waking up at 5 and lying there for a while) to make our morning tour, which would take us to Nijjo castle, the Golden Pavilion, and the Imperial Palace, three of the more special sites in a city of 100 shrines. Nijjo castle, the old Kyoto seat of the Shogun, is a beautiful, airy wooden building surrounded by picturesque gardens and koi ponds. The tour takes you past the endless anterooms and waiting areas to the heart of the Shogun's domain, which is now complete with statues of the various women of the court and a stilted tour guide explanation of the mating habits of the ruling families.
The castle's most interesting aspect was its similarity to many of the European palaces I've seen, despite the difference in style and building materials. The same flourishes – painted ceilings divided into individual squares, carved wooden panels and painted walls, would not have been out of place in Italy, although the flora and fauna would have been different. I don't remember from history class the extent of interaction between the various Eastern and Western empires by the 17th century (keyboard shortcuts have replaced much of what I learned in college), but it will be an interesting research project for my copious spare time.
After the castle, we ran through the gardens of the Golden Pavilion, which is pretty much what it sounds like – a temple covered in gold leaf. It is strikingly shiny in the morning sun, and very pretty, perched on a pond next to Sakura trees. We all posed to the obligatory pictures before being herded into the various gift shops and tea houses.
Our final stop on the tour was the Imperial Palace, and it was here that my inate inability to follow tours won out. I spent most of the tour wandering slightly away from the group around the gravel grounds of the elaborate white and orange structure. The most interesting thing in the palace was the coronation throne, a simple wooden chair underneath a sprawling umbrella pine. It looked fit for a Shakespearean princess, not a dour emperor.
Our next stop was the Daikoji temple, which we ran through looking for our lunch reservation at a Buddhist restaurant serving a vegetarian version of kaiseki, the tasting menu that Kyoto is known for. After an elaborate meal, we stumbled onto the train and across the city to the 10,000 Gates area. This is a meandering complex of family shrines and the large, orange Shinto gates that has covered the mountain since the 8th century. This was probably the highlight of our time in Kyoto, as we wandered up the winding paths, sheltered from the setting sun by the endless rows of the orange wooden structures. We reached the top of the mountain as the sun set, allowing us just enough time to run back down the stone steps before it became too Blair Witch Project.
A few restorative hotel cocktails later, we walked up to the main drag of downtown Kyoto in time to see our destination, a conveyor-belt sushi joint, shut down. We decided we wanted soft serve in liu of raw fish, and set off down the strip. Alas, Kyoto apparently stops serving food at 10, as we watched multiple places close before our hungry eyes. Finally a Lawson's, the ubiquitous Japanese convenience store, coughed up some mocha-vanilla twist, and we stumbled back to bed, sated and ready for Nara in the morning.
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