Japan 9: A rainy walk to Magome and a bullet train to Kyoto

Before going into today's events, I am going to make two comments about past events.

The squidlike mushroom that we ate at the Taipei airport upon arrival is called enoki mushrooms.



A few days ago, when I looked to get food in the train station, but didn't have time, I ended up seeing this drink.  I took a picture and forgot to mention it here.



I woke up early today, as breakfast was at 7:30.  It was raining.  I packed up my gear and left a little before 9.  The ryokan I had stayed on was part way onto the trail to Magome.  Five more minutes up the road, in the same direction, was another ryokan that forwarded my luggage to magome's tourist information center for $5.  This was a good thing, because I would have learned about five minutes in, that bringing luggage onto this leg of the journey would be impossible.

Most of the first half of the trip was a dirt road, with intermittent bouts of cobblestone, and steps were involved.  Thinking back on it at the time, I was very fortunate that it hadn't rained yesterday, for I would never have been able to make the journey with luggage under rainy conditions.  The beginning of trail did not have much to look at, as I was simply hiking in a forest.  One thing that I did see, which I would see quite a few of, were bells meant to scare off bears.

It was rainy and incredibly muggy and uncomfortable.  I finally felt a breeze when I came near two waterfalls.



Some more pictures from the first half of the journey:



After a while, I came across a building.  I had no interest in stopping, but a man pulled me inside and served me cold tea before I could speak up.  He explained that I was only the second traveller of the day, due to the rain.  Most days would have about 150 travelers hiking the path between the two towns.  I explained that I had to make it to Kyoto by the end of the day, and so excused myself and returned to the path.



After walking mostly upward for much of the path so far, I continued climbing a big hill past the building, and then the travelling became mostly downhill.  I encountered a few other hikers shortly after the house, including a group that had stayed at my ryokan the night before.  Perhaps they bused to the other town and then walk backward.  One couple joked and asked if I had seen any bears.  I said that I had only seen a handful of dead bodies and that they should be safe.  Five minutes later, I saw what was either a small bear or a small gorilla, which quickly scampered off when it saw me.  I hurried onward.

The second half of the journey had much more interesting things to see.



Eventually, I reached Magome.  It was a little bit bigger than the other towns, and it was built on a slope, going downwards until hitting a regular road.  The shops were slightly nicer than Tsumago and I considered getting a little Japanese rabbit diorama, but didn't.



I picked up my luggage and headed down to wait for the bus.  It was a thirty minute bus ride and there was never more than 5 people on the bus.  Upon reaching the station, a train was departing in 7 minutes to Nagoya, my next stop.  I hurriedly went on the train.  A little over an hour later, I was at Nagoya.  Here, I would be heading on another shinkansen(bullet train), bound for Kyoto.  There was one leaving about five minutes after I reached the shinkansen area of the train station.  Again, I quickly jumped on.

It is hard to explain how fast the shinkansen feels.  I decided to take a video.  I don't know if it'll convey the speed, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Once in Kyoto, I asked a worker what the best way to get to the station near my hotel was.  He said the subway.  I went down to the subway.  The man at the turnstile said that I would have to transfer twice.  He suggested the bus.  In order to get out of the station and to the buses, I had to show my ticket about five times, each time hoping that the next exit, would be my leap home.  Once I got near the bus area, I decided I just wanted to get there already, and took a taxi.  It took about ten minutes and $12.60.

The hotel lobby is nice and air conditioned, and the receptionist spoke excellent English.  For some reason, they gave me two beds.  I am using the second bed to hold my open luggage.  Something that I have noticed throughout the hotels in Japan, is that each floor above the first floor doesn't bother with air conditioning in the corridors.  I don't get it.

Anyhow, it was too late to do the bamboo forest, since the monkey area closed at 5 and it was nearly 4:15 at the time.  I've developed an interest in handmade Japanese crafts, so I decided to see if I could make it in time to see the Kyoto Museum of Traditional Crafts, that closed at 5.  It was a 20 minute walk.  On the way there, I saw a British bar with an odd sign.



By the time I got out of the hotel and over the the Museum, it was 4:45.  By the time I actually found the museum, which was in the basement of the building, I had just over 5 minutes left.  It turns out that the "museum" was just a gift shop.  I don't really understand what is going on with that...  In any case, I looked around for my five minutes.  There was one area with what looked like grey clay creations.  Unfortunately, the workers did not know a word of English, so I could not inquire more.

I went to get a drink of water from a vending machine, there in the basement.  I found a pPokemon drink being sold.



Next, I decided to go two streets down, to the Kyoto Handicraft Center, which was two adjacent buildings that purportedly sold a wide variety of handmade crafts.  It was crap.  While one room was nice, it was extremely, extremely pricey.  The other 3 areas had generic tourist souvenir merchandise, again for poor prices.  It did advertise some workshops for learning how to create different types of crafts made locally, but it'd be a waste with my artistic talents.  Before leaving, I saw some Star Wars characters made up in the style of one of the dolls that are made here.



On the long walk back, it started to rain.  I stopped halfway, in a non touristy area, to have dinner.  It was a tiny place with what looked like a long bar that circled around to the other side, with a thin area for the waiters to move and serve food.  When I sat down, I was told to order from a kiosk.  You order, pay the machine, and are given a ticket.  Then, the waiter takes the ticket.  They serve you free iced tea.  I asked for water after I was given the tea.  The beef, rice, and scallion dish that I ordered was incredibly good.

While walking down the streets of Kyoto, I couldn't help but notice that nearly half of the women wore either skirts or dresses, even moreso than in Taiwan.  Although I have noticed this for a while, I have not noted here on the blog that the women also wear a type of pants that is kind of flared all over.  It kind of looks like a combination of traditional Japan's clothing and more modern clothing mixed.

Once I was near the hotel, I turned into an area of cover, that was lined with stores.  I didn't take a picture, but one of the stores was a slot machine hall.  It is the one marked "Fiber," on the right.  There was also a fermented food store.



I saw a guitar store with a few guitars.



There was a movie theater that had anime movies as well.



There was even a huge tore dedicated to machines where you throw in money and a mechanical arm doesn't pick up a prize for you.



I saw an interesting restaurant that sold what looked like tall pancake cakes.  I went inside and ordered bread pudding.  It looked much better than it tasted.  An odd thing about this restaurant was that the menu was on the table and you were instructed to ring the bell when you wanted service.



Afterwards, I returned to my hotel to do laundry.  Tomorrow, I will be seeing my second guide of the trip, for four hours again.