Day 16: Bicycle Mayhem

Friday March 11th, 2011 by Celine Vincent

Kyoto is not as large a city as Tokyo or Nagoya. When we first arrived in Kyoto, the lack of skyscrapers even seemed strange to us. But Kyoto is still a large city and most of the must see attractions are located near the edges of the city. Since we could not walk or use the pulic transport to visit everything we wanted in one day, we decided to rent bicycles and cycle there instead.

Riding a bike in a Japanese city is an experience by itself. Although public transport and most traffic we have seen is well organized, the same cannot be said of the sidewalks, which bikers and pedestrians share. In Japan, cars ride on the left side of the street, but on the curbs this is not the case. Here you ride where you please and you should always try to choose the most illogical side. Sometimes a part of the sidewalk is marked for bicycles, but both Japanese bikers and pedestrians seemed to ignore this completely. Add to that the fact that nobody looks for bikes before crossing the curb or taking a turn and the noises of the city completely muffled our bells, riding a bike was most definitely an adventure by itself.

But the bikes were merely the means to visit some must see spots. In the morning we visited the Toji Temple and the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Toji Temple is known for its five-story pagoda, which is the highest wooden structure in Japan. This pagoda is also the symbol of Kyoto, so a sight we could not miss. Fushimi Inari is also a very impressive place for the many torii’s there. More than 1300 torii’s are placed over a four kilometer path with beautiful nature and spectacular views along the way.

In the afternoon Nijo Castle, the Ryoanji Zen Temple and Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, formed our program. Nijo Castle offered beautiful sights both inside the castle, with its many wall paintings, and outside, where there was a large garden. The Ryoanji Zen Temple offered some participants a glimpse of the satori, the enlightenment that our study tour was named after when seeing the rock garden there. The Golden Pavilion, a building covered with gold leaf and surrounded by a Japanese garden, was also very impressive to see.

After this amazing day in Kyoto, it was time to pack our suitcases, which will be sent to our hotel in Osaka. But before we will go there as well, we will spend the night at a temple near Nara. A tea ceremony, traditional meals and sleeping on futons (the traditionsal bedding) promise to be quite the experience, but more on that in our next post.