14. KYOTO - RYKOAN

Sunday March 3, 2013, continued

And now for our Kyoto adventures. Once the imperial capital of Japan, Kyoto in central Honshu, is now a city of about 1.5 million people. We came here because it has more traditional architecture than most Japanese cities and for good reason. It was spared much of the WWII arial bombing that burned up so many other cities. In fact, it had been on the short list for a nuclear bomb until it was replaced by poor old Nagasaki because the US Secretary of War had honeymooned there.

Back from our little excursion to Ashiya, and when we eventually located our locker in Kyoto Train Station... we set out on a mission to find our ryokan, which we will tell you about in a moment.

Honganji Temple

Kyoto has some 2000 religious places, 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines, as well as palaces and gardens so its no surprise that we stumbled upon this one as we walked in search of our accommodation.

Not on our list but the doors were open... so... we "j-walked" through the grounds

 

The host of the show...

 

 

 

 

Behind the temple the streets narrow to tiny lanes

After quite a search. And with some help from some friendly Japanese We eventually, we found our accommodation.

Welcome to the Nagomi-RyokanYuu. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn. Ryokan, pronounced somthing like "dyokon", is the one Japanese word that we could never say properly, though we tried and tried...

 

 

 

A small communal dining room.

A courtyard.

The corridor to our room.

 

 

The small garden courtyard from our room.

Ours had a teeny plastic bathroom for one.

 

Our room - tatami-mats on the floor, clay walls, sliding shoji screens, yukata (bathrobes) on top of our futons waiting to be unrolled.

Breakfast

Interestingly Bethel has several Japanese style rooms with all of the above, set aside as guest rooms, which the brothers said we could use if we wanted,,, and we wanted,,, but due to our somewhat hectic schedule we did not have the time.

Lloydnalex