Tour de Kyoto

Monday morning we awoke in Kyoto ready for a day of sightseeing. We first went to visit a really old Temple call Kyomizodura or something like that. We caught a bus there and then decided to walk back to the main train station for lunch and to decide our plan for the rest of our day. The 25 minute walk back reminded both of us of the many hours we had spent wandering Asian locals street contacting with little success. While it felt the same in terms of a foreign land with an American companion walking side-by-side down the street, things were a little different in shorts, T-shirts, iPods (listened to Bob Marley and Great Country Playlist), and a little more laid-back attitude.

Fernando was so inspired by the walk that he got the idea to rent bikes for the afternoon's sightseeing. He had spent most of his mission on a bike and wanted to relive the glory days I guess. I was a little dubious as I hadn't ridden a bike consistently for a while and knew we had another 25km or so ahead of us. Basically, I figured if Fernando wants to relive his mission that is something I should support so we got bikes for $8.50US or so and headed out after riding home for lunch. When I noticed that he was riding almost solely on the busy sidewalks I asked why not the rode and he said in Japan bikes stay on the sidewalk. He explained that the fun of it was the feeling of "cheating death" as you dodge in and out of walkers, people waiting for busses, other bikers, car, shops, etc. With that insight, I did my best trying to keep up and survive the day. The first hour or two I was a laggard, but by the end of the day I could do fine. It was a lot of fun dodging traffic, cruising down hills, and simply having the freedom to go and do whatever we wanted.

As for cultural sights, in the afternoon we visited the Silver Pagoda, the Imperial Palace, and the Gold Pagoda. The Imperial Grounds were nice, but a bunch were sealed off or with tour only so it was more what we saw from our bikes than actually walking through any buildings. The Golden Pagoda was amazing! It had a great setting on a pond and hillside in green, lush foliage and glimmered in the sun. After riding our bikes back to the store we headed home for the evening. We stopped on the way for dinner at an inexpensive curry restaurant (good enough that we repeated it today) and had some ice cream at CircleK. I guess that is how the world works, Japan gives America Toyota and Sony, and we give them 7-11 and CircleK. No wonder we are running a huge trade deficit with them and everyone else.