expiration date 

it’s Christmas! Merry Christmas, everyone!

we were planning to wake up late. our alarm clock was set for 7AM, but we ended up waking up at 10:30… i guess the room was so cold that we didn’t really want to get out of the warm futon.

today, we’re planning to explore the Higashiyama area. so, after studying the map and the guidebooks last night, today we finally took the bus. busses in Kyoto turned out to be very easy to use. we bought the daily ticket, which saves us quite a lot, since we took the bus everywhere. the only thing that threw us off at the beginning is how you enter the bus. here in Singapore, you enter the bus from the front door and exit at the back door — both times, you swipe your card. in Japan, you enter from the back door and exit from the front door, while paying the fare (or in our case, swiping the card) at the little machine next to the driver. we kept trying to enter the bus from the front door…

anyways, we stopped at Gojo Zaka and walked toward the Kiyomizu Temple. we passed by many cute little stores along the way. there were ceramics pots and cups stores, snack stores, restaurants, and many other things. each of the stores are packed with people. i think we came during the tourist season or something, because the road was full of tourists, both local and international.

the Kiyomizu temple is one of the most visited temples in Kyoto. it’s quite an achievement, since there are over 1000 temples in Kyoto to compete with. the complex is vast. there are ponds and a few (pretty) gates to go through before going into the main complex. we didn’t go in, though… the line to enter the temple was long.

the view from the entrance is amazing. it overlooks the whole Kyoto. and i think, it would be a hundred times prettier if we were there during any other seasons when the trees actually have leaves.

all the sudden, my camera battery died. oh no! this is bad! the good thing is that we brought a spare camera, which is ari’s digital camera. but it’s bound to die too… because even though we brought the chargers for each of the cameras, we couldn’t charge the batteries. we forgot that Japanese plug is not the same as Singapore’s plug. Singapore plugs are three-pronged, while Japanese ones are two-flat prongs, the same plug as the ones in the States. and we forgot to buy the plug converter in the airport, so now we can’t use the chargers in Japan.

anyways, we continued walking… on the way down from the temple, we passed many restaurants located on the edge of the cliff, providing nice views of Kyoto from the top of the mountain. we then decided to go back tomorrow to have lunch there. meanwhile, today we bought some cream-puff (one with the regular fillings, one with green tea fillings) to fill up our stomach while sight-seeing. the fillings were warm, so it was nice to have while walking in the middle of winter. but those crazy Japanese tourists opted to buy ice cream, instead! …we found out that there are many ice cream parlors open during winter, and they actually have customers…

we then walked to Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka, the small alleys that were kept as it was since a few hundred years ago. once again, it’s full of cute little wooden shops. the alleys consist of many stone steps going up and down the hills. this is one of the places that we’ve been wanting to see for years…

on the way to Maruyama Koen, we got lost in those little alleys and ended up finding more cute little houses and pretty gardens. i can’t really describe how it looked… they’re just so… Japanese, i guess. i haven’t seen anything like that anywhere else. the small wooden houses standing so close to one another. the trees bend in a certain way. the lamp posts are full of wires going here and there. everything was cramped into small spaces, but somehow managed to look neat and lovely…

we were still lost in the middle of one of those alleys with traditional houses and gardens, when we found an Italian restaurant. it was located in one of those traditional houses at the end of a dead-end alley… i wonder who goes there… but it looked very pretty and very Japanese. i wouldn’t know that it was an Italian restaurant if it weren’t from the small lantern sitting on the stairs.

we passed by a few shrines and temples along the way before reaching Maruyama Koen. we stopped and had dango (Japanese snacks on skewers) with tea. at that time, my feet started to ache. there is something wrong with my boots… i guess it’s not made for walking; it’s more like a fashion boots…

after resting for a while, we continued our walk toward the Chon-in Temple, which is famous for its huge entrance building and the largest bell in Japan. and it was huge! we were going to enter the temple, but my feet had started to act up again. at the same time, ari’s camera battery went dead as well… so we gave up and abandoned our journey… instead we took the bus back to the downtown area. the plan is to go to a large department store and look for the the plug converter…

well, it turned out that all of those department stores don’t have plug converters. they do have ones that convert from Japanese plugs to other countries’ plugs (even for the Singaporean ones), but they don’t have the ones that convert to Japanese plugs.

so we went back to Kyoto Station and asked the Tourist Information Center where to find the plug. the Tourist Center guy wasn’t sure where to get the plug converter, but he directed us to a large electronic shop (that covers a whole floor of a department store) located behind the Kyoto Tower. after browsing and browsing (and my feet were killing me at the same time), we found it! yay! we can charge our cameras again!!

at the ryokan, my legs were falling apart. we took an afternoon nap, hoping that it will heal the pain.

photo album: Japan Trip: Day 2 (25 December 2005).