Day 8 Wed June 2

I was up at 8 and at the post office ATM within minutes of its opening—success! We had cash again! It’s amazing how free I felt on the way home. I pretty much skipped down the street, smiling and nodding at old people who shot dark glances at my tank top which was, admittedly, not as modest as it could have been.

I woke D up with a nice cold coffee from the vending machine and we managed to procure two of our ryokan’s free bikes, one with three gears and one totally gearless, and rolled our rusty way down the streets, celebrating with a hard-earned apple. Just down the street was a bakery, Yamaga, with two loaves of bread taller than me on display, crossed over one shaped like a huge turtle. We bought an apple turnover and a sort of breakfast pizza with sliced egg on top and stopped in a little park to eat breakfast.



Darryl’s bike was curiously draggy and he was really suffering as we headed cross-country, stopping here and there at antique shops and lacquerware stores—Mom and Dad, you would have loved some of the cheap antique furniture we saw. We paused at Mosburger at eleven for D to eat a funny small burger with a sort of curry sauce on top, but when we continued on, D had to stop, flip his bike upside-down and take a look. His diagnosis revealed that the rear brake was broken and, essentially, had been on the entire time he had been riding. No wonder it was so hard!

By some miracle we had pulled over right next to a mechanic shop, so while I investigated a nearby temple, D managed to get the mechanic to fix the bike for free.



After some hard pedaling, we reached the Golden Pavilion, our major temple visit for the day. We picked up bento boxes from the grocery store for lunch—it was 1245—and paid $15 each to enter the temple in a mass of screeching kids in school uniforms, like Disneyland but a bit more regulated. Unfortunately, though, there was nowhere to eat. The pathways were absolutely packed and there were no turnoffs—you had to walk in your regulated line, and if you tried to turn and go against the flow of people, there were security guards standing by to stop you. We were hungry, though, and unwilling to leave, so we ended up sort of half-crouched in some rocks in the most secluded spot we could find, a very small turnoff where a pathway had been blocked by a rope slung across, still clearly visible from the middle of a ramp by everyone on their way up. We snuck bites and tried to chew secretively, but suddenly a man in a red uniform with a badge was coming toward us. “Excuse me,” he said, as D guiltily dropped his backpack in front of the little plates of food, and we stared up at him wide-eyed, “They want to practice English for their school.” Five little kids in yellow hats slunk out from behind him and stared at us, nervously offering their notebooks.

I smiled as sunnily as I could and tried to swallow the bite that was in my mouth without chewing. D’s phone chose that moment to ring, so I signed my name and home country (Louise, Australia) five times and then waited. The little boy in front seemed the boldest. He started to recite, and the others chimed in raggedly. “What is your name? Where are you from? Where have you been in Kyoto? How do you like it?” D got off the phone just in time to help me answer the last question. “Watashi wa atsui des!” he said, and we mimed fanning ourselves. It was very hot, our first sunny day this trip, and we both already had sunburnt noses.



The Pavilion itself was, well, golden. Covered in layers of gold foil, it shone brightly across a koi pond. It was impossible to take a photo without getting at least two schoolchildren in. The English pamphlet didn’t tell us much except that the temple had been re-gilt in the 1990s; Lonely Planet, however, informed us that the Pavilion had been burnt down in the 1950s by a mad obsessed monk. This wouldn’t be the first time that Lonely Planet would differ from the informational brochures.

From there we went to the next temple, where we crossed a nightingale floor in our socks to see the mid-15th century Zen garden. Nightingale floors were specially designed by paranoid nobles so they could tell when anyone was creeping up on them. At every step, the boards sigh or squeak or chirp like a bird. It was hard to hear, though, over the sound of masses of people stamping flatfooted across it. The Zen garden itself was rather dull.




Five sets of three stones were arranged in a significant pattern over a bed of smaller rocks—what pattern, no one is sure, because no one quite knows who the artist was, according to Lonely Planet. But the pamphlet we received at the temple entrance told us that the artist had actually intended you, the visitor, to use your imagination so the garden was whatever you wanted it to be. I couldn’t think of many things the little islands of rocks could represent, except maybe islands. I did like the walls around the garden, though, which were constructed from oil baked into clay. Over the years the oil had seeped out, forming strange patterns on the walls. Just around the corner from the Zen garden was a lovely, quiet, mossy lawn. As D commented, if the temple had been dedicated to the Moss Garden instead of the Zen Garden, the masses of craning people would have been perched around that abandoned side of the building instead. Farther inside the grounds, we admired a much quieter pond full of pink waterlilies.

It was almost seven when we made it home, exhausted and with aching backs and knees, and by 8 we were cleaned up and on the bus into Gion, the nightlife district. Searching for a restaurant, we got lucky, finding an upstairs one. These are easy to miss, as a gaijin (foreigner) since we are not trained to look up, and the signs advertising the restaurant are often on the second or third or fourth level of the building. Also, since you probably can’t read the sign, you are quite likely to end up in a massage parlor, knocking on someone’s apartment door or, as would happen to D a few days later, stepping out of the elevator into a hardcore porn shop.



Our restaurant had a special sale tonight and we paid less than three dollars apiece for six tapas-sized dishes, although our waitress managed to sneak past us a 300 Y cover charge and a 630 Y per person charge for the tiny salads she brought us at the beginning of the meal, unasked, much like if Olive Garden served you breadsticks and then charged you $8 per basket. After food, we managed a bus home without too much drama.