Reflecting on the previous day’s adventures, and bearing in mind this was the only hotel where we were booked in for two nights, I decided to lighten the load in the backpack.
I placed the bottle of Steingarten in the fridge before we shut the door and set off for Sannomiya en route to Kyoto where, on a sunny sakura season Sunday, one could go, so I was informed, to look at the people.
Even after the Himeji episode, I didn’t appreciate just how many people were likely to be involved.
Prior experience also suggested breakfast might be a good idea, so when we reached the station, we found a suitable eatery and placed our orders.
I thought a hot dog might be a non-controversial selection and was bemused when it arrived accompanied by a salad and a dab of mashed potato.
By the way, it’s surprising how often mashed potato turned up over the next twelve days.
We managed to snare seats on the train out of Sannomiya, but we had to change trains en route, and the second train must have been packed to the gunwales when it left Osaka, so we were forced to stand for the second leg.
Once we’d arrived, ‘Er Indoors announced her knowledge of the local geography left something to be desired, and we needed a map.
That resulted in a search for information that seemed to take an hour and involved enough changes of direction to leave me completely disoriented.
Even if I’d known where we’d started.
Which, of course, I didn’t.
Once we had a map, we wandered out in search of a bus and found queues meandering away from close to a dozen points. Buses appeared, in what seemed totally random order, from time to time, so we attached ourselves to what we thought was the right queue (it wasn’t) and settled down to wait.
Close by, some out-of-towners managed to attract the attention of one of the officials wandering around the area.
While I had no idea what the conversation was about, it was enough to direct us towards a completely different location. Apparently, over there, we would find a more appropriate and marginally less crowded alternative that would deliver us to a point close to our main objectives, Ginkakuji temple and the Philosopher’s Path.
The bus delivered us to the foot of the road leading to Ginkakuji (and one end of the Philosopher’s Path), and we joined the crowd headed uphill.
Ginkakuji, the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, at the foot of the mountains east of Kyoto was built in the fifteenth century as a place of solitude for Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa.
The main building was going to match his grandfather’s Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion).
Plans to cover it in silver were delayed by the Ōnin War, which ravaged Kyoto, and were abandoned after Yoshimasa's death in 1490.
The villa was converted into a Zen temple and trees, plants and mosses from all over Japan were planted in gardens designed by the landscape gardener Soami.
We didn’t get into the main building, which is being renovated, but I was totally blown away from the time we walked through the entrance, where magnificent high hedges line both sides of the approach to the temple.
Inside the courtyard, the first thing you run across is the Ginshaden (Sea of Silver Sand), with a smooth cone of sand that represents Mount Fuji.
From there, following the pathway, you eventually end up looking back over the city of Kyoto.
The notes in my journal read don’t write, just show pictures though I can’t leave the subject without mentioning that I particularly loved the moss.
Until that day, if I thought of moss at all, it was something you find on rocks in pools and damp environments, attractive if you like that sort of thing, but nothing to write home about.
I emerged with totally unrealistic ambitions to incorporate moss into the grounds around The Little House of Concrete.
But, in the end, it was all about the sand.
Heading back downhill, we stopped for ice creams and set off on the Philosopher’s Path.
It's a thirty-minute walk beside a canal, with heritage buildings, tea shops and art stalls beside the path, and a constant flow of people in both directions.
Put that way, it doesn’t sound all that fantastic but add the cherry blossom, which is the reason most people are there, and you’ve got something else entirely.
Eventually, the crush got to us.
We bailed out before the trail finished, and wandered downhill towards the city centre through quiet streets lined with old-style houses.
Eventually, we ended up at an imposing shrine, but we’d had enough of crowds, thank you very much.
Working our way back towards downtown Kyoto, we crossed a bridge and dived into alleys lined with bars, restaurants and dens of iniquity.
With a couple of hours’ walk under the belt, having landed on a major thoroughfare, we stopped for lunch (a hamburger plate and tuna cream spaghetti) which was enough, as it turned out, to keep us going for the rest of the day.
Back at Kawaramachi Station, we decided we’d had enough, for the time being, boarded a train and managed to find a seat.
That might seem a minor detail, but it was enough to persuade us to travel all the way to Osaka rather than change trains as we had in the morning. That would give us a better chance of a seat on a Kōbe-bound train and be assured of a seat.
It had been that sort of day.
Back in Kōbe, we decided we hadn’t quite got the full value out of the three-day Kansai passes, so we took a ride on the Portliner Monorail out to Kōbe Airport and back, which gave us a mariners’ eye view of the city.
Once we’d finished that little jaunt, it was time to organize the next stage of the odyssey.
First up, we had to convert a couple of Japan Rail Pass vouchers into actual tickets, and with that accomplished we were able to book ourselves onto the Shinkansen from Kōbe to Kyoto and the slower train that would carry us from Kyoto to Kanazawa.
To be quite honest, I’d more or less had enough by the time we got back to the hotel, located in the downtown business district, which meant dining options in the immediate neighbourhood were few and far between.
Instead, I opted for a takeaway snack, a couple of beers from a convenient vending machine and the chilled bottle of Steingarten. Then I set about bringing my travel notes up to date as ‘Er Indoors slipped in and out of the room to monitor the progress of a load of washing.
The Steingarten with its lemon/lime characters on the nose and palate provided a wonderful wind-down after what had been a rather wearing, and at times quite chaotic, day.
Several days later, I heard Madam use a word that sounded like Kyotic to describe the day’s events, adding a new concept to our personal dictionaries.
Kyotic: (adjective) State of utter chaos as experienced in Kyoto on a sunny Sakura Sunday.