Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Anyone familiar with the Japanese mindset where sites of national significance and coloured leaves are concerned would know it's a good idea to get in early before the crowds start to arrive, and given the fact that the two sites Madam had pencilled in for our only full day in Kyoto lay around nine and a half kilometres from the CBD it should come as no surprise to learn that we were queuing for the Number 8 bus outside Karasuma Station well before the scheduled 7:22 departure.
The crowds were going to increase as the day went on, and it seemed logical to assume a fair swag of them would be travelling out on later services on the same route.
The journey out through the regulation urban landscape was mostly uneventful, though it took a while to pass through a particularly notorious intersection, and shortly thereafter we were winding our way up into the foothills, alighting from the bus around 8:15 and turning our thoughts towards the morning's route march.
Madam has had plenty of time to figure out the paths down which Hughesy's mind is likely to wander, so having landed close to the temple at Jingo-ji, a venue that would, I was told, involve an unspecified degree of climbing, the first thing on her agenda was to determine whether a walk to the other option (Kozan-ji) was doable.
The maps and other data available on the ground weren't particularly helpful as far as administrative details like distances were concerned, so she went for the nearest available human source, a middle-aged woman, obviously a local, sweeping up leaves.
No problem, she was told. It's a fifteen minute walk. At least, that's the version I was given. Since the conversation was in Japanese she could have decided to recast any information that had been given and I would have been none the wiser.
But a fifteen minute walk certainly seemed doable, and while there were concerns expressed about the state of Hughesy's feet I was determined to soldier on and cover whatever distance was required. It was, after all, the last bit of sightseeing for the trip.