Kyoto tourism box ticking

The view from the window this morning 

Yes that’s the roof / living room of the house next door. Close quarters here ;)

We did some tourism box ticking today, and although Ken assures us he’s a certified guide & certified English speaker I’m starting to have some doubts. Every question will receive ‘yes’ in reply. ‘How hard is the Japanese language to learn?’ … ‘yes’ ‘why can’t we take pictures of that shrine?’ … ‘yes’. While he speaks well enough he clearly doesn’t understand it much at all, which is actually pretty impressive considering he’s hanging around us all day every day.

As far as the guiding goes we’re hitting the hotspots, although that is in dispute because there are a LOT of places I would rather have gone today. And he’s doing the work on the fly, asking people in the street where to go & using google maps. I’d prefer the guide to be more guidey really. 

Tick box 1: Togetsu-Kyo Bridge

This was a lovely area with a lot of potential, but we did not know it because we did not

a) get told about it by our guide

b) have longer than 15 minutes allocated find out about it ourselves

Although it turned out that we had an hour here because one of the people on the tour got confused about the meeting point and it took the rest of us an hour to find her (less than optimal).

Tick box 2: Arashiyama

Interesting but sadly very rushed. It was like … right they’ve seen the bamboo, ✔️ move along. The streets here were crowded with people but also filled with fascinating shops that we had to walk by without stopping. The air was filled with the delightful scent of lemongrass. What was that all about? I don’t know. I could have asked ask my guide while we were waiting for the people to arrive at the meeting point but what good is ‘yes’ for an answer? Honestly we spent more time standing waiting for the tour group at meeting points than we did sightseeing today. 

Tick box 3 Gion district - took this pic whilst waiting for the people again

Maruyama Park

These streets are lined with little cafes where we were to have lunch & which Ken was surprised to find closed due to the public holiday. He really must be new to this guiding gig. So we walked to the next tick box locale

Tick box 4: Pontocho

We were all a bit nonplussed by Pontoncho. Which had been hyped as a quaint old town rather than this drainage ditch walkway. Ken was using google maps though and I suspect he misjudged the pathway because when we turned back on our heels and walked parallel to the drainage ditch … 

The real Pontocho appeared. 

MGM was also using google maps and said we were only 1.6km away from the hotel. We four had all had more than enough ineptitude for one day so we abandoned the intrepid Ken and the best part of the day began in ernest.  

We found this wonderful place to eat, we’re getting really good at finding food, finishing off the meal with tea & I introduced Sandy & Geoff to the joys of gishy cake (what my Mum called delicious shop bought cake). 

Look at this cool place we found for dinner! Oh maaaan the food (& whisky) was heavenly 

I won’t profess to understand anything about the Japanese language except that it is fascinating. Made up of three scripts Hiragana, 46 characters most commonly used