Beer with subtitles

One of Kyoto’s top gardens for this afternoon. This one you have to book in advance, in person, at a small office in the Imperial Gardens. A major pain in the neck but it proved well worth it: it’s got paths, it’s got lakes, it’s got at least four tea houses (sword wielding samurai-proof ones, too, if I understood correctly).

The guided tour is unrushed and allows plenty of scope for copious photographs. Tricky lighting for much of the time leads to mixed results…

A late start after the early morning and other exertions of yesterday.

I had a tour of Katsura Imperial Villa Garden booked for the afternoon but the morning was free. The castle of Nijo (“Nijo-jo”) was vaguely on the route so it won out.

This was my first castle of the trip; quite different from the shrines and temples I’ve been sightseeing most days. There’s politics attached, for one (warning: myJapanese history is hazy at best): built at the behest of the shoguns but rarely visited by them, the castle was the scene for the final handover of power from the shoguns back to the emperor, after nearly 300 years.

The majority of the complex (two palaces and surrounding gardens) have somehow survived more or less intact since the 1600s; little surprise that the entire site is a world heritage site.

The (self-guided) tour begins at the Ninomaru Palace, magnificent home/office of the shogun. Bright, airy corridors adorned with paintings of animals and trees lead you around the building and the massive rooms contained inside. Several rooms (such as the meeting halls and bedrooms) have figures inside to illustrate how the rooms were used.

Space is the word: big rooms, big corridors and high ceilings. Perhaps to have space in Japan has always been a mark of sophistication and wealth…

Lastly, the Ninomaru Palace sports real, authentic, nightingale floors. The throng of tourists make the place sound like the dawn chorus.

Outside lies a lake garden…

Deeper within the complex is found the Honmaru castle and garden, of which only the latter is open to the public. The present palace does not date back nearly so far as the Ninomaru.

One remaining tower from the original structure provides a view of the surrounding area…

Overall, an excellent way to spend a couple of hours and surely an unmissable part of a trip to Kyoto – but, I get the feeling there’s so many unmissable sights here…

July 17th is festival day in Kyoto – “Gion Matsuri”. It’s the biggest festival of the summer and one of the biggest of the year. The guide book says it dates back to the ninth century when it originated as a ceremony to stave off plague during the summer months. Well, it’s not every day you’re nearby for the biggest Kyoto festival…

Last night’s arrival wasn’t the best: it took ages to find the hotel (even though it was just 10m from the east side; there is an art to exiting Japanese train stations which I haven’t yet mastered), the hotel had no information on the festival and – the last straw – the hotel did not have broadband (a first in Japan) to allow me look it up.

Eventually, I figure it starts around 9am somewhere near Yakasa Shrine. Lucky for me really: it could have been 5am (like in Fukuoka, where the bed of the Grand Hyatt was so much more appealing) or 5pm, in which case I needn’t have bothered coming to Kyoto an evening early and staying in that crappy hotel.

Anyway, in a Herculean feat of …sleepiness, I arrive at Yasaka Shrine at 9.15; there is no activity. I ask a passerby; I wish I hadn’t. Eventually, I wander out and the friendly shopkeeper asks if I want the parade rather than the shrine? Correct!

There’s one or two people there already.

It’s a little St. Patrick’s Day (from March 17th to July 17th) but with less girl guides, brass bands and more…rustic transport in place of the tractors. I never quite work out what these floats are: they’re almost like street-cars (trams, in Europe) but really crap street-cars that are too tall and lurch about all over the place and require twenty men to turn them round to take a corner.

This, in fact, is the main thrust of the parade: watching them turn these contraptions: they’re pulled by about twenty young men and to take a corner the wheels have to be placed on planks and brakes applied and ropes pulled…it’s very complicated. A bit of an art form, like so many things here.

I don’t understand the significance of anything (a recurring theme on my trip) but it is good fun, probably in much the same way that St. Patrick’s Day is fun for a while too.

One last observation: it’s very nice being the tallest person in the crowd…but some resourceful locals are prepared for that…