| While we were in Arashiyama, we visited Okochi Sanso, the private villa of Japanese movie legend Okochi Denjiro (1898-1962) at the foot of Mt. Ogura. Okochi was already a famous actor when he started construction on the villa in 1931, and throughout his career, this would be his place of meditation. |
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| Coming out of Okochi Sanso, we passed by a field of yellow flowers, so we stopped for some pictures. |
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| We also saw a shop selling things made out of bamboo. You've probably noticed Japanese like square shaped things. |
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We decided to give the pig temple quest one last try before we left Kyoto. We went to the Kyoto Palace Side Hotel and asked for directions. The lady at the reception was most helpful and pointed us to this temple. |
| We found it! The temple was full of boar shrines. There was a even shop that sold talismans of all sorts and the guy behind the counter was a priest in full robe. We asked him for a talisman for conceiving babies but he didn't speak any English. He disappeared behind the counter and came back with a Casio digital translator. We asked him what each talisman did and he'd punch in the meaning and showed us the translation. Eventually we found one that was for "Get pregnant" so we bought it. (2007 update: It worked, by the way). |
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It was time to leave Kyoto for the bright lights of Tokyo. It was a 3-hour ride on the shinkansen (bullet train). |
| Youtube video of two trains passing one another. |
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When we arrived in Tokyo, we couldn't seem to find the Tokyo Terminal hotel. We dragged out luggage to where we thought Yaesu Terminal Hotel was, but it looked closed. We saw a lady standing by the street corner soliciting some sort of seedy business from passer-bys, so we decided to avoid eye-contact with her. As we were looking at our map, she came over and asked us if we were looking for Yaesu Terminal. We nodded our heads and she helpfully pointed out the front entrance to the hotel around the corner. The room was tiny, smelled bad and cost us 17,000 yen but according to Lonely Planet, it was supposed to be reasonable and clean. We might have to lower our expectations for Tokyo hotels. |
| Back to Day 7 (part 1) <<< | >>> Day 8: Tokyo Akihabara |
