On the 25th of April, fresh from London, we headed to Fontainbleu for a bit of bouldering with Greg, Ronan, Romain and Jesus. I didn't climb much, and when i did climb it wasn't very good either, instead I spent most of the time dozing in the sun lying on rocks; watching lizards and caterpillars...
Having landed in CDG on the first flight of the morning, Greg was waiting to whisk me away to Brittany for the weekend. 6 hours later we arrived and were straight away given the grand tour of the house. Then we were off to see a bit of the sea and the rolling landscape of Brittany. A welcomed change from Tokyo. We were then driven to a nearby park and had a gentle stroll through the woods. We then went back to the house for some lunch...a delicious ratatouille made by Greg's mum.
After lunch we went back out to admire the Pink granite cliffs, which have very strange forms carved into them from the sea and wind, there were very impressive boulders teetering precariously on top of other boulders. Until a couple of years ago, the area around the pink granite cliffs had been all but destroyed by tourists trampling all over the place, so now you are made to keep to quite a strict and narrow path. On the brightside, the view is much better than a few years ago, as the vegetation has grown back very happily and is now flourishing. I don't have any photos of the spikey bushes with little yellow flowers... but they were everywhere.
We walked up to a tower, built on a little outcrop of rocks, which had an impressive arch bridge built out of the same pink granite as the cliffs, and looked like it had grown out of the rock itself as the butressing rocks moulded around the ends of the bridges.
Wakabaya Ryokan [若葉家旅館] just opposite the Hospital in the North East side of Kyoto... Despite us trying to book our ryokan early (in anticipation of Japanese holiday planning efficiency) and attempting to coincide our visit with Sakura/Hanami 桜・花見 A lot of the ryokan's that Greg managed to find were either booked the nights that we wanted to stay, or very expensive. However, after trawling through the Rakuten Travel website (here) I managed to find the Wakabaya ryokan which is only available when you do your search in Japanese. Greg convinced Fumi to phone up on our behalf and make the booking, but on hearing the name for the reservation, the owner became very apprehensive, and it was only due to the very polite and convincing argument of Fumi-san, that we managed to make the reservation. I guess the reason that the Japanese search is different from the English search on Rakuten travel, is because some of the hotels/ryokans specify their clientèle...Because the Ooyasan 大家さん of the Wakabaya did not speak english she doesn't really take foreigners...
The ryokan is attached to a restaurant (where we had our breakfast)...and I think it was called Kabuki 歌舞伎 or something like that. The ryokan itself definitely looked as though it had seen better days...probably sometime in the 1960's. There was a room for toilets, which had two little urinals stuck to the wall, and three 'Japanese-style' loos (ie. squat loos) and one 'western-style loo' - I didn't venture into the Japanese ones, but the Western one had the smallest little light bulb in it, which was plugged into the mains and the only source of light, which was quite amusing. There was also a very sinister looking 'massage' chair...which looked more like a torture instrument...But it all paled insignificance because the hospitality of the owner, a lovely little old lady, who I mainly saw with a stitch apron and a headscarf tied around her head to keep her hair back.
On our first night, we had arrived rather late, and still had not had dinner...I did try to ask the lady if there were any places to buy food nearby, and she pointed us to the nearest combini...but in the end we managed to get to a Hokka-hokka Tei ほっかほっか亭(a bento 弁当 chain store - not great food but I wasn't really in the mood for trekking for ages to find anything more exciting...) and then dragged it back to the ryokan...I just popped down stairs to get some hot water, and the little old lady handed me a thermos, and then told me to wait. I waited. She then appeared with a plate of tempura, which she insisted that I take. It was very generous of her, and definitely better tasting than the stuff we bought from hokka hokka tei.
The next night, instead of the usual tea that is left in the ryokan room (on the little tea table) she had placed plain hot water... which was very thoughtful of her. She also warned us that it would be raining on Sunday...so we should take care, which was nice of her. Anyway, she was very cool, and I'm not sure our Japanese was good enough to thank her enough for her hospitality.
photo taken from Rakuten Travel Website: http://travel.rakuten.co.jp/HOTEL/8817/8817.html
Our Ryokan [旅館] Landlady had warned us on Sunday that it would rain today, but since every thing had been shut yesterday, and Greg had taken this Monday off as holiday we thought we'd at least try and go see some stuff... So, as soon as the Imperial Palace office opened at 8:45, we gave them a call and asked if they still had spare places on their tour of the gardens in the Imperial Palace grounds...They advised us to come as soon as possible to make a reservation in person. For some unknown reason, it is much easier for foreigners to get reservations on the tours of Imperial Palace gardens and villas than Japanese citizens. We got there about an hour later to book for four people. We then went in search of luggage lockers in the nearest station, to get rid of our big bag, and then waited in the rain under a tree trying to get as unwet as possible. I wasn't very successful.
When we finally got into the grounds, the introductory video was in Japanese with English subtitles. Unfortunately, despite being earlier than the allotted time, we missed most of it. The tour itself was also in Japanese, which I generally ignored and made up any missing information for my own amusement. It was still a nice garden (apart from the weird flat round pebble beach which I just didn't see the attraction of...) but the rain made it a little less enjoyable...
We then battled to get on a bus and headed to Ginkakuji [銀閣寺] the Golden Palace, where intrepid tourists were forsaking their umbrellas just to have photos with the palace in the background... This involved careful timing to coordinate the photo taking and removal of Golden-Palace-obscuring-umbrellas from view.
We had intended to go to the Shugakuin Imperial Villas, but it turned out to be CLOSED on weekends and secondly, in need to an appointment through the Imperial Palace Household Agency ppl that we got reservations to the Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens...Anyway, since we'd made our way all the way to Shugakuin, we thought we'd better not waste the trip, and went a little further down the road to find Sekizan Zenin [赤山禅院]. A lovely peaceful temple, a great contrast to the crowded places we visited the day before. It was very peaceful, and a pleasure to walk around.
Near the entrance there were little wooden bald men, which I think were for writing your prayers/requests on. As well as the traditional wooden sticks (which can be seen in the background)
We were the only visitors for a while, until we saw two men following the same path that we were going down (and up) stopping at each shrine to pay their respects.
They also stopped at a window and got their book written in by the calligrapher sitting at the desk, with the temple's name and the day and date. Apparently, you can get these 'signatures' at every temple, and people have complete books filled with all the temples they managed to visit. The calligraphy was beautiful. So I bought one. If you bring your own book, they write a fresh one in your nearest blank page. If not, they have several pre-written loose leaf versions, which they pop the date on...
The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, when we ventured down to Kyoto, so there was lots to see.
Just a few photos of Kiyomizudera on the 5th April. There was a definite one way flow of people entering the temple from one side and leaving from the other (after doing the tour of the temple)
After a few minutes of trying to go against to flow, we gave up and followed everyone else. The good weather and full bloom of the sakura had brought people out in force.
| Earn an online associates degree . |
