Kyoto D2, Hozu River
Alright now this was a fun day! See we had planned to tour Gion upon our arrival to Kyoto yesterday, but since the weather was horrid we decided to postpone it until today. More on this little tidbit later. So we have breakfast at the ryokan around 7:30 or so, and then assemble our day gear and make for Kyoto station. We jumped aboard a train bound for a little not-really-a-town north of Kyoto by several miles, and got off at a station which was in a nice open area. There was a feild of flowers near the walkway to our destination.
Our destination was a boat dock. We were going to take a scenic tour of the Hozu river via watercraft. Supposedly the rapids were quite dangerous (ha ha ha oh…oh man thats funny). We ‘ordered’ a boat and waited around for a few minutes, watching these big boats coming and going from the long wooden dock. These were big fiberglass vessels…probably 25 feet long(?) with a 3 man crew.
So after a while we here “Shireya something something” over the loudspeaker; that was our party! Shireya (Celia pronounced in Japanese) is our tour guide if you haven’t read any other posts I have written. Anyway we were guided to one of the vessels by a nice older fellow, and proceeded to climb aboard. The boat held quite a few people.
A motley crew.
While we waited for everyone to get aboard I snapped that photo. We shoved off with the older fellow at the oar on the front migi (or righthand) side of the boat, a man with a bamboo pole on the front left, and a fellow on rudder at the rear. We passed beneath beautiful bridges and through awsome grassland, followed a canyon setting. In it we hit a few spots of rough water and some rocky areas…but our guide acted as if we were running the colorado river (though life vests were not provided). There were different varieties of what I think we Americans would call herons, cormorants, and even a hawk!
We also encountered some turtles sunning on the rocks and a deer foraging on the side of the canyon. There were bamboo forests on both sides of the river for most the length of the trip…but there were also coniferous trees further up. The guides would switch off on their three respective jobs every so often… It was quite entertaining when Elvis stepped up to the pole position. He had the hairdo, the blue jeans, white shirt, and a Ford belt buckle…what a crackup.
Toward the end of our long excursion a snack boat pulled up next to us and sold baked rice balls, squid, octopus, and some other goodies. Someone offered me a rice ball and I ate it…was pretty good. We ended our journey in a township called Kameoka, and there was a variety of things going on. I saw a fisherman out in the river wearing waders. He was dragging nets around and setting up to catch fish:
We took a train away from Kameoka to Ryoan-ji (temple), which is known for its gravel-garden. This place had a really nice park/garden with a pond, interesting plants, and peaceful walkways. In between the temple and our coming and going there was a beautiful large black butterfly that was resting on a leaf:
The gravel garden wasn’t that great and I have photos of a better one! Ryoan-ji was a little over-rated I think…but still it was interesting. The next destination was Kinkaku-ji, a.k.a. the Golden Pavillion. It was pretty impressive, and there were tourists from all over not just Japan, but Russia, Mexico or spain, england, the US…all over. I think there were Germans there to.
The pavillion sits across the pond from where you first see it, and then you get to walk around the pond toward it to make for some interesting shots.
Kinkakuji had some beautiful old pines out front, a nice little garden walk, and the people watching was fantastic! Though it was a bit more on the beaten tourist path, it was definitely worth seeing. Since this entry is so long already I am going to bust up Kyoto day 2 into two parts. We’ll get to Gion and dinner with Peter on the next post.
Tags: Travel
D-roe
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