This Is A Lake - A travel blog

After a big, hearty breakfast at the hotel, the first order of business today was to visit Kenroku-en, Kanazawa's most famous attraction and one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan. Its name means "Garden of the Six Attributes" because it has all six classical attributes that a garden is supposed to have in the Chinese and Japanese tradition: " spaciousness, tranquility, artifice, antiquity, water courses, and magnificent view from the garden," according to the tourism information centre's documentation. We took a bus from the station, packed with people, that stops unnecessarily in six bus stops where nobody gets off before reaching Kenroku-en in the city centre, where the entire bus vacated. We walked a little bit uphill to find one of the garden's multiple gates and paid 320 yen for a ticket (€2.7). Right off the bat we were greeted by Kenroku-en's main sight, that of the pond with the famous two-legged stone lantern in the foreground. It was clou

Although it rained heavily all throughout the night, by the time we left our apartment with our bags the morning was cloudy but dry. Today saw us on the road again, as we took a THUNDERBIRD train to Kanazawa. With such a bombastic name I had assumed it'd be a state-of-the-art shinkansen, but it's in fact a regional line. No thunder or birds spotted on board either. It takes a little over two hours to make the trip from Kyoto north to Kanazawa, and it can be booked with the JR Pass. The landscape during the journey seemed nondescript from my seat, but it's likely due at least in part to the gray, drab mist that clung to our train for the majority of the ride. We arrived at Kanazawa Station, which is yet another massive city-within-a-city with a mall, shops and restaurants. On top of that, there's another 7-storey mall literally next door to the station. We're staying at the Dormy Inn Kanazawa, a mid-range hotel just three minutes from the train station. It's very

Surprise day trip! So I was looking at the guidebook yesterday, planning what to do today, and I came to a realisation. There are a million things in Kyoto that I still haven't seen; between 2013 and this trip I've spent a combined eight days in this city and I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface. There's an immense wealth of history and art here, and the sights are very scattered all around the city and the mountains. All that said, after enough days in Japan it's entirely possible to burn out on temples and gardens, and we've seen so many that we risked saturating ourselves by the time we get to the great garden of Kanazawa. So I thought, why not dust off our JR passes and go somewhere for the day? Somewhere not about temples and gardens, but something equally representative of Japan? Options included Osaka (Dotonbori is fun, but I've already been), Himeji (hosts Japan's most famous castle, recently renovated, but I've read there isn

Sunny Sunday in Kyoto! Today I finally got to cross the one item on my 2013 Kyoto trip list that I never got to visit: Fushimi Inari, the famous shinto shrine in the south of Kyoto with thousands of bright red torii gates. Last time I left Fushimi Inari for the last day, but then I was too late and I missed it. Not this time! We took the JR Nara line to the Inari stop, and from there it's a 10 min walk to the shrine, which is clearly signalled along the way (although, as always, Google Maps helps). As with many shinto shrines, this one is free to visit, and has several bright red buildings containing omiyage shops(souvenirs), omikuji counters (where people buy a random paper slip with their fortune on it, and then tie it to a tree or a rack nearby), water fountains where people can wash their hands as a ritual of purification, different altars for praying, and of course the main hall. Ceremonies take place inside, and on the outside people queue to pray; they throw a coin into a bi

Today we were also treated to a gloriously sunny morning, so we decided to go on a day trip to Nara to make the most of the nice weather. There are JR trains going to Nara that you can board with your JR pass, but that line goes to the JR Nara station, which is rather far away from Nara Park, and it also takes longer; it's better to pay the 700 yen (€6) and take a Kintetsu line to the Kintetsu Nara station, and from there to just walk to the park. The train ride takes about 40 min. Rather than making a bee-line for Nara's main attraction, the Great Buddha, we started with Yoshiki Garden, which is free for foreign visitors! It's a gorgeous 20th century Japanese garden (not that I could tell; to me it looked like it had lain there for centuries, it was so well designed).  The garden occuies a rather modest plot, but as with many Japanese gardens it has been masterfully designed to offer lots of distinct spaces. There's a tea ceremony garden, a moss garden, and a more West

Sleeping on a futon over tatami is GLORIOUS. I don't know what it is about it that hits my "off" switch and instantly puts me in a deep and dreamless slumber. The alarm had to wake me up to a bright, sunny morning! Today's Friday, so I thought it might be wise to go to Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto's most popular temple, before the weekend crowds rush in. It's a bit up on the eastern hills of the city, so wherever you're staying it's probably best to take a bus. Buying that Japanese SIM card was the best purchase I've done all trip, because now I can just look up on Google Maps where the bus stop is, which bus I need to go on, and how many stops I need to wait through. The closest to Kiyomizu-dera is Kiyomizu-michi, which is still about a 10-min uphill walk away from the actual temple. As soon as we started ascending we started seeing more and more people joining the route, until we got to the temple itself, where all of Kyoto seemed to have gathered. There

Today we left our apartment in Tokyo and took the shinkansen to Kyoto! It wasn't one of the really fast ones though, it felt like it had a lot of stops on the way... This time I managed to look out the window and see the scenery change. The landscape began very urban while we were leaving Tokyo and then Yokohama, then turned suburban, and at one point all I could see were ghastly factories surrounded by small houses spewing white smoke onto the sky. It made me think of a daytime version of FF7's Midgar. I think it wasn't until we were past Nagoya and getting close to Kyoto that the industrial areas gave way to forested mountains in beautiful autumn colours. We arrived in Kyoto at around 14:00, so we headed up to Kyoto Station's 11th floor to have a great tonkatsu lunch in one of the many restaurants there. Yeah, the 11th floor: like many Japanese stations, Kyoto's is a behemoth of a building that houses an entire department store and a score of restaurants inside. I