Sayonara

The last day in Japan has arrived, marking the end of the first leg of our trip. But let's rewind a little.

We came back to Kyoto on Thursday well after sunset, and had to find our way to the hostel under an annoying rain. Apparently the spell of bad weather isn't over yet. The walk to the hostel wasn't pleasant, but it was more than compensated by a warm shower and a nice dinner at a place nearby, recommended by the hostel's owner.

The restaurant seemed rather 'untouristy', even more than the okonomiyaki place in Miyajima, and it almost made us change our minds and steer towards a supermarket. Not a single word in English in the menu, and even many prices were written with characters that we couldn't understand. On the other hand the locals sitting inside were obviously enjoying their meals and it all had a very cozy and familiar feeling to it. While we were staring blankly at the menu, a young waitress came to our table using a few English words, just to ask us if we wanted chicken, beef or pork. Not knowing any better we just made our choice on random. After a minute a very old and lovely lady came to us to explain more in detail the menu... obviously all in Japanese. She really made a big effort to make us understand what she was offering, and with the cook showing us a breadcrumbed pork cutlet we eventually understood what 'tonkatsu' was. At that point the lady, all smiles and waving hands, offered a choice between 'pork-katsu' (this can sound pretty funny when said in Italian) and 'chicken-katsu': she used those words exactly to make it understandable for us.

Eating with the common folk

The waitress came back a few minutes later with a huge and unexpected set of dishes, including rice, miso soup, vegetables, and of course the 'katsu' of our choice. It was delicious and we could hardly finish all that food. It turned out to be also rather cheap, which is always a nice surprise in Japan.

8 euros, drinks included

On Friday morning we got up early to have as much time as possible in Kyoto, and fortunately the weather had mercy on us. After stopping at the train station to book a train for the afternoon, we got a bus pass and went on to discover a few more temples. Before lunch we were able to squeeze in a visit to the Nanzenji complex, the beautiful but crowded gardens of Ginkakuji (Silver Pavillion) and the quiet and isolated Honen-in temple.

Gardens of Ginkakuji

For lunch we were able to accomplish two very important goals of the day. First of all K could satisfy her craving for a last feast at a conveyor belt sushi place. The quality wasn't as high as other sushi that we had tried, but it was fun and a very good lunch. Furthermore we were eventually able to buy a copy of the "Le Petit Prince" in Japanese, to add one more piece to K's evergrowing collection.

One last nigiri and we go

Probably pushed by the post-lunch sugar spike we foolishly decided to venture to the Kinkakuji (Golden Pavillion), easily the most visited temple in Kyoto (if not in Japan), on the other side of the city. The golden temple in the middle of a pond is fabulous, but the visit can be spoiled by the incredible number of people that get to share the visit with you. There was even an official traffic controller in charge of handling and directing the continuous flow of visitors. A beautiful place, that we left after only 15 minutes since we couldn't handle the flock pressure.

Fortunately next to this famous landmark there is the much less popular Daitokuji zen temple complex...a much bigger area with one tenth of the people. It's easy to find your inner peace and recover a bit of faith in humanity in a tranquil zen ground like this.

After a short stop at the hostel to pick up our backpacks and buy some food for the trip we got onto our last Shinkasen with destination Tokyo. A smooth ride as always. The Japan Rail Pass is expensive but at least in our case it has repaid itself.

We arrived at Haneda airport before 9 pm, took a look around to find a nice place to spend the night and eventually settled for what we thought was definitely the best place for a good (albeit short) night of sleep. Just few hours later we would find out that it wasn't the best pick. In any case we had access to free wifi and a 24h grocery shop for cheap food and beverages of all kind, a real blessing: actually a grocery shopping spree helped me recover from the uneasy feeling of sitting/camping on a bench in front of 'decent' and judgemental Japanese people. What we still didn't know was that the girls of the travel agency sitting just in front of us would close their stand at midnight and reopen it at 4am, thus guarranteeing the constant presence of staring Japanese. Oh, and right behind us was the office in charge of recovering and rearranging the airport's trolleys with their unsettling clickety-clack. Bingo! Even despite all the odds we managed to sleep a little before our check-in a 4:30, but started the day looking like zombies.

So here we are again, sitting at the airport waiting for our next flight. Japan was a unique experience and I'm already pretty sure that we will very soon miss this polite place where everything works perfect and on time.

Next destination Bangkok!