Japan -- Oct/Nov 2007

The last business meeting I was involved in on the trip ended late on November 8, and my return flight was scheduled for November 10. Thus I had November 9 as a mostly free day (I did have a few follow-up and "lookup" items to take care of at the hotel). All of the remaining photos were taken on Friday, November 9.

The MHI people recommended going to see Kyoto (about 25 minutes from Kobe on the shinkansen) during that free day. Using the internet, I found out there was a 5-hour English-language guided walking tour there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting at the rail station. So I went to Kyoto and joined that tour.

Kyoto is a fairly large city. There are several -- perhaps 20 or 30 -- historic temples and shrines (and the old imperial palace) -- and they are fairly spread out. The walking tour basically limits one to stuff within a mile or so of the train station -- but there was a LOT to see within that distance. They have a subway system (which I did not use), but apparently some shrines (etc.) are not conveniently served by subway stations. Looked like a lot of the touring is done by charter buses -- but I'm not sure any of them have English narrations. Also, I saw on the internet that bicycle rentals are available, which (in good weather -- and with a map and guidebook) might be the best compromise (but I have few complaints about my walking tour).

It surprised me (but shouldn't have) that only about 1/3 of the 35 or so people on the English-language walking tour were from North America. There were perhaps another 1/3 from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. The other (roughly) 1/3 were from places like Germany, Norway, and Singapore. I suspect some of these people were not able to get a narrated tour in their native language, so they went for a narrated tour in their second or third language.

My knowledge of Japanese history is pretty much limited to seeing a couple episodes of the "Shogun" TV miniseries several years ago. However, my understanding is that Kyoto is considered the historic capitol because for a few hundred years (up until the 1860s) the emperor lived there. For most of that time, the emperor was pretty much a figurehead, and the shogun (a military leader, who lived in Tokyo) really ran the country (Tokyo may have been known as Edo for some of that era). In the 1860s, a powerful emperor overthrew the shogun and moved the capitol to Tokyo. The current imperial palace in Tokyo is at the site of what had been the shogun's palace.

This photo shows the gate house of a large Buddhist temple (I'm pretty sure it was buddhist). The main building was being repaired and was covered with scaffolding that had sort of curtains on it -- making it look a bit like a large tent). Thus I didn't get any good photos of the main building (which was said to be the largest wooden building in the world). We did go through a small portion of that main building, that was not directly affected by the ongoing work.


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