Kanazawa to Kyoto

Trip Diary Day 8 - 5 April 2019

Check out Episode 6 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

A week has gone already but we still have around three weeks to go. Today we say sayonara to Kanazawa and konichiwa to Kyoto. We were up at 8. Pack. Load car. Leave. We couldn’t leave Kanazawa without a decent breakfast so we drove to Curio and parked in a nearby underground car park. 300 yen parking. We had a couple of coffees, toast, granola and a breakfast sandwich. 3850 yen.

On the road by 11 which isn’t too bad for us and it is only about three and half hours to Kyoto. We stop for a few minutes to see fighter jets, probably F15s, doing touch and go landings at Komatsu airport just out of Kanazawa. We travel along the Sea of Japan coast for a while before dropping down through the middle of the country towards Lake Biwa.

Kanazawa to Kyoto

Shizugatake SA toll road rest stop was where we stopped for lunch. Pork buns for kids and hotdogs for Michelle and me. And iced coffees. Shizugatake is one of the average sized rest stops, Michi-no-eki. Not one of the super sized stops but plenty of eating options and a large souvenir shop. We bought 3860 yen worth of snacks. Cookies, mochi, and one of the things that tells us we are close to Kyoto - yatsuhashi. Nama Yatsuhashi is a sweet confectionery. Steamed mochi is rolled out into a square and stuffed with a filling like red bean paste and folded into a triangle. It is a little like a sweet ravioli. Road side rest stops sell boxes of yatsuhashi in many flavours. They can be filled with anything from vanilla cream or cinnamon cream to red bean paste and black sesame. Souvenir boxes can contain as few as four to dozens. We bought a couple of boxes of different flavours containing about a dozen yatsuhashi each. Yatsuhashi is just about our favourite souvenir snack food. The cookies we bought were a soft, almost soggy, cookie and were absolutely moreish. They would give the Yatsuhashi a run for there money if we can find them again. There’s a lot of souvenir dried or frozen fish. I suppose nothing says we visited Shizugatake road side stop than taking home a packet of pickled herring. We stopped at Shizugatake for about an hour. We had about one and half hours to go to get to Kyoto.

Kyoto

I’m not saying we got lost looking for our apartment in Kyoto but it did involve getting out of the car and wandering around a bit. Let’s just say we had a little trouble finding apartment when we arrived in Kyoto. A woman carrying baby on her back could see my confusion so she helped find the correct alley. It was bit of a maze on this block. We were close. It was in an un-driveable alley way so the GPS had just kept directing us around it.

The last couple of times we’ve stayed in Kyoto we’ve stayed more or less centrally, close to Gion, the historic older part of Kyoto. This time we chose to stay a little further out in the Kamigyo Ward, a kilometre or two west of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. When I say chose I mean we basically secured whatever accommodation we could find in our price range that was still available. And we booked months out. For whatever reason Kyoto had become very expensive and very difficult to find cheap accommodation. Gone were the days when we could stay in a large central hotel at a heavily discounted rate. It seems every tourist in the world has discovered Kyoto. I think arriving slap bang right in the middle of Sakura season didn’t help either.

But we still had to get into our apartment. Airbnb apartments often leave your key in a locked combination lock box outside of the apartment and email you the combo. The combination lock didn’t seem to work. I tried a few times with different combinations of the combination. A guy from restaurant across alley tried to help. He offered to phone the accommodation people for me but I figured out how the combination works. User error. Idiot.

There was a small parking area at the end of alley for us to park and drop off our bags but it was part of a Pachinko parlour and the security guard working the door said we wouldn’t be able to stay. He suggested a car park at the end of the street though. That car park cost 200 yen per 40 mins during the day and 100 yen per hour overnight which seemed excessive. I drove around looking for a spot but I couldn’t find anything reasonably priced without a long walk back. Back to the first car park I asked another Pachinko security guard at another Panchinko parlour, there are a few Pachinkos in the area, if there was someone he could suggest and he only pointed to the expensive one I didn’t want to park at. Then I saw another car park about 50 metres up the road. I think the rates look better but it was all in Japanese so I wasn’t sure. A guy picking up his car from first car park confirmed that the no cap car park would cost the equivalent of about $40 per day. Fuck that. The guy went with me to the second car park and confirmed that the daily cap is 1000 yen day time and about 500 at night - 1500 yen or about $20 per day. I can live with that. Kyoto is proving to be very expensive. This was the first time I’ve used the car park locking system. When you park a bar rises up from the ground to pin your car to the spot. You can’t move the car at all until you pay at the machine.

While I’d been having parking problems Michelle had been having trouble finding the washing machine and bed linen for the living room sofa bed. The two futons upstairs for the kids were okay but it looked like we needed to call our hosts to find linen for us. I went upstairs to look for myself and I found the washing machine out the bedroom window on small shaky terrace. Then I found the sofa bed has pillows and linen, surprise surprise, under the sofa bed. Crisis averted.

The apartment looks like a restaurant from outside. It has blue curtains hanging down over the front door that is typical of Japanese restaurants. The place has the grand name of Nishijin Kyogoku Inn. It probably means very small place in Japanese. The front entrance has a long counter taking up one side of the hallway entrance that leads into the tiny kitchen and then living room. The living room only has the sofa which in bed mode takes up nearly all the floor space. To the right of the kitchen is the bathroom, which is not horribly small considering everything else, and the steep stairway to the upstairs bedroom and the secret washing machine.

The unfortunate thing of where our apartment is located is we're not on any of the subway lines. However we are only around the corner from a bus stop for a direct bus ride to town. Then it was only a 15 minute ride for soba noodles. Of course the place closed. We walked to another couple of places that were either to busy or we needed reservations. We decided to walk to Gion for udon or sushi. Gion is always jumping so we were sure to find something there.

Gion

On the way to Gion we crossed the Takase River, which is a canal that runs parallel to the main Kamo river, overhung with fully blooming cherry blossoms. We have arrived in Kyoto in peak Sakura season. There are many more blooming sakura in Gion. Hundreds of people were gawking and taking photos of the sakura or going to and from restaurants or entertainment. Lights, shops, restaurants, cherry blossoms, it is all happening. It was about 8 pm when we found the sushi place from our list of restaurants to try. It was too late to eat in though and so they could only offer take-away. However they did tell us there was no need for a reservation tomorrow if we could be there around 6 or 7. When I say sushi this is Kyoto style sushi and not typical nigiri sushi so we very much wanted to try it.

Okaru Udon

We had originally set out for noodles so we thought we'd try the nearby Okaru Udon. They were busy too but we only had to wait 5 minutes. A couple of women saw us waiting so they finished and paid quickly so we could have their table. How nice is that? Okaru is apparently popular with the locals and the local Maiko. Maiko are the apprentice geisha you sometimes scurrying around Gion. This probably explains all the fans decorating the upper parts of the walls. Apparently, but don’t quote me on this - I only read it on one website, the Maiko gift fans with their name on them to customers. The rest of the walls are covered in pieces of paper with notes scrawled on them and signed and dated. Nearly all in Japanese. I presume they say things like “Great udon”, “the curry was awesome”, “Try the pickled herring”. They could also be celebrity autographs. I have no idea. Sometimes I think I should just ask.

We ordered the beef, chicken and tempura udon. The three essential food groups - mammal, bird and fish. The pickled Pacific herring looked good so we ordered that too. With a bottle of cold sake, a Kirin beer and and OJ the grand total came to 5570 yen. Delicious. Cheap, cheerful and informal. It’s funny but Okaru (おかる) translates as “funny”. Welcome to Kyoto.

It was as we left Okaru it really dawned on us how crowded Kyoto had become. It had been four years since we’d been here last and the rumours we’d heard about how busy it had become were proving to be true. We had to walk through hordes of people to the bus stop to catch the bus home. There were shit loads of people. Taxis trying to navigate down narrow alleys just made it worse. On one busy corner we found the okonomiyaki shop, Yoshoku, with the statue of the boy with his pants being dragged down by a dog. I think if that statue isn’t iconic it should be. We’ve seen it every time we’ve been to Kyoto. I tried to shoot some video of a nearby street vendor cooking on open coals. Just the coals. But woman chased me off with “No photo kudasai! No photo kudasai!” and she indicated to a sign with a no photo logo. Kudasai is please by the way. This is Japan, when you’re told no it will be done politely. Emphatic but polite. Anyway, that is another way to tell just how many tourists visit Kyoto now. I’m fairly certain that when we came here for the first time 10 years ago you could pretty much take photos of anything or anyone and they be happy to pose. Now with a million tourists coming by every five minutes it isn’t surprising it would annoy the crap out of them.

Dango

This is from a previous visit to Kyoto when the street vendors didn’t mind photos so much. Great dango by the way

There are people everywhere while we waited for the bus and when it arrived we squeezed on like sardines for the 25 to 30 minute bus ride. This might be a new city for us but we stuck with our Lawson routine to get supplies. Muesli, milk, yoghurt, and a Dragonball Z card pack for Brandy. Georgia wanted lollies. It was only a two minute walk home from there. We discovered a small supermarket at the top of our alley which would prove handy.

The kids sleep upstairs on futons. The stairs to their room are very steep so we are little concerned, but let’s face it, if anyone was going to fall down the stairs it would probably be me. Michelle and I have the downstairs sofa. It was so very comfortable after the shitty bed in Kanazawa.

We didn’t expect to have any noise issues even though there are a couple of tiny local restaurants in our alley. Mostly catering to locals. There was some faint carousing coming from the one across the way but nothing to write home about. We couldn’t even hear the Pachinko. During the day there’s only kids on bikes and old ladies wandering around. Very residential. All in all it is a top spot.

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Check out Episode 6 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

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