No Regrets!

After a luxurious night’s sleep in our plush Four Seasons bed, we hopped into a taxi to begin exploring Kyoto. While definitely urban, Kyoto feels more intimate and homey than Tokyo, with no towering skyscrapers or dense city core, and the streets follow a familiar grid for more efficient navigation around the city.

Our first stop was Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine, known for its rows of vibrant and photogenic torii gates. Well, photogenic if not for the thousands of tourists who were already swarming the place early. Tourists from all cultures hustled and posed, some more patient, others jumping in front for photos and prayers.

Add up all the torii gates on paths and marking entrances, and there are about 10,000 of them. For hundreds of years, they have been donated by private citizens and merchants, and new gates are still being added today. They are all painted in a consistent, wonderful shade of orange-red, which research reveals is vermilion, a color associated with protection against evil and purification in Shinto beliefs. Some of them have been freshly repainted, some of them need some work.

The grounds grow increasingly beautiful and haunting as you walk through the gates and up the mountain. Moss starts to grow over the older statues and crumbling monuments, giving the place a bit of an Angkor Wat feel. The deeper you go, signs warn that there are no bathrooms at this point, but there are plenty of souvenir stands. Other signs warn that there is no food or drink available, but there are plenty of vending machines. Anything for a buck.

We came back down and left through the front entrance, noticing that the number of tourists at the shrine had roughly doubled from when we arrived. This place is nuts.

We considered trains to our next destination, but after finding the local train signage confusingly tedious for our bougie tastes, Dave insisted we grab a taxi. So we did, and headed out of town to Nara Park, home to the famous bowing deer.

First, though, breakfast at 7-Eleven, where I recorded Dave in slow motion easily crushing an entire egg salad sandwich in one bite.

Nara Park was not at all what I expected. Open and unfenced, with one edge running alongside a very busy street and the rest of the park open to nearby temples and shrines. How many of these deer wander into traffic? How many are mistreated or abducted by people? How many transmit ticks or disease?

The deer are exceptionally tame, wandering freely among hundreds of tourists. Over hundreds of generations, the sika deer have learned that mimicking the bowing nature of tourists results in the reward of a cracker, sold in bundles by vendors around the park’s perimeter. Dave went all out, buying a huge bag of crackers and instantly making him popular among the deer.

There is definitely something cute and charming about the bowing deer, though some are better at it than others. Dave and I got into the habit of only rewarding the deer who bow properly with a cracker, and I think it is exactly this type of “selection” which has reinforced this behavior of the deer over time. Some of the deer got a little aggressive, nipping at Dave’s butt and biting his jacket. Young ones are still learning the move, tilting their head awkwardly but trying their best. Others lounged around and relaxed. I think we fed all of them. Dave and I got some amusing photos and videos.

We took a break when we spotted a vendor selling soft serve. I went with matcha in a cone, while Dave tried a matcha/uri milk swirl. Throughout the morning, we had been tracking World Series Game 7 on our phone. The starting pitchers for the game were Max Scherzer and Shohei Ohtani, an epic match-up and perhaps the biggest game ever for a Japanese player in the history of baseball. But it was at this time that the game was tied late, so we slowed our walk to watch the gamecast on our phone. We were on a wide, tree-covered path full of deer, on our way to Kasuga Shrine, as Dave gave me live updates, pitch by pitch.

We were standing right in front of Kasuga Shrine when Alejandro Kirk, my favorite player and one I am deeply invested in with baseball cards, grounded into a double play to end the game and lose the World Series. A real gut punch. It took a few moments to collect myself, and I wondered if this is what I should have been praying about at these shrines all along.

Then to nearby Tōdai-ji Temple. The gate is enormous, and the temple itself is breathtaking, home to one of the largest bronze Buddha statues in the world. The sheer scale of the interior, with its towering statues and aged wooden beams, is magnificent. Definitely a highlight.

At this and every other temple we have visited, Dave has found joy recounting moments in one of his favorite games, Assassin’s Creed, when he scaled the walls and sat on the roof and threw daggers at people. The renderings of these temples in the game are extremely accurate, according to Dave.

Then into a taxi and back to the hotel. The transgender bunny from the Tokyo taxi seatback ads has followed us here to Kyoto. I have playfully named it Trunny, though apparently it has a real name, Ravi-san. Whatever the name, the thing is creepy.

After several full days of stomping around cities, chasing trains, and temple hopping, the rest of our afternoon was devoted to some much-needed self-care back at the hotel. We hit the steam room and hot tub, followed by massages. I refreshed myself with a can of Pocari Sweat, a local drink that tastes like a watered down version of colonoscopy prep. Not my favorite.

My masseuse, Minami, was from Fukushima. She didn’t appreciate my joke about radiation poisoning, but she knew what she was doing. Small but strong. I came out feeling like a million yen.

Dinner was at Wagyu Bungo Gion, another place with counter seating on the floor and a sunken nook for your legs. What was advertised as a “wagyu feast” was in fact another tasting menu featuring thin slices of meat and tongue. We had been craving big chunks of steak to rip into, but this was just a tease. Not our favorite dinner.

We returned to Pontocho, which was still lively even on a Sunday night, with street performers and cheerful people filling the streets. We stopped at a small bar called World for a drink and spent a few minutes talking to a young, very drunk, and very friendly Japanese couple with Google Translate. Later, we stopped at L’Escamoteur, another bar with a cool, funky vibe. But we were fading fast and called it a night.

I really like Pontocho. It’s social, it’s chill, it’s full of music and smiling faces. A little canal winds through it, adding charm. Every city deserves a neighborhood like this.

Tomorrow, another day of Kyoto fun! So much to see and do here.