Japan Day 1- Kyoto

 A bit overwhelming to try and clear through this experience in one sitting. I'm going to take it a day at a time (and by that I mean the trip days) and see how it goes getting it all written down. 

We arrived in Kyoto after 24 hours of travel. Flight to Seattle, then Tokyo, then from Tokyo to Osaka on a "discount" Japanese airline called Star Flyer. I thought it was actually really nice and all black styling super posh! Then about an hour van ride into Kyoto. Big time effort but worth it! 

The hotel we stayed at was the "Hotel Okura" which was a super nice hotel but you could tell it was very dated. I'd guess in the 90's this thing was new they still had a lot of old stylings but it was super nice and only a couple blocks from the river which made for beautiful morning jogs. It also had a legit breakfast buffet way up on the top floor that had amazing views! The food was decent as well I didn't realize at the time but I should've appreciated some of the American breakfast options at this buffet. We got there right in the last few days of "Sakura" where the cherry blossoms were in bloom. I didn't realize that this was essentially a country-wide event. I always thought there were just a few gardens here or there that had them but there are these trees blossoming everywhere which was quite cool to see. 

Day 1 we start at the Tenryu-ji Temple which is a Rinzai Zen temple (i'm still not sure i understand the difference between the various options within Buddhism but suffice it to say all were very peaceful and zen is definitely an appropriate word). It was what i was anticipating as far as temple and garden experiences. Beautiful Japanese structure, beautiful pond in the back and an awesome bamboo forest to walk through. Had to take our shoes off in certain areas. Made total sense and I felt like I was ready for more. 

When we left the garden we walked along a river that had these traditional boats. The area was a bit quiet when we first got there but by the time we left the Temple it was crawling with people. We got our first ice cream (sidebar: somebody told Rachel to look for Sweet Potato Ice Cream. . . we found it this first day at a spot but it was sold out. We looked the rest of our time and never found it again), got our first treats from Japanese vendors (fries, donuts of course all the traditional Japanese snacks!). 

Back to the bus and on to lunch. Essentially all our meals were prepared/reserved which I can appreciate the degree of difficulty to show up with 20+ people and need a meal. This place had delicious bread we kept asking the server to bring back more bread to us. Bread became a very important staple! 

We left lunch and walked up the street/hill to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. This had more of the traditional pagoda-style buildings and had some incredible views off of the mountainside. Pictures truly don't serve the view of Kyoto from the temple deck. This was the first experience with actual Buddha statues, incense (this became ubiquitous i can instantly smell it just thinking about it), and ritual prayers/fortune. We poured water on our hands and drank some as part of a ritual from the temple. You could choose "Long Life" "Love" or "Education" but of course I drank from all 3 so not sure if I'll get all 3 or get eliminated. 

We came back to downtown Kyoto and had time to walk through the Nishiki Market. Just a normal covered market similar to other big towns but had tons of cool Japanese foods and products. Of course raw fish galore spanning all sides. 

We left that evening to a nice restaurant in town for an opening "Welcome Dinner" from our National Geographic tour hosts. Our main guide was named Junko-san and her assistant was named Kyoko-san. We learned that "san" added to the end of anybody's name is like calling somebody "Mister or Ms." and is just respectful overall. Even if you don't know their name you use "san" at the end as a sign of respect (i.e. bus driver-san). Everybody ended up calling each other "san" at the end of their names all trip. We also had a National Geographic photographer as part of the team he was an American that had lived in Japan and primarily covered the Asia area for most of his career. 

Our dinner included of course raw fish and plenty of other items i was unsure of. I was honestly trying to get my mind into "missionary mode" where i just ate whatever was put in front of me. I actually did pretty good this first night but think I burned through all my after burners on this single meal as I found the rest of the trip I was definitively more selective. I can handle raw fish which I find amusing to myself since most would think that's the most nasty stuff. I have a hard time with many food textures and plenty of the mysterious food items had textures that i didn't handle well. 

We had Geisha's come to our dinner and perform for us! Their dances were very eloquent albeit the music I was surprised to hear was a bit weird. They also answered questions and engaged with the whole company. We played a little game of grabbing a cup while music is playing but i lost to the Geisha pro. Basically just clapping in time and stealing the cup but the music gets fast and you have to rely on reflexes to steal the cup at the right time and I of course don't have those. They came around and handed out business cards to everyone and showed us all their instagrams. Fascinating the apprentice Geisha doesn't have a social media account yet since she's only an apprentice. They have to "earn" it over time. Very cool experience.