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Kyoto, Japan
I found a way to live forever, I found a place where no one cares
One of my very favorite places anywhere on this earth was and still is Kyoto. As much as I enjoyed Inuyama (and I did) and as much as I really, really enjoyed Kanazawa (and I really, really did), they're still not Kyoto. An unfair comparison, all things considered.
As a city, Kyoto can (sometimes) on the surface feel like nothing special. It has buildings, hotels, restaurants, shops and crowds like any major Japanese city, but if (and when) you start to look for it, there is real magic just around the corner. This time in Kyoto I decided to concentrate my efforts in one area, the Higashiyama, the eastern hills of Kyoto, where temple after temple wait to be discovered. Let's start with the Sanmon, the (almost) 500 year old main gate to Chion-in, a near perfect Buddhist Temple complex, although that description fits a lot of the sites in Higashiyama and in Kyoto.
My first view of Kyoto (like most everyone else's) is the gargantuan, semi monstrous JR Rail Station, the place where the Shinkansen stop and where visitors scurry back and forth in general confusion throughout the cavernous station. The building is organized somewhat well (to a point), but the real fun happens when you head outside and head up level after level after level on outdoor covered stairs and escalators, all there for no discernable reason. Even the views of Kyoto (when there are views of Kyoto) aren't all that well framed from the building, the only impressive view (and it is an impressive one) is looking back down all those stairs, across the station, and right back up a mirror of the same staircases and escalators that brought you up level after level after level to begin with.
For me, the temples are fantastic but the gardens are often even better. Together they work perfectly- every view, every step, every turn is carefully planned and designed. There's a reason that every rock on every path was placed where it was, there are no accidents, everything is where it is for a reason. The more that you realize this, the more that you see this, the more amazing the experience is. As I walked around and through the temples and gates and gardens of Shoren-in, you almost start to see the experience as an unreal and amazing continuous tracking shot, one where everything is as it should be. Perfect.
Wow.
There are things you can expect to see throughout in Higashiyama. Things like ageless temples and perfect gardens and lots of people. But even with all those people, you can sometimes find yourself looking back on wondrous bamboo forest path or even find yourself behind three women who paid to dress up like a Geisha for the day at Kodai-ji.
In all four hotels that I stayed at (hotels which grew exponentially better as the trip progressed), the toilets were simultaneously downright wonderful and downright creepy, depending on your perspective, I guess. All four had heated toilet seats, a luxury which is nice after you get used to it, despite all of the warning of real and distinct possibility of low level burns, warnings written in just about every imaginable language. After that, the water show was, well, harder to get used to. I could go into detail about the very subtle differences between "spray" and "bidet", but instead will leave it up to your imagination.
