Gion District
kyoto gion district
Getting to Kyoto
The Japan trip lasted 11 days, traveling from Osaka — Kyoto — Tokyo — Osaka with my old folks. I planned it in a way that we would only start our Japan Rail Pass a few days later to maximise our usage. But traveling there during golden week was a tiny complicated, because even having our JR passes, you have to book your Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets in advance! Many time slots were fully booked, and we actually collected our Passes and tickets the following day when we arrived in Osaka. We managed to get all of our tickets. But one of them didn’t have an ideal departure timing and some of them had our seats split into 4 ways…
The station departing from Osaka station had this giant basement of bento food and dry wet market. We went a little over-excited and got ourselves a couple of bentos, thinking that we will be eating it on the train. Except we didn’t check that our train ride to Kyoto was only 20mins 😂
We checked-in to our hotel at Mimaru Apartment Hotel, but we were too early. So we left our luggages there and went out to explore. Except the lazy ass in me, didn’t do my research properly 😅Originally, the weather forecast predicted rain during our days in Kyoto— which caused me to be rather disappointed. I planned to rent kimonos for my old folks to wear and well, you know… let the old folks enjoy taking photos which my mom loves. With the predicted rain, I didn’t book our rental… but when we arrived in Kyoto, the weather was sunny and warm. So the first thing we did was to go to the Kimono rental shop to book a slot. Which lucky us, booking a day in advance gave us a tiny discount too. But unfortunately slots for hair and makeup was already full.
kyoto city
kyoto city
kyoto travelogue
kyoto travelogue
kyoto travelogue
kyoto city shrine
Transport in kyoto
It took a while to figure out the easiest transport in Kyoto, which was the bus. A single bus trip was around 300¥ if I remember correctly.. I found out that our hotel sells a day bus card for 600¥ which allows you to get unlimited bus rides for the day. And strangely enough, you board the bus from the back door. I was so curious about it in the beginning… I just followed what the locals do to figure out how things work 😆(typical example of monkey see, monkey do) You only pay for your bus fees when you alight, in this case, you walk to the front door next to the bus driver. So if you have your day-bus-card, just insert it into the little machine for the first time and then show it to the bus driver for your following bus trips.
It’s always better to take the bus than subway. You’ll be on ground level and you get to see so many things!
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine Nishiromon Gate
Gion
The downside to buses is to figure out the right directions. I had to ask a random obasan with my broken japanese to figure out the directions. So by the time we got to Gion, it was a little late (plus we had our bentos in a little park since we didn’t have time to eat on the train 😂)
Golden week meant a sea of people. Just at the entrance, you get people posing for photos and crowding the entrance… Of course, being in Japan means lots of shrines. And me being me, didn’t really figure the map of the whole district and led us to walking to almost all the different edges in the area 😌There were a couple of different temples/shrines/gates, little parks and ponds… basically killed our feet before really getting to the geisha districts 😅
Here’s a map to show you how much we walked 😂😂😂
Red and Blue stars
So we took a bus and it brought us to that red arrow, which is the Yasaka-Jinja Shrine Nishiromon Gate. There were lots of people… and somehow we just randomly followed the flow and didn’t really check the maps. We got some of the shrines in our checklist and circled much around Maruyama park. There were a few street food stalls where we bought food and snacked around. I always indulge in a matcha soft serve in Japan while the dad prefers something heavy like squid skewers or beef cubes. Around there- I took the wrong turn and led us all the way up to the blue star 🙃W hen where we wanted to go was the area around the red star 😂
The iconic Kyoto geisha street with stairs is located one street below Ishin-no-Michi. The label that says Starbucks is on another street that cuts into the main street. Speaking of which, it’s worth a little peek because the building itself and the interior decors just shows you the traditions of the local designs.
You can imagine how much time it took to go all the way up to Chion-In and then walking all the way down to Starbucks… so by the time we got “down”, the sun was already setting… 😭
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine
kyoto, Yasaka-Jinja Shrine fortune telling booth
kyoto, portland roasting coffee
kyoto chion-in sanmon
kyoto streets
kyoto daiunin temple
kyoto, Ryozen Kannon Statue
kyoto streets
kyoto, ishin no michi
kyoto, ishin no michi
kyoto, ishin no michi
It was almost like the moment where I went “omg yes, finally got the right route" to the iconic street of Kyoto!
😂😂😂
kyoto, ishin no michi
Starbucks Coffee Kyoto Ninenzaka Yasaka Chaya
kyoto streets
kyoto streets
kyoto umeshu shop
Interesting finds
So along the main street, I randomly found this store, which I couldn’t find the name. Until much googling— I got this name “嘉祥窯”, which I think is pronounced like “kasyogama” (according to google translate). They sell a variety of flavored pickled plums, teas and the best of all umeshu 🤤? The window display caught my eye and I went in for a quick tour. These bottles were heavy but they came in a variety of flavours. I quickly asked if it was possible to try and holy yes! They only have the original flavor for sampling but it enough for me!
Look at that pretty packaging! The bottle is huge but there was an option to buy smaller bottles in a beautiful packing of different flavors. I was indeed super tempted… but they were too heavy for me to carry around in my luggage without the fear of breaking them. So I settled one giant bottle.
Even the momsie approves of the umeshu (or so I guess is umeshu) 😋
kyoto Nio-mon (Kiyomizudera Temple)
All the way to the top
By following the main street path and leads you to a little hike, you will arrive at the “top”. But we got there too late and the gates were closed 😰 All we could do were to sit by the stairs, resting our feet while watching the sunset. It was a pretty walk up there, enjoying the little Kyoto architecture. Everything looks so pretty with so much stories to tell!
kyoto, Nio-mon (Kiyomizudera Temple) street
kyoto matsubara-dori street
kyoto streets
kyoto, Donguri Kyouwakoku shop
Food: Okonomiyaki
We walked all the way towards the main street at the bottom of the hill with our stomach grumbling, since we didn’t really have a proper meal for the day. However, while looking for buses to go back towards our hotel area, I found an Okonomiyaki place which seems to have a lot of people! Local and foreigners alike. It turns out really awesome.. A kinda teppan okonomiyaki / yakisoba experience. Though unfortunately, we don’t have our personal chef working in front of us but the food was great 😋
However, the service wasn’t very good though. Maybe it was because of the crowd and the end of the day, the servers were a little forgetful about our orders and we waited quite a long while between each serving.
okonomiyaki kiraku
okonomiyaki kiraku
okonomiyaki kiraku
okonomiyaki kiraku
okonomiyaki kiraku
Whenever I thought of Japan, I always wonder when I will get the chance to walk through the thousand Tori gates. Yet never have I thought that I would walk through them while wearing a kimono…