Wednesday, 27th January

Today we woke up late in Kyoto without knowing what to do. Continuing our list of things from last time we were here, we decided to go to Arashiyama in western Kyoto to have a look at the famous bamboo forest.

Cleverly, we worked out how to get out there on a  JR line so we wouldn't have to pay a fare. The subway kind of expensive in Kyoto.  Out in Arashiyama we looked around for the Buddhist temple, Tennoji. It has a famous garden and connects to the bamboo forest. We payed to have a look at the garden and spent a while sitting in contemplation at the nice pond and reading about it. As seems to be the case with all Kyoto temples, it was built in the 1300s, but unfotunately burned down... eight times... since then. So it's not really very old. Except in tradition.

The garden was very nice but a bit wintery, on the other hand it was pretty quiet. The exit of the garden walks right into the bamboo forest which was also nice and only marginally spoiled by workers cleaning up with chainsaws and hammers (don't worry, we went back later after the chainsaw guys left and taxis started driving through instead). We took lots of photos that look exactly like other photos in books of the same place. We observed and skipped some bits from the Lonely Planet guide and started wandering along the edge of the mountains looking at the interesting houses and other japanese tourists. Our favourite tourists are little groups (usually trios) of old ladies who all  huddle together on the train. They all wear little knitted hats and walk slowly and quietly with only the occaissional "hon to neeeeeee?". They're all polite and sometimes say "konnichiwa" to us. The worst tourists are embarrassing Australians who yell out at each other across parks and gardens and stuff. Ew. Luckily we only saw a few today.

We saw a house where Basho's student used to live, which was pretty, and some weird fields, and some ninja guys pulling carts with japanese tourists. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that mainly serves traditional japanese sweets and and tea. We wanted food so we ordered two different sets based around green tea flavoured Soba noodles. My set had a pile of cold noodles and some sauce and condiments to dip them in, as well as a little bit of fish and some pickles (sukimono = things you like) and some salty red beany rice balls. Chrissy had soba in salty soup with a big bit of fish on top + sukimono and a bowl of rice with tiny fish. We ate it all and it was delicious. Soba noodles are great. The restaurant was nice and quiet and we sat for a while looking at their garden.

Our next stop was Gio-ji which is a mini temple which Errol + Pamela had visited in November. It has a mossy garden started by a Buddhist nun hudreds of years ago and was really pretty. My favourite thing of the day. It's surrounded by bamboo forests and the cool air was falling down from the hills above us. We met some japanese tourists and admired a cat which seemed to live in the temple building.

One of the tourists had an old fashioned style reflex camera with the view finder on top. I think I mentioned already that film cameras are totally in this year, especially weird ones. Every time we go sight-seeing I see tourists with novelty cameras or old Canon SLRs. Sorry Peter and Errol - no Minoltas. Also, it's mostly girls. Chrissy where's your tilt-shift colour-filtered Holga toy camera?

After walking through the bamboo forest again we took the JR line back to town, changing to a subway so that we could go visit the Teramachi arcades. We wandered around for a while and had McDonalds for dinner. After that we got serious about shopping and went straight to the bag shop. I was going to buy a Porter wallet but Chrissy said that the zip was too big and would break so I didn't. We also went to two music shops, one only sold guitars but the other had a pretty cool selection of stuff. Chrissy got to try a real Moog theremin which was awesome, we both played with Yamaha Tenori-on (synthesiser toys from Yamaha which are a grid of lighted buttons, rad and cool, but also $800). I wanted to buy a little Korg controller but they only had it in white and not black so I didn't.

Maybe I'll buy a Korg wavedrum drum synth. Only $500? Maybe not.