Japan Photo Set 7 – Kyoto & Tokyo

This update covers Kyoto and Tokyo, which means this is the last Japan update.

We arrived in Kyoto on that Tuesday, I believe. We left on Thursday.

This is Kyoto station, an incredibly spacious-seeming place (especially for Japan!). The high ceiling makes it really incredible. I heard it’s studied by architects around the world.

I have no idea what those things are for, but they are pretty neat.

Kyoto station from the outside. Note the little “Astroboy” on top of the directory in the lower left.

Our first destination in Kyoto was Kinkakuji, more commonly referred to as the “Golden Pavilion”. This sign (same type as at previous sites) says that it was built in 1897, burnt down in 1950, and was rebuilt in 1955. It’s covered in pure gold leaf.

This actually turned out really well. This is the Golden Pavilion, one of the most incredible things I have seen.

This is a Buddha statue. Those shiny things are mostly 1-yen coins. We never managed to get any in the bowl, though.

This is most of our hotel room in Kyoto. We stayed at Kyoto Cheapest Inn, which was actually the nicest place we stayed at for a reasonable price.

The same place from the outside. There were 5 floors at Kyoto Cheapest.

Just down the road from the hotel, the old Imperial Compound in Kyoto. This is as far as we could go since it was under construction.

After Kyoto, we went on to Tokyo. We had some troubles finding our hotel (and in fact we found the wrong one, but that’s another story)…

The interior of our room at the Ryokan Kangetsu. This place was not nearly as inexpensive, but it was really nice.

Welcome to Akihabara, the “Electric Town” of Tokyo and quite possibly the most tech-saturated place in the world. Needless to say, it’s a miniature paradise for nerds like me (but I couldn’t handle the crowds for too long).

In retrospect, we really should have tried going in Club Sega. It could’ve been really neat.

Another picture of Akihabara. See the little tall orange building? There were dozens of places like that in another area – they’re actually 4-5 stories tall.

This is all for one store – one really big, really cool store, but one nonetheless. All of the posters near the middle are advertisements for Sengoku Basara, a game based in Japan’s middle ages that was brought to the U.S. as “Devil Kings” with the historical basis removed. I guess they thought it wouldn’t sell otherwise.

Tokyo Central Station. Built in a sort of Victorian (?) style. It looks small on the outside, but it was hard as heck to find our way out of the place.

After going to Central Station, we gradually made our way towards Tokyo Tower, which is sort of like the Eiffel Tower but not as tall (and really just a tourist trap).

On the way, we found this really neat Buddhist temple. You can see the tower itself in the far upper right.

Temple and tower.

These dog statues were pretty much right next to the tower. This plaque tells about their history (although the only pertinent kanji I can read here say “dog”, “journey”, and “story”).

Tokyo Tower as seen from below.

Welcome to Nagano! Congratulations, now you’ve seen as much of it as I did. We were here maybe 2 minutes.

2 Comments »

  1. DarknessSavior Said,

    January 16, 2007 @ 10:13 am

    Wow, looking at all your pictures from Japan make me want to go even more!

    Also, I tried to use my fresh knowledge of Kana/Kanji for that sign, here’s what I got:

    (Some Random Kanji I don’t know), de ha te ra , (kana I don’t recognize), te (kanji for “Power”), (two more Kanji I don’t recognize), to, (Kanji for “dog”), no, (more Kanji I don’t know)
    1959 (I assume that’s the Kanji for “year”)
    The second Kanji in the next line is “Root” (everything else I’ve never seen)
    Everything else is way too small.

    I’m unaware if that helps you at all, probably not, you probably will never notice I posted this, and you have probably translated the entire sign by now. =P

    ~DS

  2. niahak Said,

    January 16, 2007 @ 12:11 pm

    Actually, after hataraitate, it’s karafuto (katakana).
    Other than what I’ve got there, the only new part I can read is nihondoubutsu (animals of Japan).
    I should really get around to translating the whole thing.

    Oh, and all the comments on here go straight to my email so I notice every comment. So far I think there’ve been 6 I didn’t make 😛

RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI

Leave a Comment