Kyoto & Osaka

The day started relatively early, after a good night's rest in the hotel, near the Geisha-District (a shopping, restaurant and party/ tourist district) in the north of Kyoto, I had the usual porridge breakfast and for some good coffee, I made my way to the local Starbuck. The plan was to read for a bit and wait for my brother and his girlfriend to wake up and for all of us to get going with the day. The big plan was to meet-up with Taiga in Osaka in the afternoon. By now, pretty much everyone was scared of the Typhoon Hagibis (it's even got its own Wikipedia entry). We all realised that we were really lucky with our choice of location, being about 500km away from the main typhoon, having escaped South. Eventually, the typhoon would kill 80 people with another 11 missing (21/10/2019) and millions of damage.

Eventually, some 1.5h later my brother appeared in Starbucks and handed me a little free magazine with an interesting article on a young swordmaker called Hamawaka Sadasumi (35), who, after an 8-year apprenticeship is making Japanese swords again (link to article here).

Hamawaka Sadsumi (35), making traditional Japanese swords.
I wanna go and do a sword-making workshop.

Eventually, my brother's girlfriend arrived around 11 and we all decided to explore the Geisha district by day, which also had a huge amount of temples and shrines to visit. We braved the weather and went exploring. We stumbled into a fairly large temple (Yasaka Shrine), which hosted some private ceremony on the day and we couldn't explore the inside. However, there were many small details such as some really beautifully landscaped Japanese gardens.

Thankfully only a broken umbrella. That's the most that the typhoon affected us and of course we got a bit wet. but thankfully we chose Osaka for the day.

Yasaka Shrine

Yasaka Shrine

We went somewhere for lunch, for some reason trusting Google to tell us where to go, not always an easy feat with two vegetarians who are looking for variety and whatever is possible when it comes to finding dishes that are traditionally Japanese and with meat, such as Ramen, and finding a vegetarian alternative. After lunch, we had another coffee and decided it was time to get ourselves back down to Kyoto station, using the local bus and to make our way to Osaka, where we would meet Taiga, my friend I was hanging out with last year in Sapporo (Hokkaido). It's amazing travelling alone as you can meet so many people and you generally tend to engage in conversation with local people more as being alone all day long sometimes sucks. I met Taiga in Sapporo one evening, as we were both hanging out in Budha-bar, him travelling alone, me travelling alone. After an eventful evening, we decided that should I ever be in Osaka I'll tell him. So I did. We met Taiga at Osaka Station and whilst it was pretty rainy, it was also kind of warm. Much warmer than in Tokyo and even warmer than Kyoto just a few minutes earlier (it only took 30min  from Kyoto to Osaka by train)

Taiga showed us around the place, visiting the much-famed shopping streets and the Glico Running Man billboard. It's much famed and lots of people taking pictures there. We took some pictures but then we really went into the little alleyways of Osaka. The atmosphere was very strange, it was almost like a movie, the rain, people hushed with their umbrellas, the feeling of being on the outskirts of a mega-typhoon and then the familiarity that comes with being with someone you know and enjoy being with. Even though we've only ever met for a few hours, it felt like I've known Taigo for a long time already. We walked to a local shrine with a buddha statue that was completely over-grown with moss. Local custom is to donate the obligatory Yen 100 coin (or more) and then to sprinkle the statue with water using one of the ladles in front. No wonder the statue looked the way it does.

Taiga showed us a good time going to a local diner, where we had some sushi and some local food, before going to a corner bar that only had 5 chairs, with a strong female bar owner who was clearly boss, but also super friendly. We had a few drinks (Shoju, potato schnapps, Japanese speciality alcohol, a bit stronger than the rice-wine or Sake as it's called here). 

Eventually, we headed back to the Osaka station but not before encouraging Taiga to come visit Lonon in 2020. We were all pretty tipsy by now and the train ride was an hour as there only seemed to be local trains or we managed to miss the fast train and it looked like there were only local trains. In any case, we made it back safely to Kyoto, where we would do some proper sightseeing tomorrow.