Etchy in Kyoto

On Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed and ran down to the station and hopped on the first Shinkansen train to Kyoto.  I had arranged to meet  one of my Japanese friends in Kyoto.    She lived nearby and had the day off so we had planned to go to do some sightseeing outside of Kyoto  (the much vaunted 'Ninja Village')  during the day and then come back to town for an evening event...  I would take the train down to Osaka and fly back to HK the next day.

OK, sounds easy right?  Get to the station, drop off my bags and grab the train out... 

well unfortunately some things don't work the way we planned...   if you've ever been to Kyoto Station you know how hugeit is... and you can probably guess how many people are there on a Sunday afternoon on a 3 day holiday weekend.... AND couple that with the fact that my cell phone stopped working....  so long story short: it took an hour and two station-wide pages before I found my friend.

OK, not the end of the world until I tried to look for a locker.... I saw about a thousand of them, but none of them were empty!  finally we got hungry and tried to find food in the station but every restaurant was packed too... another hour and a half wasted! I was quickly starting to dislike Kyoto! 

Finally we just decided to walk a few blocks, found a McDonalds that wasn't completely packed, grabbed a table and waited for the crowds to die down. Ninja Village would have wait for another time...    I had to regroup and replan... 

先週東京出た後、新幹線で京都まで行った、京都近住んでいるの友達を京都駅で会うの予定ありました。。。一緒一日観光した。簡単予定有ったんだけど、問題一杯有りました！駅中に人とても一杯！１時間ぐらい友達見つけませんでした！携帯使いませんから。後ローカーが’満’でした！レストランも満席！とても大変でした！僕の観光の目的を京都の近の忍者村、でもたくさん時間かかりましたから、行けませんでした！残念！でも次の目的まだしました：清水寺の紅葉（夜）景色行く！

Instead we waited til the sun went down and headed to our next objective: the world famous Kiyomizu Temple ( 清水寺) in Kyoto...  I actually have already been here like twice before, but this time was special...  because of this was the peak period for fall leaves in this part of Japan, they open the temple up at night and put special lighting in the trees that surround the temple.  The temple is comprised of several buildings built on the side of a hill,  so the scenery is quite nice.

But Kyoto had a few speed bumps left to throw my way... namely the crowds... Hong Kong is one of the most crowded places on earth,  but this was a whole other level:

人とても一杯が居た！香港のモンコクより多い！すごい大変：

Wall to wall people... all slowly shuffling towards the temple.. 　皆は寺より歩きました。。。

Despite the crowds I was able to get some nice pictures (i brought my mini tripod!) The main entrance.  they had a giant spotlight shining over the temple from the hill in the back.

寺の後ろに大点光がありました。

Also many of the trees on the grounds were lit up... 　公園中の木も照明灯が有った。

After much experimentation I finally figured out how to get my Canon to take a long exposure picture... it took a lot of hunting through submenu options to finally get... (its only two steps on a casio!) :-/ 

僕のカメラで長露出時間たくさん試用したから、綺麗な夜写真を撮った。見て：

But I was happy with the results:

those white lights are actually flashes going off.  i had a several second shutter time and there were THAT many flashes going off... (which means their pictures looked like crap of course).

白と赤閃光 が人のカメラのフラッシからですよ！

here's a view back looking at how packed it was...　人一杯！撮り難い！

I asked my friend Cathy to try to take one of me (for the blog),  but she had shaky hands. :-P

僕の友達あまり上手じゃないで撮った！残念！

I think this was the best one! ( this is what it looks like during the day)　

この枚が一番好きな。。。合いませんか？

I tried to get one through the trees of the Kyoto Tower too... but a bit too blurry. :-(

あまり見えませんの京都タワー。

Down from below I tried to get a cool shot with the temple's pagoda, the spotlight and the full moon.　寺の下から満月を撮ってみた。。。

Here's a zoom:

I learned a long time ago that its really hard to get a good picture of the moon w/ a regular camera... never comes out right. :-P

月をとても撮り難いよ！

By the time we left it was still pretty packed on the street approaching the temple. Lots of people were stopping to get gifts and snacks:　帰った時人まだ一杯のにまだお土産とお菓子に買い物した。

I stopped for both. :-P 

I ended up talking to the young couple in the kimono in the left picture,  they were pretty nice.  The place on the right specialized in food on sticks... I got the mochi cheese stick... cathy got something made from Japanese potatoes... very filling. :-P

And this was some sort of pumpkin bun:

But i didn't realize until after i bit into it that it was some kind of Asian pumpkin, not american pumpkin. doh!

the first half of the day was quite aggravating, but the evening turned out to be so great (despite the crowds), that I was really happy I decided to divert my trip to Kyoto for a day.  After this my friend and I had a really good Japanese dinner near the station and then I haded to osaka...

今の日とても悪いな始めありましたけど、最後部とても良かったから、京都へ行ったがとても嬉しかった！