“I woke last night to the sound of thunder”. I’m sure that Bob Seger wasn’t in Kyoto when he wrote Night Moves but it is a perfect description for that weather last night that woke me. The sound of thunder and rain against the window. I was wondering what I should do with my upcoming day as I feel asleep again.
The morning was cool and overcast with clouds so low in places that you would call them fog. I didn’t have a lot of indoor plans for the trip so while I sat in yet another faux French bakery and ate chocolate croissants and drank coffee I decided to go to Uji.
Uji is located south of Kyoto and is famous for its green tea. It straddles the Uji river and is home to many ancient temples and shrines. One of the oldest Shinto shrines Ujigama is located there. It is also home to Kyoto Animation (KyoAni) who have produced some of my favourite animes in the last several years. They have a unique style that just keeps getting better. I wanted to visit their shop in Uji and see if I could get a book that they publish on how their style of animation is produced. Uji is also home to the Genji Museum. The Tale of Genji is considered one of Japan’s literary masterpieces and the last 10 of 54 chapters are set in Uji. There are also a lot of old building that should be interesting as well. So a mix of old and new, indoor and outdoor. No matter what the weather I should be able to find something to do.
I decided to go to the KyoAni shop first and see what the weather was like afterwards. Bad weather I would visits the museum and the tea laboratory. Good weather I would visit shrines and walk around. Getting to Uji involved taking trains from 2 different companies who don’t share a station. I took JR from the Kyoto station to Obaku and walked to the Keihan station and took a train from there to Kowata. The shop was about a block from the station. Yay Google maps and iPhone.
The KyoAni shop was smaller than I had expected but had a lot of interesting stuff. There were a couple of other customers there and 2 staff which seemed like overkill for a shop of about 200 square feet. I could not find the book that I wanted and asked the staff for help. They looked around and eventually came to the conclusion that they did not have it. I’m not sure whether it was out of print or out of stock but they did have 2 other volumes that covered the same material. (I think that they are replacements). I bought these and a couple of other sketch books that showed the process of character development. My carry-on is now way overweight but I’ll deal with that later.
Afterwards I walked around some looking at stuff and found a place for lunch. I had a sort of okonomiyaki which I now can’t remember the name of. It was different than any I have had so far and contained corn, potatoes and a lot of cheese. It was good but really filling and quite salty.
The weather was improving and there was a little sun form time to time. On my way back I decided to take a different route and needed to use the fare adjustment machine which was fairly easy to figure out. I took the Keihan train back to the Uji station and walked across a bridge to the JR station where the local tourist office is and got a map.
I walked to the Hashihime Shrine but found when I got there that it was closed for renovation. I then walked around a shopping area and then down by the river which was quite pretty. I took a lot of pictures and then crossed a bridge to an island in the middle of the river and looked at a tall stone pagoda. I crossed another bridge that brought me to the gate of the Uji shrine. I walked from there to the Eshinin temple and the Genji museum. It was late enough that I decided not to tour the museum and made my way back to the JR station via another bridge.
I took the JR train back to Kyoto with a lot of high school students who had been out on some sort of outing. I wonder if this happens a lot? So far I have seen students almost every place that I have been.
Back in Kyoto it was sunny and I couldn’t resist a trip up the Kyoto tower on the way back to my ryoukan. The view from 100 meters up was really great and it gave me a great perspective of the city. Again there were a bunch of students.
no images were found
Afterwards I walked a couple of blocks back to my ryoukan. A pretty good day for one that had started with such poor weather.