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Up early, walk to JR Train: Osaka to Kyoto via Express Line. Cityl­ine Bus around to the middle of Kyoto sub­ur­bia. Express Line is faster as it seems to skip 2 stops out of 3. A Rapid, in com­par­ison, skips 1 out of 3. A local stops at every stop. The nuance between Rapid and Express means the dif­fer­ence of 30 minutes between Osaka and Kyoto.

Rush­ing through the country-side between Osaka and Kyoto, it is easy to miss the actual coun­try part. Yes, the moun­tains are all very verd­ant and green — the farms can be seen in the tri­angles between houses. Farm­ing is squeezed into the left overs of sub­ur­bia. All the spare space in Japan is used. Rice pad­dies, soc­cer fields on the flood plains of rivers; ver­tical car parks. All the space is wisely used.

Ima­gine a mod­ern city, wrapped around large plots of land con­veni­ently con­tain­ing shines, temples and gar­dens. Gone is the deep green of the coun­tryside: here it is orange. Lots of Orange. It is a shame that digital cam­eras miss the deep oranges and purples. There is lots of orange in Kyoto.

The bus sys­tem is per­fect for Kyoto’s sprawl. Only Y500 for a day pass is excel­lent value. The JR trip from Kyoto to Osaka was Y540, one way. This is a mere AU$10 for a day’s worth of travel, each. Enter from the rear, and exit (after pay­ing) from the front. A smart sys­tem that ensures an effi­cient flow of people through the bus, onto the street and into the money mak­ing temples. For the JR, we re-charged our Suica (stored value) cards from our last trip in 2005.

Japan, whilst exhib­its many fea­tures of the future; cash­less is not one of them in small stores and res­taur­ants. Thank­fully, the JR trains use these new stored value cards and the places where you can get money from your accounts seems to be greater.

Every temple/shine I’ve seen is sur­roun­ded by mech­an­isms for tak­ing money from the attendee. Whether for long life, good mar­riage, for ancest­ors — the temples/shrines take your money in mul­ti­pli­city of forms. At least this invest­ment res­ults in some of the world’s best vis­tas, and the raw earth and nature calm­ing sub­ur­bian nerves.

Our first shine/temple/garden/shopping trap was the Kiyom­izu (largest) etched into the moun­tain­side of Kyoto. We had Meiho, Yuka and Shiho escort us (for free!) around this large temple. They were using the exper­i­ence to learn English.

Pic­ture: some fat bas­tard look­ing for Charlotte.

In Lost in Trans­la­tion, Char­lotte (Scar­lett Johans­son) calls her mum still in the US and says “she went to a temple, and didn’t feel any­thing” I can under­stand why. Whilst the temples and shines are meant to evoke spir­itual feel­ing; the sheer num­ber of people and the shop­ping stalls dampen the spir­itual feel­ing some­what. A calmness does decend on you in the gar­dens. Sit­ting and watch­ing the Koi (think: carp) and turtles fight it out for illi­cit scraps of food thrown down into the water.

The second was the Heian. The gar­dens here are bril­liant. I think there is a scene from Lost in Trans­la­tion (Char­lotte cross­ing the pond) shot in this garden. The garden is situ­ation around a stark white and orange court­yard temple thing. Ven­tur­ing through the portal into the garden, you see a cooler, calmer world where the sounds of Kyoto traffic disappears.

The JR train return­ing to Osaka we passed Sun­tory Whisky dis­til­lery. Just like Lost in Translation.

Din­ner at a ran­dom place with some ran­dom Japan­ese food. “setto menu”. Buy­ing food late in the day from the depart­ment store res­ul­ted in dis­counts; although it was still a little expensive.

Tired legs, broken feet. Tomor­row is another day.