First full day in Kyoto.

I'm still bad at being a tourist.

I tried to do this Kyoto itinerary today, but I didn't leave the guest house until about noon? And then I needed to get to Kyoto station, and then I had lunch before heading off, and so it was about 1:00 when I got to the first site. And I'm a slow walker, and everything closes at 5:30 at the latest, so I only got about halfway through. And half of the sites were under renovation.

(Kiyomizu-dera was still gorgeous, but I'm pretty sure it's nicer when there aren't scaffolds and nets over half the buildings.)

I was a few blocks from Gion when I gave up for the day, so I went over there and walked around the shopping street. There's a Hello Kitty store there. It's not a Sanrio store, like the one in Ikebukuro - it sells only items with Hello Kitty's face on them. Keroppi is not permitted. I went in there and looked for the pen drive elongated_tito wants, but they didn't have one.

Is it weird that I feel like it's not especially weird to find a Hello Kitty store in Gion? Gion is for distorted idealized femininity. The presence of this shop is natural and expected, like that of a stalactite in a limestone cavern.

I decided to try to take the bus back to the guest house - I knew there was a bus station out front - but having forgotten to look up what bus(es) I needed to take, I ended up having to take one back to Kyoto Station and get on the JR instead. I'm pretty sure this wasted a lot of time, but I cannot find any bus maps, and thus cannot figure out how much.

Also, I had planned to go to Kokedera, but had somehow failed to realize you need to make a reservation several weeks in advance, though this is stated clearly on every website about the place.

I did have some very good nishin soba at Gion, though.

Unrelated but of interest if you have read Ooku.

Or probably any other fictional narrative involving Tokugawa Tsunayoshi:

I guess I at one point knew this but forgot about it: Rikugien, my favorite landscape garden in Tokyo, was apparently designed by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. The garden plaques and pamphlets describes Yoshiyasu as being known mainly for his contributions to the arts. I do not think that this is, in fact, the case. At the very least, he's a sub-villain in the 47 Ronin narrative, which is better known than the man's poetry. Probably anyone with an interest in the period has opinions about whether he was sleeping with Tsunayoshi.

For purposes of comparison, Koishikawa Kourakuen was designed by Mito Koumon.