After spending a week in two big, modern cities, we went to see some of the history of Japan. To do that, we went to another huge city, but this one was different. Kyoto is one of the only major cities to have been spared massive damage during the war; it was also the capital of Japan for about a thousand years. This means the city has an enormous number of old, in tact, and very impressive buildings. The amount of temples and shrines is overwhelming.

Speaking of very old buildings, we made a quick stop at another one on the way to Kyoto. We got off the main Shinkansen train line and headed a bit inland to the mountains for the day. Our destination was the Bitchu Matsuyama Castle in the small town of Takahashi. This is the highest castle in Japan and has been used on and off since the year 1240. It overlooks the town from a few miles away in the mountains, and the trip up there made for a nice hike past rice fields and through a forest. Probably based on its less-than-convenient location, we basically had the whole place to ourselves. There were a handful of other people on the trail and at the top, but nothing compared to the crowds at the Hiroshima Castle. This one was sparsely decorated inside, but they had most of it open and let people climb around to the upper floors inside the main keep.

The first day in Kyoto turned out to be centered around food and beverages, we did make time to wander the grounds of the old imperial palace though. It is now a big city park with a few sections off limits because various important people still live there. Immediately after breakfast we went to the Nishiki Market where we couldn’t resist having a few fish-related snacks. One of which looked like a biscuit, but turned out to be a giant fish ball wrapped in bacon. In the afternoon, we found ourselves in a historic neighborhood south of town. It was curious to see a general absence of tourists there. Downtown Kyoto was crawling with people speaking English and studying maps, but a few stops away on the subway they all disappeared. The Momoyama area had the usual sprinkling of temples and shrines, and a small shopping street. The town was mostly filled with traditional houses and places that have been brewing sake continuously for a few hundred years.

Luckily, one of the bigger breweries had a museum that was partially signed in English so we got to learn a bit about how sake is made. This is probably a good time to mention something about the word sake. We had noticed that walking into a restaurant and ordering sake usually resulted in confused looks or the bartender offering a beer. It turns out that “sake” really means “alcohol”, and what we really wanted to be ordering was “nihonshu”, meaning “Japanese alcohol”. To add to the confusion, they decided to use the same character for both words. We also learned that there is no difference between hot and cold sake. Although the top-shelf versions are generally drunk cold, the serving temperature is just based on your mood at the time – sort of like hot versus iced tea.

The central part of Kyoto was just as impressive as the old neighborhoods. To see the main sites we decided to join a walking tour of the city, mostly because something on the Internet said it was famous. Unlike some other recommendations found on obscure websites, this one turned out to be a good idea. It is led by an old Japanese man who has been doing it for many years. He took us to a several Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and a cemetery, and explained how both religions coexist in Japan. We also walked though the geisha area, stopped in a small shop making fans, tasted some tea and a pastry made from rice flour and beans at a bakery, saw another shop making hand-painted pottery, and walked past the original headquarters of Nintendo which got its start making playing cards long before video games were invented. It was all very interesting and we learned a lot.

We departed the ancient capital and rode the train to an even older one. The city of Nara is a lot smaller, and more manageable, than Kyoto and was the first permanent capital of Japan. The city is also celebrating its 1300th anniversary this year. In preparation for the event they did two things, they chose a rather hilarious mascot for the city (look for the baby Buddha with antlers on the photo page), and, perhaps more significantly they spent the last ten years constructing a building on the site of the old imperial palace. The purpose of the project was to showcase traditional architecture, art, and building techniques.

On the other side of town, the old buildings are still standing. The whole area is now a park and it is packed with temples, shrines, museums, and gardens – all guarded by the same friendly deer that we saw on Miyajima Island near Hiroshima. The main highlight is Todai-ji, which is reported to be the world’s largest wooden structure. That is apparently a disputed claim, because the same thing was said of a similar temple in Kyoto. I guess we saw them both so we are covered. It was built to house a gigantic bronze statue of Buddha. After wandering the park and seeing what we could, we retired to our guest house in the historic Naramachi neighborhood. Even that was nice and old, we stayed in a hundred-year-old traditional Japanese house. This one had beds rather than the tatami mats we had in Kyoto, but still a beautiful place.