In our series of revisiting places, we went to Kyoto today. Another former capitol, that is now known for it’s temples. Well, not only the temples – but also the parks, the palace and for being a quite lively metropolis. Last time, we spent a lot of time out of town or at the outskirts of Kyoto, so we got the feeling that there is quite a lot of Kyoto we haven’t seen yet. Well, after today there is still a lot we didn’t see, but we started to get there.

Let’s make one thing clear. In Kyoto you’ll find temples and shrines… a lot of temples and shrines. It’s like you can’t walk a few hundred meters without running into at least a small shrine between the buildings. Seriously, they built shopping districts along shrine roads, so you’ll find fashion, food, fashion, accessories, shrine, fashion, sweets and so on. You turn a corner, find a few vending machines and a shrine. Truly amazing and as you might imagine, we’ve seen quite a few.

But aside that, there’s a lot more to discover. For examples, walked past the International Manga Museum and thought: “Ah, what the heck.” Though, we have to say, the “international” part is quite small – only a small shelf displaying comics from other countries, including German ones I’ve never heard of. Of course, Manga and Anime are mainly a Japanese thing, but since it’s being read and viewed all over the world, they showed how other countries go with the cult (like a German Cosplay magazine which we didn’t know and didn’t need to know). And, of course, you’ll find a lot of Manga books there (just about 50,000 with additional 250,000 in storage for research), which you can just pick out of a shelf and read (if you’re fluent enough in Japanese) on the premises. The most interesting thing was someone was doing Kamishibai in one room – traditional Japanese style of story-telling with pictures, which used to be popular as street entertainment. That was very fun due to the performance, even if we only understood the basic idea of the stories. The whole museum is a former elementary school, so its history is told there as well.

We were also in the Imperial Palace Park, a very nice area. We didn’t go to the palace, though, since it was already late then and you need to make reservations for that anyway.

And yes, of course we also went geocaching, which was quite successful.