Joking aside, it was a good day. Like the title said, today I went to Kyoto. But then again, if you want to get technical, I visited only 2 places in Kyoto. From my house, the overall trip to where these two places were is about 1.5 hours, so considering the 3 hours total trip time, I went there early to come back in the evening, in order to
Welcome to Nijo Castle, one of the most famous castles in Japan.
One good thing about this place (and also, the second place I visited) is that it's pretty close to a direct line from Osaka to Kyoto. I don't know how many there are actually, but damn that's convenient. Anyway, since I said I wouldn't bother you anymore with the trip details...
The castle is really beautiful, on the inside and also on the outside. The rules about taking pictures inside the buildings were very strict sadly. I mean, even sketching was forbidden ! I don't have much to say about it, except for a few bits of history : about 400 years ago, this was once the home of a shogun. Did your masters not tell you who he was ? (Sorry for this one)
One cool feature of the Nijo castle is the possibility of having an audio guide, which is available in English AND in French ! I took the french one, and either the woman narrating is bilingual, or spent a lot of time getting the Japanese pronunciations on point. Either way, props to them. It costs an additional 500 yen, but the entry itself is only 600 yen and it adds a lot of depth to the visit by explaining everything like what the rooms are, what were their purpose, notorious events that happened, etc. Honestly, as someone who'd rather stay at home all weekend, I really recommend visiting this place if you happen to pass by Kyoto. The visit itself should be about an hour or so, but be wary of the opening times, which is 9:00 to 17:00 if I remember correctly. Turns out not every place in Japan is open until 23:00 after all !
Before you don't ask me this question, no, I did not explore Kyoto itself, for 2 reasons : First because it looked like your average big Japanese city and I was already living in one, and second because it rained too damn much the entire day so I was no ready to wander and randomly looked for someplace to go to. I must say that, strangely, for a city that is often mentioned for its historical locations, the city looked very "western", even more than Osaka actually. But that's just my opinion after going through a couple spots in downtown Kyoto, so take it with a grain of salt.
Now for the next one, it's going to be a little awkward to talk about since people aren't allowed to take any pictures. Actually, maybe some spots were free to take pictures of, but with the "NO PHOTO" signs at numerous places, I decided not to try my luck.
Without further ado, the second place I visited was the Kyoto International Manga Museum ! (if you want pictures for reference, I recommend you google it or try the official website in english). Now this place is actually very recent (founded 10 years ago), but nevertheless much interesting. While one of the primary attractions is their collection of 300,000 (!!!) mangas including extremely rare/ancient stuff, you can do much more than just staring at big shelves filled with paperback chinese cartoons. First of all, aside from a few of those rare and/or ancient ones that can't even be touched. you can actually read all of those mangas at your heart's content ! In fact "can" is an understatement since most of the crowd was actually reading on designated reading spots all over the museum.
This is far from being the only feature of this place. One of my favorite rooms is some kind of manga history room. Starting from one side of the room with a shelf named "1945", go along the wall to find many other shelves until "2005". You guessed it : every shelf contains mangas that were made in the year indicated at the top ! Not only there are many issues in every one of those, but you can read all of them as you want to, similar to the manga in regular shelves.
Another exciting area of this museum is the exhibition site, located at the second floor. Temporary exhibitions take place here, and the current one is about the manga artist Eguchi Hisashi. For a more personal note here, I did know about his art but not about his name or his career in general, and let's just say that I found myself very fond of his work after contemplating the exhibition. One sad thing however, is that this exhibition runs until mid-September, so I won't be able to witness another one before leaving (for the record, I go back in early September).
Other features of the museum, in no particular orders, are first of all a lot of small areas dedicated to things like signing places to meet artists, manga drawing workshops, live drawing demonstrations, etc. Being a bit shy and not actually very interested, I only saw those from a distance but it's cool that it's present in a place like this. One very unexpected spot was the international corner, located near the entrance. Here, many mangas translated in a wide selection of languages are shown. Though I don't understand the appeal of it, I found many Japanese people looking through the ones translated in French. I guess this spot is more for their curiosity instead of the foreigners', but anyway, I thought it was really cool that it existed. The actual number of mangas for each language is available on their website.
In the end, this place is easily comparable to a small-sized Japanese culture convention focused around manga. In addition to a vast number of free to read manga, the various activities, workshops and exhibitions give a really similar feel, having participated (and also organized) in several of these kind of conventions. The commercial is not neglected, because near the entrance (and exit) you have a goodies spot, again much like a japanese culture convention. Numerous anime/manga related goodies can be found, in addition to professional mangaka (manga artist) equipment, and naturally, manga. I'm fairly certain that the price is above average for every product here, but nevertheless I let myself get tempted by some cool purchases. No regrets !
And this concludes my trip to Kyoto. Hell, I think I'll say that this concludes my FIRST trip to Kyoto, because I think I have many places to visit there, and the transportation from my home is actually pretty convenient (and way cheaper than I thought for such a distance) so stay tuned for the follow-up, even though I think that I'll make a second visit at a date close to when I'm going back, to leave some room for other places (surprise surprise !)
Thanks for reading, and to thank you even more, here's a teaser : I'm planning on making one or more "Bonus Chapters" that don't describe a particular event, but more general experiences, so... please be excited.
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