Visitors Part 3

The silent car was pretty weird. There were no announcements to tell us what station we were approaching and we weren't allowed to talk. haha!
Well, it was only as far as Osaka, and then we changed trains to a normal one for the remaining 10~15 minutes or so to Kyoto.
Finally we were back in Kyoto.  First stop, the hotel.

Actually, Our hotel wasn't in Kyoto at all! It wasn't even in Kyoto Prefecture!! All the cheaper hotels in Kyoto were booked out, so I had booked us into a hotel in Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture (by lake Biwa). It's only a 20 minute train ride from Kyoto, so it wasn't a big deal. Prad was happy about it too, since Lake Biwa is where the largest Bass in the world was caught. Unfortunately we didn't manage to get out on a boat while we were there.

Mississippi? No... Lake Biwa, Japan!

After having checked into the hotel we headed straight back into Kyoto for dinner at a roof-top beer garden!! HOORAY!!! We had a small map telling us how to get to the train station from the hotel, but it wasn't very detailed or helpful. After walking past the turn-off once, we managed to turn back and find our way. The station was TINY!  There was no ticket machine, and nobody working there. It was just a matter of walking up onto the platform and getting on the train. Getting lost on the way to the station caused us to miss our train. The next train was 20 minutes away!! There was no way we were going to make it to the beer garden by 5:30!! (5:30 was the start time, and being a Saturday night in summer vacation, I figured if we didn't get there at the start time, we wouldn't get a seat).
Eventually the train came, and we headed into Kyoto. When we got off at our stop (underground) we quickly made our way up to ground level. However, as we were heading up, we heard a strange rumbling sound. It almost sounded like thunder, but surely not! It was sunny out there... right?

Apparently not. When we neared ground level, it soon became clear that it was bucketing down outside. Not only was it raining, it was POURING! The wind had picked up to a gentle gale, and thunder was booming. Hmmm... what should we do?
We headed back underground and bought umbrellas at a small convenience store in the underground station. Clearly the typhoon-like weather wasn't congenial to roof-top beer gardening, so we decided to made a mad dash to a nearby izakaya for dinner. We waited under shelter for a while to see if the rain would let up, but it was just getting worse and worse, so we decided to cut our losses and go for it. Well... the umbrellas were pointless. The wind was swirling so much that the rain just came up and under the umbrellas! That, and the force with which it was pounding on the footpath caused it to splash back up and saturate our legs. haha! We finally made it to the restaurant, and dripped our way in. We had a good time there.

When we walked out of the restaurant after dinner, we saw that the weather had completely cleared up. It was actually quite nice outside now. So we decided to take a walk around Kyoto at night. However, my socks were saturated, and Prad's T-shirt was soaked, so we hot-footed it to Uniqlo (clothing store) to get some socks and a T-shirt. Prad and I switched our wet clothes for dry ones, and then we all headed off to the convenience store for some beers, and walked along the Kamo River, beers in hand, down to Shijo Street, where we searched for a famous matcha desert shop, but it seems it was temporarily relocated due to renovations. We took the opportunity to walk around Yasaka Shrine, and then headed back down Ponotocho to the English Style Pub. We had a drink or two there before calling it a night and heading back to the hotel in Shiga! haha

The next day we headed into Kyoto and went to Sanjusangendo Temple, Kiyomizudera Temple (well, the streets leading up to it) and then walked down through Gion to Maruyama Park, and then wasted time until 5:30 for the beer garden to open. YES, that's right: we weren't able to go to the beer garden the night before, so we decided to try again tonight.  It was great too! We arrived a little early and so waited on the rooftop for opening. Then we were seated and got drinks and food. We had some really drunk guy sitting at the table next to us, who was trying to impress his girlfriend with his English... haha!! It was hilarious to watch Prad "chatting" with him!  We had a great time at the beer garden.

Lee throws a coin onto the wishing stone at Sanjusangendo

We stumbled upon some traditional Kyogen Theatre going on at Yasaka Shrine

As you can see, as it started to get dark, they turned on fairy lights at the beer garden. It was like Christmas! haha

Heading back to the hotel, exhausted.

The next day we headed to Kyoto Station and did some shopping there before taking the train home to Yosano.