Thanks to Nakahara-san, a friend through Rotary, I have a Kansai Museum Grotto pass. There are discount coupons and free admission tickets to some famous museums and tourist attractions in the Kansai area. I decided to be a tourist for a bit so I went to Kyoto yesterday! I went to the Kyoto National Museum. It was great. I’d like to do a lot more sightseeing this month, as I am on Spring Break right now. I really like looking at artwork and artifacts!! I was planning to see two or three museums in Kyoto, but as usual I took a long time looking at all the interesting displays in the museum and didn’t have time to go anywhere else. I was in the museum for about five hours, from 12 to 5.

Since Girls’ Day (Hinamatsuri) was March 3rd, there was a special display of dolls. I think I actually learned quite a bit. I saw different types of dolls like Gosho dolls and Tachibana dolls. There were three grand doll sets that were very impressive, in addition to displays of individual dolls from different times in Japanese history. It was interesting to see the doll set from the Meiji period. I had never seen a doll set in which the Emperor and Empress were dressed in Western-style, military outfits!

Also there was a special exhibit of painted wood carvings. The portraits of people in wood were extremely life-like. I could have expected them to move at any second! There were also some tiny human figures with amazing detail.

I also saw huge wooden Buddhist carvings (many from Kamakura period) and beautiful Buddhist paintings, calligraphy, lacquer bowls, porcelain, kimonos and embroidery, bronze statues, roof tiles, and even blades from the Paleolithic Era. There was some Chinese and Korean artwork.

Compared to the Nara National Museum (which I visited in the Fall), there were many more pieces from Kyoto temples and from the Heian Period.

The weather was great. It was nice strolling around at night too. I walked around a shopping center near JR Kyoto Station. I found a really nice trucker hat (black with Japanese floral designs) and I always wanted a hat like that…but as it was 3000 yen I decided to walk away. Food was pretty expensive too, in my opinion. I ended up getting a sandwich and a beef croquette. The sandwich was really good. But I was quite surprised because there was a lot of butter in it!

At night it got kind of shady though…I noticed there were a lot of women on the street passing out flyers to men. When I passed by they didn’t hand me anything…

Yay Kyoto! I would like to go again soon! I felt very tourist-like.