April 5 - Tokyo Shinkansen Bullet Train (新幹線子彈火車) & Miho Museum

We took the Tokyo Shinkansen Bullet Train (新幹線子彈火車) from Tokyo to Kyoto.  This was a very comfortable ride just like the high speed train in Taiwan.  

Our first attraction in Kyoto was Miho Museum.  On the way to Miho Museum, we stopped by for traditional Japanese lunch at Yu-shen in a small town with nice setup for kaiseki-ryori (會席料理).  They also have beautiful cherry trees right in front of their restaurant.  From where we sat for lunch we could look over the window for blossom cherry trees and it attracted us to take more photos.  We had a great time and noticed one of the custom of Japanese people at the time when we left the restaurant.  When we were ready to leave, their waitresses came out of the restaurant, stood by their front door, and waved goodbye to us.  They stopped waving only after they could not see us anymore.  Our tour guide directed us to return the favor by waving goodbye to them too.

When we got to Miho Museum, it was still raining.  From the entrance point to the museum itself requires a 20 minutes walk through a garden. It has cherry trees, willow cherry trees, a tunnel, and an unique bridge with slick architecture design.  Even walking in the rain with umbrella, we still enjoyed it.  Miho Museum was the dream of Mihoko Koyama (after whom it is named), and was designed by the famous I. M. Pei. He called his design as Shangri-La which is executed in a hilly and forested landscape.   Out of respect for nature, I. M. Pei  built 80% of the museum blow ground.  The roof is a large glass and steel construction, while the exterior and interior walls and floor are made of a warm beige-colored limestone from France.  

We had a wonderful museum guide to lead the tour and introduced us to see the most important collections in the museum including Standing Gandhara Buddha, Statue of Queen Arsine II, Cult figure of a Falcon-Headed Deity, Barnett Newman’s paintings, and Yosa Buson’s Landscape Screens. Miho Museum is beautiful with many surprising architectural designs and valuable collections.  It gave us the feeling of visiting a Shangri-La.

We checked into Biwako Hanakaido (琵琶湖花街道) which is a ryokan (Japanese-style hotel) located nearby Lake Biwa (琵琶湖) in Shiga Prefecture (滋賀縣).  It features Onsen (Hot spring baths - 溫泉).  We had kaiseki-ryōri (會席料理) as dinner at Banquet Hall (Omi no hana), and after dinner we enjoyed the hot spring at Open-air bath (Hidamari-no-yu  which is called 向陽之湯).