Kyoto JR Train Station / Hotel Granvia

The Kyoto JR train station is built around a sprawling hotel / mall / department store combination. The hotel in this case is the fine Hotel Granvia, awesome if you've blown in from Tokyo on the Shinkansen (i.e. Bullet Train) and want to just cruise straight into the funky Kyoto-visiting-the-whole-family hotel vibe.



The structure is a pretty weird pastiche of angles and grids and layers and stone and metal that mostly looks like it's trying real hard to be avant garde, but ends up looking just kind of, well, weird.





Assisting in the weirdness is a random Liberty style bell and gazebo floating around in the concrete and marble haze.





On the far end from the hotel is a sprawling 9 stories of stairs and escalators along a department store.





Running above it all are these long catwalks, which should have great views, but there's too much physical stuff all around blocking them. At night, they're pretty dark. In the Summer, teenage couples hang out up there and don't so much make out, as just sort of nuzzle.