Took the train to Kyoto. Whitney & I were staying two nights, but David had 5 hours to tour Kyoto before leaving for Yokosuka, so we took a whirlwind tour of some of the highlights. (First, though, we stuffed all of our backpacks into the lockers at the train station. A feat!)

The first place we stopped as Kiyomiza Temple (Kiyomizu-dera) – a very pretty Buddhist temple with lots of cherry blossoms and PEOPLE EVERYWHERE and incense and things for sale and great views of Kyoto.

One of the busiest places in the temple was a waterfall where three channels of water fall into a pond. There was a long line of people in queue for a chance to catch the water in a metal ladle and drink it. I had no idea what the significance of this was until I looked it up, but it is said that drinking from the three channels of water will confer health, wisdom, and/or longevity.

Off the beaten path a bit, I saw a smaller spring set up next to a small shrine, with flowers in front of it. Several Japanese people ladled water from the spring and poured it over the Bodhisattva statue in the shrine. I still don’t know what it meant but the meaning was solemn. Ancient women were praying nearby; Bow twice, clap twice, bow once, hands tightly clasp.

As the wind blew, cherry blossoms fell off the trees and blew across the path leading through the temple, and I thought about the impermanence of beauty and the cycles of life.

We took a taxi to Nijo-jo Castle and arrived just before it closed. No shoes, no pictures. It was very impressive – many things were plated with gold and each room was decorated with paintings on sliding walls. It reminded me of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo (or, maybe the Tokyo palace was built in this style). I really liked the “nightingale floors” of the castle – made to warn its occupants of intruders. They were very very squeaky and did sound like little birds.

We took another taxi to the Golden Pavilion, but we arrived a few minutes after closing time. Dave was really disappointed, so we took him to a Japanese buffet to make up for it. The buffet was interesting – it was quite expensive (about $30 a person) and the food was delicious (exactly the oppposite of buffets in the US!). Whitney was super excited that they had a bunch of vegan food. Dave left us, and we wandered around looking for our hotel. Whitney asked the scariest Japanese guy I’ve ever seen for directions (seriously, I’m pretty sure he was in the Japanese mob), and he was extremely nice and pointed us in the right direction. Our hotel was uhm, “unimpressive”, and there weren’t a lot of things to do in the area so we bought sake and sochu from the CircleK and watched BBC news.

On to Day 5, Kyoto

Related posts:

1. Japan Day 4, Hiroshima (AM)
2. Japan Day 3, Hiroshima (PM)
3. Japan Day 2, Tokyo