By now I have no idea what day it is or what time it is anywhere other than the place that I am at. I did laundry in the morning, and drank 5 cups of coffee before breakfast. (The laundry room had two coffee vending machines – one for hot coffee, the other for cold coffee). We had breakfast at McDonalds (I know, I know. I feel bad about it but we were hungry!). I did not eat the breakfast “McHotDog Classic” (a hotdog with ketchup & scrambled eggs) but I did try the potato, bacon, and cheese pie (tasted like deep fried potato soup).
We set off for a walking trail that someone at the Kyoto tourism center told us about. We first ended up at the Myoshin-ji Buddhist temple complex. We wandered through the complex and came upon a service in progress – lots of chanting and incense. We didn’t go in but stood a ways away and watched for a little while.
We also saw an English-speaking zazen center, but didn’t go in. (Interesting side note: during the Edo period in Japan, Christians were persecuted. Some Christians kept their faith and made their crosses & graves to resemble Buddhist statues, pagodas, and lanterns.)
We walked to the Ninna-ji Temple – white sand gardens and lots of incense.
Also, some of my favorite wall paintings.
From there we walked to the Ryoan-ji Temple to see the famous dry rock garden. On the way, we found a grocery (Whitney bought oranges and persimmons, I bought smoked fish (or maybe smoked eel) that was freaking delicious). We wandered through the path at Ryoan-ji, but somehow missed the famous rock garden.
We did see several gardeners who were sweeping the moss. (The grounds were impeccable).
We set off walking again, to Kinkaku-ji Temple (the golden pavilion). (It was hard to miss this one).
I made a wish and tossed my 10yen (about 8 cents) into the wishing bowl.
We tried to find another temple using the (very rough) map in the guidebook, but we got lost in a residential neighborhood. We asked a little boy for directions; he went and got his mom who directed us (without using any English) back to Kinkaku-ji. The little boy rode on his bike behind us, and guided us back to the Golden Pavilion (he was very cute). We got new directions from the english-speaking parking attendant, and walked and walked and walked some more. Finally we made it to the other temple, but it was closed…so we walked another few kilometers to a subway stop.
We tried to go to two separate veggie-friendly restaurants but they were both closed. We ended up in the busy part of Kyoto at a weird little restaurant where I had duck (good) and Whitney had eggplant with miso sauce (bad) and warmed tofu (worse). We walked around a little more (just to make sure we were really tired), and then went back to the hotel. (Whitney canceled her room & just slept in mine – the rooms were that unimpressive!).
Related posts:
Pingback/Trackback
weary as water » Blog Archive » Japan Day 4, Kyoto (PM)