Day #5

We arrived at the Kyoto Station at about 7am (check time) and I called Mom to wish her a Happy Birthday (it was about 6pm their time on May 3rd). It was funny because they were so concerned about calling such a distance that they wanted me to get off the phone quickly but then kept asking me questions and blabbing. :) We chatted for a bit and then said goodbye. Rach then called her mom but she wasn't home.

We then started to walk to find our hotel. We walked and walked and walked. Hope then finally confessed that we were lost and was trying to find someone to help us. Unfortunately in Japan they don't have street signs or address numbers in front of their buildings. I don't know how anyone is suppose to find anyplace that way. It seemed like we were walking forever in circles and we were exhausted from the overnight bus and with carrying all of our crap around.






Finally we found our place but was told we couldn't check in until later. We ended up freshening up as much as we could in the bathroom and dropped the rest of our stuff in their storage closet and set out.

We walked back to Kyoto Station and got a day pass for the bus. We learned a lot about taking a bus in Kyoto by the end of this section of our trip. We boarded the bus and headed to the Ginkaku-ji Temple. The Philosopher's Walk started the trek up the hill to the temple. The Philosopher's Walk was so cool. It was a very peaceful little walk next to a river. There were various little bridges that cross the river every once in a while that were so picturesque.



The next part of the walk up to the Temple was the shopping part. Shop after shop competed for our money. Like the US the shops had the same souviners in them though unlike the US the quality of the souviners were incredible. The handmade (or at least looked handmade) quality items just blew us away, we wanted to buy everything. We took note of the stores and items that interested us and we kept going to the temple.

The Ginkaku-ji Temple was also called the Silver Temple for reasons I'm not quite sure of. It looked very old and a bit worn but it had a lot of character and history to it. There was also a Zen garden that was meticulously taken care of and raked to the pattern of perfect stripes. The gardens were incredible and so green and lush.

Our next stop was the Kiyomizu Temple which was also in Kyoto. We had to walk through a Buddhist cemetary in order to get to the temple.



Buddhists are creamated but headstones are placed in the cemetary in their memory. I have never seen so many headstones, it seemed neverending. When we got to the top of the hill, still in the cemetary, the headstones were both shocking because of the number of them but also somehow beautiful the way they climb the mountain and contrast with the trees beyond. It began to rain but we had our trusty umbrellas with us so although it was harder to take pictures and videos it was fine and dandy.

The Kiyomizu Temple itself was beautiful. There were a few buildings all of which were painted a vibrant red (my favorite color!).



It was funny to see the massive amounts of umbrellas coming and going up the hill....all different colors.

On our way down from the temple we stopped at the stores that we were interested in on the way up and bought up a lot of our souvieners for other people as well as for ourselves. The best buy that we encountered were these Japanese porcelin dolls of Giesha. They were selling for only $1050 yen each (about $8). I had to buy one for me and one for Mom. Rachel bought one for her Mom too. Our one problem with the dolls was that they were large and bulky....a pain in the ass to lug around.

I decided to wash my clothes tonight cuz they were getting a little funky! :) So I hand washed them in the sink with my handy dandy Woolite.

(Not sure what we did after this will have to get back to this entry later.)