Today’s our second morning in Kyoto, and before we take off to visit Fushimiinari Shrine (can’t wait!!), let’s look back on what we already did/saw/visited in this spectacularly beautiful city.
On our first day, after checking out the location of our (very nice and nicely located) hostel, we went for a walk to Kiyomizudera Temple. Since there are literally thousands of temples and shrines in Kyoto, it quickly dawned on us that we would never be able to visit all of them, but we wanted to go to Kiyomizudera because of it’s location up on a hill, overlooking the city. The view did not disappoint, we watched the sunset from up there, and it was breathtakingly beautiful.
Kiyomizudera
Yesterday we decided to rent some bikes, which makes for a great way of transportation around Kyoto and is highly recommended. We went to the northwestern part of the city and visited Kinkakuji Temple (the famous Golden Pavillon), which was completely overrun by tourists. You really can notice how Kyoto, despite being so pittoresque and beautiful, is much more of a tourist destination than (the much bigger) Osaka. We also went to see the famous Zen garden at Ryoanji Temple, which was interesting, but we can’t say we really “got” the whole calming Zen aspect of it, amidst hundreds of other tourists. We also discovered Ninnaji Temple by accident, which has proved to be a great way of doing things on this trip, by the way – just start walking aimlessly in a foreign city, and you discover the most beautiful hidden places. And if there’s a city that’s full of those, it’s Kyoto. Definitely.
Kinkakuji
Stone Garden at Ryoanji
In the evening, we decided to dine at the Ninja restaurant (a famous and popular chain of entertainment restaurants). It was fun, but too expensive for what we got, despite some entertaining card tricks shown to us by a waiter in Ninja attire. Before returning to our accomodation (an impressive and spotless capsule hotel), we met up with fellow travellers from Spain whom we met at the hostel the night before and went out to a reggae bar (on the 5th or 6th floor of a rather unimpressive building we would never have found on our own) for some tasty warm sake.
Today we are meeting with our first Couchsurfing host, really excited about that. So far, the hostels we ended up staying at were all pretty okay and surprisingly clean and comfortable. Via Couchsurfing, we are hoping to meet some more local people and get the chance to experience Japanese culture in a different, more personal way. There’s also supposed to be a a party at the river tonight with music, fire, food, and lots of fellow Couchsurfers, which we are going to check out before meeting our host.
See you soon, ja mata.