Kyoto, Day 2!

Hey guys!

So it's currently 6:00am on Day 3 of Kyoto here. I'm gonna tray and make a super quick post about what I did yesterday!

First we when to Kiyomizu Temple, a huge, beautiful Buddhist "pure water temple". It was a couple bus stops and a short walk up a hill away from our hotel. It was so beautiful!

Here's the huge front gate.

I also got a picture of a lion-guardian.

The view from the front gate. You can see the street of souvenirs and the mountains framing Kyoto.

A huge pagoda in the temple walls. 

This temple was one of the more busy places we've visited.

The view from the main part of the temple.

Kyoto and the mountains.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the actual Buddhist alter at the temple, but it was very impressive! Buddhist monks dressed in full robes were chanting at the alter, and you had to remove your shoes before stepping up on to the platform to approach the Buddha statue. I made my wishes there (the same three I've been making at every temple and Shire we come across) and moved on.

Now, the Temple it's self is Buddhist, but that doesn't mean there isn't a Shinto shrine there too. In face, in Japan Buddhism and Shintoism seem to co-exists (even mix) harmoniously all over the place. There is a small stair case and gate that took us up to a Shinto shrine for love.

The shrine gate.

One of the places to donate small sums of money and pray. I made my same wishes here too.

A small alter for a kami at which you can donate and pray as well.

The plaque explaining the myth behind the love stone.

The Love stone. Megan and I got to witness one woman successfully make it to this stone from the other. She was very excited and it was really sweet to watch. All of us in the group touched it once, but didn't take the walking challenge.

More wonderful view.

I really like how this picture came out. You can see the pagoda, the city and the mountains!

On the way down from the temple, we passed tons of little kami shrines.

 At the foot of the temple's hill there was a place where you could drink the pure mountain water. It's supposed to cleanse you and protect your body from illness. You let the stream of water fill up a small cup on a stick. From there, you poured a little water into your hand and drank it. Then you turned around and prayed briefly at the small shrine behind you.

Dr. Huang and his wife decided it was better to keep as much of the holy water with them as possible. So they filled up Yolin's thermos.

 When we left the temple, we had a little time to look into the shops along the street. I bought a couple postcards for souvenirs, and two treats. The first was a puff-pastry filled with soft-served cherry-blossom flavored ice cream. The other was a steamed beef dumpling.

The ice cream pastry.

The dumpling.

After that, we took a bus over to Nijo Castle, and old Shogun's castle that has been standing for hundred's of years. It was huge and terribly luxurious. All of my pictures are of the outside of the castle. Pictures indoors were forbidden in order to protect the old artwork painted on the walls.  

The awesome view from where the castle tower once stood.

On the way out of the castel garden, we saw something we didn't think we'd be able to see. Blossoms! The grove was full of plum and cherry trees just begining to bloom.

 

I went a little over board on pictures, since I was so excited to even see these.

After the castle, we went to the Kyoto Manga museum. Dr. Huang let us roam free there, since it was only a block or so away from our hotel and we could walk back on our own whenever we liked. I don't really have any pictures of that, but it was quite cool. We peeked around at some of the floors of manga and we were able to get really cool anime merchandise in the gift shop, which the nerd in me was really happy about. Then Megan, Backy and I ate lunch in the Museum Cafe and walked back to the hotel. After that, we had a two hours break in the day before we went out to the lantern festival that night.I spent the time napping to save up energy, so no cool stories to be had there.

Then at five o'clock we headed out to the Lantern Festival! The festival was held in a big, beautiful shrine in Gion, a historical section of Kyoto. Before entering the festival, we took a quick walk down a side street of Gion full of exclusive restaurants. These restaurant are usually super expensive and exclusive to certain costumers. These are the kind of restaurants where you might see Maiko (Geisha in training) running from restaurant to restaurant to entertain various guests.

After that walk, we headed to the temple grounds.

Two Maiko performed at this festival. Megan and I were particularly thrilled to be able to see them dance. Genuine Geisha are slowly becoming increasingly rare as time goes on and the tradition becomes less popular for girls to pursue.But these Maiko were amazing to witness!

The lantern-lit stage where the show was held.

They were amazing. The video above is a small (poor quality) bit of the dance I was able to get. The one in the blue kimono had such a way with her eyes that it sometimes looked like she was staring right at you. It was eerily beautiful.

After the show we walked around and admired the various lantern displays and checked out some of the beautiful and historical side streets of Gion. I got some pictures of that, but it was dark and they are all poor quality, so I'm not going to bother sharing them.

And that was day two in Kyoto~!

(Update: I am so far behind on this blog, it's sad! I'm going to try and squeeze my review of yesterday (Day 3 of Kyoto) in this morning before we leave for Hiroshima. I'm sorry for not keeping up with it as well as I should be! I've been exhausted whenever we get back to the hotel at night! With luck, I'll be all caught up before we leave at 7:30 this morning. But don't quote me on that.)