Kyoto

What an amazing weekend we had! Hopefully I'll be able to get it all straight since we did so many things. Saturday morning I finally got the boys up around 7:00 and we went to Ginkakuji Temple. This temple is one of Japan's national treasures. It is a Zen temple that was established in 1482.We found that there are quite a few of these. The gardens here were amazing! There was a zen gravel garden that had patterns swept into it and it was so pretty. Just walking around the grounds of this temple was so relaxing and the walkways were gorgeous. I will put up photos on facebook eventually. :-) Tucked in among the gardens as we walked were various shrines and other smaller temples. We spent about an hour and a half here and then went on the Philosopher's Walk. This is a 1.5 kilometer walkway along a canal that a philosophy professor used to walk daily. It is so pretty and winds along through these quaint neighborhoods. Every once in awhile there would be a cafe or restaurant tucked into the houses. We meandered along this walk and about halfway through came upon the Eikando Zenein-Ji temple. We decided to stop off here and look around and we were so glad that we did. This was a Buddist temple and again, the gardens were amazing! There were walkways built into the side of the mountain and many waterfalls.

We continued walking the Philosopher's Walk to the end where we wnt to the Nanzenji Temple. This Zen temple is the most famous head temple of Rinzai Nanzenji school, one of the Zen sects. The gate at the opening is one of the largest in the world at 22 meters high. On either side of the gate at the opening are two huge statues carved out of wood. I'm not sure how tall they are but they go almost to the top of the gates. inside we were greeted by some young men who were volunteering for a club and needed to practice their English so one of them asked if he could guide us through the gardens. It was a beautiful walk and there were these huge aquaducts in the middle. There was lots of climbing of stairs and walking throughout these temples and boy, I was feeling it. Thankfully Peter was, too, so the boys didn't mind when I wanted to stop and take a break now and then. :-)

Next we went to Kiyomizu-dera, which is where Ike proposed to Bethany (he took us to the exact spot and it was gorgeous!). This is the largest wooden structure in the world, and it is tucked into a mountain and is 6 stories high. There were so many people here this day, and just walking to it was a long, uphill hike. Yes, I was dying here, folks. :-P And the thing that made it so bad was that there would be these cute little Japanese women wearing short skirts and HIGH, HIGH heels clip clopping up to this place! I mean, what are they thinking?????? Why would you dress like that to climb a mountain and go sight-seeing? Okay, my sour grapes venting is finished. :-) So the road leading up to this temple is steep, crowded and all along both sides are these wonderful little tourist shops. It was really fun to browse these places and made the walk easier (nothing like a little shopping, huh?). We get to the top of the road and there are stairs, stairs, stairs, and more stairs. We climbed these and then got out onto the temple and was greeted with the most amazing view of the mountains and Kyoto in the distance. Okay, yes, it was worth it. While we were up there walking around a bunch of junior high kids would come up to us and ask us if they could practice their English with us. Then they wanted to take pictures with us, too. Pete was a big hit, naturally, and they would burst into giggles when he talked Japanese to them. It was so cute.

Okay, I think at this point it was mid-afternoon (the weekend all just blended together for me!) and we went back to the hostel for a bit. Then we took a bus or train (again, we took so many trains, buses, trams that I can't keep them straight!) and went to Fushimi Iinari, which is the park with thousands of orange gates. This was SO cool!!!! We walked about a third of the 6 mile path of gates, and it wound through a mountainous forest. Again, every so often a shrine or small temple would pop up. We spent a long time here and it was really neat.

We finally made it back to the hostel and I was beat! Bless the boys, they went out and brought back sukiya (beef in a bowl of rice) and drinks and we crashed. What a long, amazing day.