Kyoto With Guide

Today, after a good breakfast in the hotel, we met up with Mie, who was our personal guide for the day.  She was hired by Oku Japan, our tour provider, to guide us around Kyoto.  Earlier through e-mail, we had to select our preferred area of interest and since we didn't know anything about Kyoto, we decided to leave it to her.  She chose an area in northwestern Kyoto which turned out was her personal favorite.  It involved a lot of bus and train travel but included several famous sights.  It was Sunday and although Kyoto is only the 7th most populous city in Japan at 1.6 million, the people were out in droves.  I think Betsy and I were fully saturated with humans by the time we got back to the hotel around 5:00 pm.

We started by going to a peaceful temple at the foot of Kiyotaki Mountain known as Otagi dera mae.  This is a small, family run temple that has 1200 carved-stone statues made by commoners.  They were allowed to express themselves, creatively and produced a variety of whimsical figures.

That is a camera in his hands

We next walked down a "preserved" street of old homes, shops, etc.  We visited the Gio-ji Temple, which has a moss garden, what we came to see.  

We have developed a new phrase reminiscent of one seen in Europe - ADT (another d@#* temple; in Europe the phrase is ADC, the C standing for cathedral)).  Our next destination was a path through the Bamboo Grove.  

We then walked to the Tenryu-ji Temple and enjoyed the garden.  

This is a very large ink stone scuplture, standing on end

We stopped for lunch at Randon for rice bowls with tuna. 

 

We jumped on a local train on what looked like a small private rail system, which took us to the Rokuon-ji Temple or what is the number one tourist destination - the Golden Pavilion.  It is a 3-level structure built next to a pond.  It is a "shariden," a Buddhist hall containing relics of Buddha.  It was originally the site of a villa owned by Saionji Kinstume.  Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the third shogun took a liking to the area and "acquired" in 1397.  He built a separate villa and when he died, the villa was converted into a temple.  It is now a World Cultural Heritage Site.  And, there were a lot of photographs being taken.  We walked around the site and seeing a special teahouse and some minor sights.

We caught a bus back to the train station and transferred to another bus to the hotel.  We said our goodbyes to Mie at the train station, which was a good thing, because the bus ride to the hotel took a long time in horrendous traffic.  I can't imagine what it must be like on a weekday, but we may see it tomorrow.

This is what one does in Japan, with a selfie (or more appropriately named "groupie") stick.