Stacey's Bodacious Japan Trip: Kyoto and Osaka Trip! Day 2

11/4/2016
We all woke up for real around 8 am and started on the day’s adventures. We took a bus out to Kinkaku-Ji temple for our first stop.

The walk up towards the main entrance was beautiful with lots of old, and interesting trees.

The Beautiful Golden Pagoda!

The top two levels of the pagoda are covered in a fine gold leaf

Saw this really cool-looking old gate, that was blocking the rest of the path to the left of the pagoda.

This is the view on the other side of the gate.

Beautiful door inside the traditional house.

This is the golden rooster on top of Kinkaku-ji.

View from the back.

Kinkaku-ji Temple is a famous temple in Japan. The temple is three stories tall and the top two stories are covered in gold leaf. There’s a beautiful pond next to it as well, and the temple is partially supported over the water. The grounds of the temple have beautiful gardens with stone pagodas and statues as well as statues of the Buddha. There was one statue of the Buddha with a small bronze bowl on his lap, and you had to try and toss a coin into the bowl. I threw two coins but missed both times. Cormac got one in the bowl.

Another little Buddha shrine that you throw coins into.

Some more Oni faces long the roofing tiles.

Here's Jocelyn waving incense on herself to receive blessings from the Buddha.

We found a cup-o-noodle vending machine!

Saw this little gem in the restrooms.

After Kinkakuji we walked to our next destination which is the beautiful, famous Zen Garden Ryouan-ji.

I saw this really cool area of rock layers on our way there. You can see all the strata! Plus you can see where the ground has moved over time. It was pretty so I had to stop.

As we were walking up to the temple grounds I saw a vendor that was selling traditional tea and was giving out samples. I tried some and realized that it was the same type of tea that I had been looking for forever! It was the same kind that I got in Takachiho three years ago with the gold flakes in it! But this one in Kyoto didnt have gold flakes. ((I just realized that I never made a blog post about my trip to Takachiho three years ago. Alright, guys, That one is upcoming!)) Its plum flavored and more like a broth than a tea. It is amazing, I bought a bag right then and there.

We walked around the grounds for a while and went into the main building where they have the zen garden.

It was so peaceful, even with lots of other people there. When I sat down next to the garden I didn't want to get up. I could have sat there all afternoon.

This oni face is above a door frame above a walkway.

The end of a traditional Japanese outer grounds wall.

We continued to walk around the rest of the temple grounds afterwards.

Cool little shrine. It had a little Buddha in the alcove.

This little garden of trees was really cool. They cut most of the tree and allow the remaining branches to grow straight up. Very unique.

Next we wandered off to Myoshin-ji Temple which is a complex of about sixty-some temples over a large area. We were going to one temple that has a dragon painting on a ceiling and when you clap your hands in the room, the acoustics are supposed to make it sound like a dragon roar or something. We made it to the temple, but found out that you can’t go into the dragon-room temple by yourself and you need to go with a tour group. The next tour group was a bit of time away, so we decided that we didn’t really need to see it.

This is a map of the entire temple complex. This would be an entire day by itself, probably to see the whole thing.

Here you can see Komainu on the roofing tiles of the temple. These were all over the complex, but this was as close and and clear as I could get.

This is a statue of Kannon-Sama in a garden in the middle of one temple. Gorgeous!

Beautiful presentation of names of donors (I think) on the outside of one temple.

This is a little shrine within a wall of the temple complex. There's a little Buddha inside.

Instead we headed off to our next stop, the Arashiyama Bamboo forest.

We took a really cool old-style train to Arashiyama Station.

The station has a bunch of pillars around the grounds that contain a length of fabric wrapped around a cylinder. At night the cylinders light up and there’s a little fountain with a “Dragonball” in it. I took pictures of the station as we arrived and as we returned from the Bamboo forest later that evening. You can see the difference between the daylight appearance and at night.

I had a video of me walking around, but it's too big as well. Sorry. (Youtube, Bitches!)

We walked around the streets eating little snacks until we made it to the Arashiyama Bamboo forests. It was absolutely stunning!

We walked through that and popped out the other side where there was a large river. You could see the changing of the autumn leaves really well.

This photo was taken with Cormac's camera, and it does the colors more justice.

We walked across the bridge to go see a monkey forest on Arashi Mountain, but Google maps told us a wrong route. By the time we figured out that our path was faulty it was getting late and we were getting tired. So, we decided to skip the monkey forest and make our way to Osaka before we started to become cranky and turn on each other.

This is the second time we passed back through Arashiyama station and the sun had nearly set by this time, so all the fabric pillars were illuminated along with the "Dragon Ball."

The train ride took us about 45 minutes and I briefly fell asleep on the train.
We made our way to our hostel and rested for about an hour before we regrouped and went out for some conveyor-belt sushi. It was a nice place on the 7th floor of a shopping mall next to Osaka station. It was really good and I’d definitely recommend it.