Kyoto Day 1 - The Philosopher's Path

We left the ryokan after having a small western style breakfast of fruit (bananas, cherries, and kiwi), a hard-boiled egg, the thickest toast we have ever seen (like 3 average American slices thick) with butter and jam, orange juice, tea, and some apple-aloe yogurt that we didn't brave. While waiting for our bus to the train station, we finally saw a blind man using the blind guide strips on the ground we mentioned before. We also somehow managed to get to the bus stop just in time to miss a bus, and the next allotted time came and went for the bus without one coming. Super annoying.

Upon arriving at the B&B in Kyoto, the owner, Ian, showed us to our room, gave us a tour of the house, and sat us down to show us a bunch of information on things to do and how to get to places in Kyoto. It was very informative. His accent sounds American or maybe Canadian, but we haven't asked where he's from. His wife/girlfriend/baby-mama walked through and introduced herself as well. She's European of some sort (possibly German? That would probably explain the lack of marriage.). They're both extremely nice.

The entrance to B&B Juno

We got situated in our room, uploaded our pictures from the past few days and entered in our posts that we had written for Koyasan and Nara now that we had internet, and headed out for lunch.

The restaurant we were going to try happened to be closed between lunch and dinner (which is when we got there, ~2pm), so we continued on and found a ramen shop that looked decent. The noodles were pretty good (though they may have been frozen), but the pork was a little salty. I got a slice of pork chop on rice with kimchee that was really tasty, and Meghan got some gyoza with her ramen that were also pretty good.

We made our way over to Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavillion, which is the northernmost point of the segment of town known as The Philosopher's Path. Ginkakuji consists of a couple temple buildings (with one being more prominent), a zen garden with a huge conical frustrum (yes, I had to search to remember what that was called), and a big garden path that winds a little ways up the side of the mountain. It was all very pretty, but there were a lot of tourists there.

The zen conical frustrum. It's a word, look it up.

The main temple

Some plants growing on moss on a log

We continued on down to try and find the next temple on our list which was on a road parallel to the Philosopher's Path, but we ended up getting a little lost, and eventually just ended up on the path proper. It runs along a little canal, and is mostly gravel, with some sections on a street and others on a stone path right against the edge of the canal. It's all tree lined and almost entirely shaded. It was a very nice walk down to the other temple that we wanted to see.

Along the way, we found a pride of cats just hanging out next to the path. There was a little stone pile that had a basin filled with water that was nearby, and we saw a few of the cats drinking out of it, so we assumed that's why they were all in that area. A school girl was taking pictures amongst them and pet a few of them, though they ran away from me.

Flock to the school girl, cats!

Wild cat drinking some water

A little farther down we saw a few street artists, one of whom was selling plastic raised prints that he had hand painted... Kinda chintzy. Even farther down, we came across an artist painting a watercolor of the canal. She beckoned to us to come look at her paintings that she had in a portfolio, and they were really quite good. She was warding off the mosquitos and gnats that were basically swarming the whole area surrounding the path and temples with some incense, though it wasn't doing a great job.

Posing for the picture

We got passed by some high school age kids who talked to us in some limited English, and their teacher helped them along a little. They were pretty funny. It seems like every Japanese person learns "Hello," "Bye-bye," "How are you," "My name is..." and "See you." The last seems funny to me, because obviously we won't see them again.

We arrived at the southern end of the path where Nanzenji is situated. It's more of a temple complex than just a temple, and consisted of a GIANT gate, a garden, and the temple proper. Next to the temple itself is an aqueduct  which looked like it wouldn't be out of place in Rome. We were trying to get a picture from a specific angle, but these other Japanese tourists were basically hanging out right at the bottom of the frame. Every time we thought they might be leaving, they ended up just shifting around. Another Japanese man came over to take pictures too, and we both waited for the people to move. I commented to him that they weren't leaving, and that they were always there, and he would groan with me every time we thought they might be leaving but weren't. Finally, the shot cleared up and we got our pictures.

The gate

From the other side

Through the middle of the aqueduct arches

A hard-earned picture

Some of the roof-edge decorations at the temple grounds

Roof on the gate

We walked over to the garden, but I think we had just missed the last entry time, because the gates were closed. We made our way back to where we needed to catch the bus, taking a few more pictures of various parts of the temple grounds on the way. We got a little bit lost trying to figure out where the bus was, but we eventually made it to the stop we needed. We managed to have the same thing happen to us with the bus schedule - we made it in plenty of time for a particular time, but ended up waiting for the next time for a bus to finally arrive. What made it even worse was that we made the first stop after getting on, and the drivers had to switch out, and we missed a few light cycles while we were waiting.

We finally made it back to the B&B to drop off a few things before heading out to dinner. We decided to go to a kushiyaki place that the owner of the B&B had listed. It ended up being quite good, though it was no Brotherhood of the Chicken. We got some more chicken hearts that weren't as tender nor large as the ones in Osaka, but were still better than the breast meat skewers that we got. We ordered a few other things (garlic toast, which was good but seemed out of place, wild chicken, beef, and pork wrapped asparagus) as well as some ice cream.

"We will serve you not only food also give you great time"

Hearts and breast meat

Garlic toast

Pork wrapped asparagus

Beef

Wild chicken (not sure what that meant, but it was tender
and tasty

We got back to the B&B and met the owners' daughter, for whom the B&B is named (Juno), and gave them the girl scout cookies we had brought them. The mother seemed to be pretty interested in what the girl scouts were doing in the pictures on the boxes which I hadn't ever really noticed.

We plan on seeing the Arashiyama area in the morning. It's going to be quite nice not to have to pack up all our stuff and lug it around on trains for a few days.

Link to Today's Pictures