Japan: Day Two

We set out for the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji) which is supposed to be the #1 must-see of Kyoto. We found it without too much difficulty (though nothing is in English!). Right as we were walking into the main gate, it started snowing! My pictures don't do it justice. It was beautiful and perfect. We walked around the grounds for a while but had to get back to the hostel to check out by 11...






















The next big thing we wanted to see was Fushimi-Inari. I love the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, and there's one scene in the movie filmed at this place where the little girl runs through the orange torii to the temple, so we trekked across Kyoto (with all our dongxi) to see it for ourselves! Fushimi-Inari is famous for its torii (gates). From what we've researched on our own (again, nothing was in English) it seems torii were used to separate the holy from the unholy, and the more gates you go through, the more sacred the place. This was also the temple for the fox goddess, and we read that if you weren't careful the fox goddess could get in your body through your fingernails?! There were thousands of torii and it was so cool to walk through them. Everything was so picturesque and...magical...everything I hoped Kyoto would be!

This map shows all of the torii. They go on forever! We didn't walk half of it!






Here's me trying to reinact the scene from the movie...








































After Fushimi-Inari we went to Kiyomizu-dera. As we approached the temple, the sun was starting to set, and it started snowing at the same time! I'd never seen anything like it!





















It started snowing pretty hard, and a sweet shopkeeper gave us umbrellas (so nice!) for free! From the top of the hill we could see Kyoto below (again, pictures don't really do it justice!).



























After this temple we decided to go find our next hostel so we could put our stuff down. Finding it, again, proved impossible. We stopped two ladies who spoke no English, but they were so sweet and ended up calling the hostel for us on their cell phones! Then the hostel lady came and met us to walk us to the hostel (so nice!!).

Our main goal that evening was to go to Gion, the old geisha district, where you can supposedly still see geisha walking from tea house to tea house. We were a little disappointed in Gion. It was mainly just a street of really nice restaurants and tea houses, and since we don't read Japanese or know how it all works, there wasn't much to see. But to our great suprise...we did see one geisha! But we weren't quick enough to get a picture.