京都 (下) [Kyoto Pt 2]

On Sunday, 山中さん (Yamanaka-san) joined us and offered to be our tour guide! Well, the story may be a little more complicated than that. When 伊達先生 (Date-sensei) heard that we were going to explore Kyoto all by ourselves, he offered his grad students to us as our free tour guides! Unfortunately for Yamanaka-san, he was in the room and was one of the few that did not have a presentation on Monday. Sad, huh? Persistent Date-sensei finally got Yamanaka-san to meet us! Well, I guess that bit of reality also happened due to my persistent whining and super loud pestering [煩い >_<].

Here we are at j-hoppers after a good night's sleep! Yamanaka-san was nice enough to wake up at 7:30am to meet us here!


The first thing we did was go to 伏見稲荷大社 (Fushimi-Inari Shrine) This temple was originally dedicated to the fox (kitsune=狐--casual form, inari=稲荷--polite form) that lived up in the mountains. You'll see lots of statues of kitsune all around the temple. I wanted to find one myself, but unfortunately, they are a bit people shy and the tourists have probably scared them off. :(

This temple is also famous for having a lot of torii gates. Here's a taste of just how many you can go through. Apparently, torii gates don't last forever and need to be replaced every few decades.



Then, we went to 三十三間堂 (Sanjuusangen-dou). It was by far, my favorite temple/shrine/everything in kyoto. There were so many statues of the thousand-armed Kannon. She is better known to mandarin speakers as 観世音菩薩. Anyways, the whole temple is still in its original wood framework. Inside (you cannot take pictures for preservation reasons), there are so many statues of 観音. It was truly wonderful!! I was so motivated by viewing the place that I even bought a book about it. Too bad it was in Japanese............... xD

Lastly, we visited 清水寺 (Kiyomizu Temple). It had the best scenery, beacuse you could see the beautiful city of Kyoto in the background. The temple was impressive too, of course, but mostly because it was up in the mountains.




Also, look at the ice cream shop we found! It was truly yummy!


By the end of our kyoto trip, we were worn out. Whew! A great thanks to Yamanaka-san for being nice enough to entertain 4 foreigners. :)