Temple Hopping in Kyoto

It took us about 2.5 hours to go from Tokyo to Kyoto by bullet train- isn't that amazing? We traveled at over 250 miles per hour and the train felt like it was barely moving. In fact, I thought that we were still stationary after leaving one station after we had already started traveling again. The bullet trains here are on magnetic tracks so they hover and it makes for a very smooth ride.

So we arrived in Kyoto and checked into our hotel with no problem. We ended up meeting this Swedish guy who was just checking out so we went to have lunch with him. He had just returned from a monestary where he had been living for the last two months! He had done it to learn Japanese but didn't really end up learning all that much because the monks meditated more than that talked and when he wasn't with the monks he and the other students all went out drinking! So, when we ordered at the restaurant he really couldn't speak much more than we can (and we only know three words).

He left for Tokyo and we went out to see the city. By the time we were all checked in, it was already dark out so we headed over to a downtown street that hasn't really changed much over the last hundred years or so. It's very narrow (only two or three people can walk abreast at once) and there are no street lights. All of the light on the street came from little lanterns that were put out by restaurants to draw attention to their place. There were also many women dressed in kimonos walking around! This is also a good place to spot geisha but we didn't see any. We're thinking about going back there before we leave to see if our luck improves any...

The next day we started temple hopping. These temples are all really funny because they've all burned down several times and have since been rebuilt! They're all still a couple hundred years old though so still pretty impressive by American standards. First we went over to the 'golden temple'. This one was burned down pretty recently (in the 50's, I think) by a monk who had fallen so in love with it that he just had to set it on fire. Can't really understand his thinking here... Anyway, it was rebuilt exactly as the original had been and it was quite beautiful. It also has some amazing gardens surrounding the temple.

Next, we visited the Zen rock garden temple. Also beautiful, but in a very minimalistic kind of way. It has 15 rocks in the garden but you aren't ever able to see all 15 at once. You have to visualize them--- very zen :)

Here's a pic of Sean thinking deep thoughts alongside the rocks...

We then hopped on a bus and went over to the Emperor's Palace. This is the one that he doesn't use- the real one is in Tokyo and you can only visit on New Years and on his birthday. Anyway, we signed up for the only tour that they have for the day. I guess we were pretty lucky because there were only about 80 people on our tour with us- the limit is 300!

One other thing about this castle. I has burned down so many times that they actually built another castle nearby so that the reigning Emporer could stay there while his castle was being rebuilt. The standby castle has amazingly never burned down and is around 500 years old.

Our final stop was the temple that was recently nominated as one of the new wonders of the world. I can't remember now what it was called, but it was beautiful.

Kyomizu Temple