Day 51 - Kyoto!

My grandmother told me Kyoto was lovely, and all the guide books about Kansai concentrate almost entirely on the place rather than any other city, so today I went to check it out. I was up at 8, and out of the house by 9:30, which is fairly unheard of for me. The day got off to a bad start, as I had a can of coffee at the train station and immediately felt terrible, and had to spend the next half hour or so throwing up in the loo, which somewhat ruined my "get there early before the crowds" idea. When I eventually made it onto the train, I went to Inari station so I could see the much-photographed Fushimi-Inari Shrine, which has thousands of Torii gates making a 4km path up the mountainside. It was an awesome place, really tranquil and beautiful, with lakes and forested areas surrounding the main path. It was almost hypnotic walking through the gates in the noon sunshine (it was really warm today as well, about 18 degrees, which made the place even nicer), with the gates forming a seemingly endless tunnel of orange. Certainly better than the beginning of the day, at any rate. At the top of the hill you can look out over all of Kyoto, which seems like a much nicer city than Osaka, surrounded by traditional Japanese houses, Temples and Shrines in every direction, with the occasional pagoda poking out of the trees.

My next stop was the Philosopher's Walk, a trip from Nanzen-Ji Temple to Ginkaku-Ji, the Silver Pavilion. The route takes in loads of other temples and gardens, so numerous that I cant remember how many I went to, let alone their names. The ones that stood out most were Honen-in, a complex of temples joined by covered walkways (no photos allowed, I'm afraid), which has a Pagoda at the top which also gives awesome views of the city. Also there was a really nice little one with incredibly neat raked sand gardens, about half way along, but I have no idea what it was called - it was a bit out of the way, and signposted only in Japanese. The Silver Pavilion itself is not too spectacular, but the gardens surrounding it are, especially at this time of year. There is a 6ft(ish) mound of incredibly neatly raked sand representing mount Fuji (supposedly). Next to it is a vast expanse of raked sand representing the ocean. Its pretty impressive, meticulously raked every day. All the Maple leaves are turning orange and red at the moment, prompting huge crowds of tourists to come here to see this, and take pictures of themselves next to the trees - this struck me as a little odd, but I must admit I gave in and took a few pictures myself. After all this sightseeing, I got on the most crowded bus I have ever been on, for 30 minutes of constant toe-crushing and groin-elbowing (another problem of being tall in Japan), before returning to Osaka and instantly falling asleep when I got in.