Day 5, August 15th
OK, I’m writing this a day after the fact so perhaps my details won’t be that great, but I’ll give it a shot. I also want to get to today’s events too so I’ll be briefer than I have been. So Day 5 was a temple day and we really packed in a number of great ones in a short period of time. Kyoto is just unbelievably packed with shrines, temples, monuments, gardens – it’s kind of unbelievable that there can be so many in such a small geographic area!
The day started off with a quick tour of Miho’s neighborhood, and she pointed out 3 things to do just around her street, one of them being a UNESCO world heritage sight. We then hopped a train and went to Miho’s work area, which also happens to be near 2 other UNESCO world heritage sights (she works at one of the shops in the neighborhood, typical touristy fair stuff, although in Japanese fashion I’d say even the touristy vendors are pretty swanky). The first temple we visited was called Kiyo-mizu and apparently Miho had never actually visited, so she came with us right before she had to be at work. We went up to the first building and paid 100 yen to enter, thinking we would just walk inside. But instead, we followed stairs down into a basement and quickly realized that it was a 100 percent pitch black maze that you had to hang onto a railing the whole time in order to get through. This is funny because we were watching a TV show the night before about haunted houses in Japan. Anyways, a few minutes in we come across a brightly illumintated prayer wheel that we spun and made a wish on. OH! And we happen to be in Kyoto during an important festival (Obon) during which all prayers and wishes are worth 1000X! This day only, get your prayers here, HUUGE SALE, all wishes MUST GO! Sorry, that’s kind of how I interpreted it when she told us that!
OK, so after the dungeon (okokok, the “dungeon” was supposed to symbolize the womb of the Buddha and it was pitch black to help us get rid of all of our attachments before we made our wish), we moved on to the temple (extremely ancient and beautiful, check out the pictures, followed by a near by shrine called the Jinsho love shrine-Home of the Love Stone! This place was a trip, kind of like an ancient Buddhist theme park. It was all about charms and finding love and there were lots of little shrines. There are two rocks in the middle, and if you close your eyes and make it safely to the opposite stone, you’ll find your true love. I missed big time, but then again I’m all set in that department
We then mozied onto a walking tour provided by the lovely folks at Lonely Planet, enjoying the wonderful architecture of the stores and tea shops. Really, really, really beautiful buildings in this city, it’s a little overwhelming. We made our way to a giant Buddha statue and memorial for all the soldiers of WWII followed by a nice little park where we saw some cats chilling out (we missed cats, they get no respect in Korea, they’re pop icons here). We finished our temples for the day at Yasaka shrine, which I think is close in color to Harley Davidson orange, very cool.
After that, we found our way to the main river, which we later found out used to be lined with the severed heads of folks who weren’t so popular with the crowd who likes to sever people’s heads. Miho told us that people automatically sit along the river at the same intervals apart from one another as the severed heads used to be. Sure enough folks were almost perfectly spaced apart.
From there we met up with Miho and her friend, Now (not sure the spelling, but that’s about right on the pronunciation). He is a little older than Miho and makes custom painted t-shirts (beautiful by the way). He is a lot of fun and knows Miho through a band they used to be in together! We ended up at an Okinawa style restaurant (delicious!) and drank many a beer. We were soon joined by two more friends and continued consuming a delicious Japanese brew called Yebisu. We had a fantastic time with this little group and Miho is really good at translating! I had expected Japanese folks to be more conservative, but these guys were a rockin’ good party group and we just had an absolute blast. We did a second round after that and took a taxi home to finish up the evenin’. One of the friends, named Kazoo-uh (spelling I have noooo idea), was a real hoot and started off by teaching me a completely made up custom called “Spinning kompai”, where you spin your cup when you do the customary “Kompai” (cheers). Anyways, really fun group, really great night!
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