Japan, Day 10 (Part II)

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

It turns out that during the fall, the temples are open at night in Kyoto and lit up to show the changing of the fall colors. Unfortunately, the photos that we took hardly do the temples any justice because it was so dark. I picked out a few that kind of show what it was like...

These barrels are holding sake.

This temple is called Chionin Temple. The temple itself and its grounds are huge.

There's a reflection pool that you can sorta see.

The city is set up in a way so that you can walk around, shop, eat, and look at temples. It almost felt like a Halloween for grown-ups, as we walked around in the dark, looking for lit-up temples. It costs about 500 yen to get into each, which equates to about $4.50, so it's not too bad.

As usual, we stopped to get a "soft cream" (aside from Coke I have determined that this is Dad's favorite food in the entire world), as there were stands everywhere. If I hadn't been so full from earlier, I would have wanted to try these meatball things that they grill on the street, but there was no way I could fit anything else into my stomach.

We pretty much just wandered around looking at everything. There were some really cute shops almost everywhere we went. I found some handmade bags, and bought two (one for Zoey and one for me). We also found a really neat paper shop that sells handmade rice paper.

I forget what this temple was called (Dad if you remember please let me know). All I remember is that it was designed or built for by a woman, which made it rather unique. There was a gorgeous bridge that went over the reflection pool and a huge bamboo forest.

We visited a few other temples as well that were all gorgeous but again, the photos didn't really turn out. One of the most impressive was actually one of Dad's favorites, Kiyomizu Dera, which is built up on stilts on a mountainside. From the top, we got a pretty awesome view of the entire city.