Kyoto has more temples

Day 6 in Kyoto (Day 3 for Zach and Emily, Day 8, I think, for Dean and Loryn) was our last opportunity to see the remaining temples.

To accomplish this, we woke early. The best part of exiting early is that we stumbled upon free coffee outside of the hotel restaurant (compared to the $8 Zach paid the day before while he was taking his accounting tests).

We got on the bus to Kinkakuji (gold temple) and made the long journey to the exact other quadrant of town. There, we stared with other visitors at the picturesque gold temple, with each level built with a unique design and purpose in mind.

[Photo of Kinkakuji]

From Kinkakuji, we walked to catch another bus and along the way ran into a sushi conveyor belt restaurant - the cheapest and most fun meal we had while in Japan. At least most fun based on the fact that the sushi and other items passed by you on a conveyor belt and you ordered by the dish and when your dish arrived the monitor would sound a signal.

This day we would continue our bus travels by stopping off at the Kijo castle (which was closed) and catching another bus to another temple up in the hills. This next temple was a Buddhist temple and when we arrived, the attending monks were chanting - we stayed here for a bit to cool off.

Walking down the hill, through the Gion district, we searched next for the Razorback (technically, "wild boar") temple. We found it near the parking lot of another more major temple and took plenty of photos to send into the Arkansas Alumni Association.

[Photo at Razorback temple]

To cap off our day of temple hopping, we made our way to the place of a thousand Torii gates - a location our mother had called us about earlier that day. To get here, we took one bus, walked a bridge, walked some alleys, caught another bus and then crossed the rail tracks. But, we made it, and walked the Torii gates, stacked one after another like trees in a forest - but bright bright orangish red.

[Photo of Torii gates]

After exhausting ourselves, we bussed it back to the hotel for showers. There we made final plans for renting our car to Mt. Fuji (next blog post) and split up to head to the "best tempura restaurant in Japan." Turns out the "best" also meant the "most extraordinarily expensive" and so the first half of our group that arrived there first suffered through an awkward "no thank you" and existed to wave the rest of us down near the entrance. So instead of tempura, we settled on McDonald's.

And after a good chicken burger, we made our way to the puricula booths for Dean and Loryn's first opportunity to create genius. With Haynes modeling for his next art installation and Dean and Loryn finding the way to best express awkward affection, I would consider our stop at Japan's best activity a success. And even more so because Tristan found us with two other Razorbacks in tow. He introduced us to two Japanese friends who graduated from the University of Arkansas - a great Razorback reunion, and yes, we did tell them about the Razorback temple.

[Photo from puricula]

And so the night came to an end after catching up on activities from the Hill.

Day 7, our final day in Kyoto, was an opportunity to start late, pack and make our way to pick up the car. Our only activities of the day were: Haynes and I skipping fare on the bus, finding a great Thai restaurant and packing the gear into the car.

Now we are off, to conquer Fujisan with our good friend Ryo. To find the sun on Japan's iconic highest peak.