Peter's Japan blog

Overslept a little bit because I had turned off the sound of my laptop, so I couldn't here the alarm clock... Anyway, went to Kyoto today. This was the first that I took the bus in Japan. You get on the bus at the back door, and pay at the front when you get off. But I don't like buses in Japan, especially on routes to touristic places. They are overly crowded...
Anyway, I arrived at Kikakuji Temple, and it is surely a must visit. Except for the ground floor, the building is covered in real gold, and the sight is absolutely gorgeous!
After this I took another horrible bus to the old Gion district. The Gion district was the old Geisha district of Kyoto and still has many old wooden houses and you occasionally still see a geisha walking around. Also many women in kimono do you see here. Wandered around a bit here and went on to other shrines/temples in the neighbourhood. I actually walked around a bit random, but I came across some nice buildings. Also another 5-story pagoda. Then I took the subway to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is the shrine which has over a thousand torii on the path that leads up to it. You remember seeing this in a scene from "Memoirs of a Geisha". But there are many many stairs here, that go all the way up the mountain to the shrine. I didn't get to the top and it was already late. But these torii are everywhere, several side paths full of them. Shrines with mini torii's.
After this I took the train back to Osaka, and went to eat again at "Ippudo", the ramen restaurant from yesterday. I was full afterwards, but when I came out of the restaurant, it was raining a little bit. This was first rain since last week on Sunday, but this was only a little bit. So I checked the forecast again for tomorrow, and it had become worse than when I checked a few days ago: 100% chance of rain... So it'll be a rainy last day in Tokyo... Let's hope the clouds take it a bit easy tomorrow.

See post for pictures:

Follow up:

Kinkaku-ji:

Old streets of Gion district:

A good example of how all residential streets in Japan look like (except major streets):

A corridor of torii (a bit dark):

One of the many stairs to Fushimi Inari:

More stairs and torii: