Trip To Kyoto Part 2

To finish up what we started a few days ago...Leg 2 and Leg 3 of Day 2, plus Day 3.

There is a really kewl picture of the monk that was taken slightly before the Buddha head picture in the previous post, but I dare not put up too many more pictures here out of consideration for the people with phoneline internet. Of course, all of these pictures (I apologize for the amount, I took over 100 in Kyoto, hee hee ;)) can be viewed on Deviantart (link at left), as usual. Took another panorama with the tripod at the beginning of Leg 2, a complex of quite a few shrines, and with a little tweaking in photoshop it came out all right:



We saw some really kewl things at that site. We saw some traditional Kyoto kimono:



and a monk stuck taking pictures of crazy tourists.

On to Leg 3, which provided us with a spectacular encounter with (what we believe to be) an aquaduct! Looking quite Roman actually. Unfortunately the shrine there was closed.

The last bit of Leg 3 was the Philosopher's Path. Beautiful Sakura, a little stream with bridges to the houses on the other side, and lots of other beautiful flowers. It was very peaceful and quiet. A long walk but a great end to a very long day.

Unfortunately that day was so tiring that Toby got sick that night. We went right back to our hostel, and Toby slept from 8pm until 10 the next morning. Meanwhile, I decided to edit some pictures on photoshop and lo and behold! The internet is connected! Free! I'm laughing because the hostel was charging 50 yen per 10 minutes downstairs. Ha ha! :D

The next day Toby still wasn't feeling well, but we managed to see lots of great things anyways. We went to the JR Kyoto station for lunch, where we ate a restaurant called "Garlic". It definitely lived up to it's name. There was a great view of the city, where you can see a sea of grey concrete apartments and factories interspersed with old-style houses and ancient five-tiered pagodas. Quite scenic. The JR Kyoto Station building is something in and of itself. The architecture is amazing and the size is unbelievable. I believe it's waayyyyy bigger than Vancouver International, but I could be wrong. From the views you get inside and outside you'd think it was at least twice as big. Here's an amusing picture-paradox:



As I said on Deviantart, two questions. 1) which way is up? and 2) which way does the roof curve? lol.

After that, we walked around the area near the station a bit. There were two large temple complexes and we watched a bit of a chant going on in one of the temples.

Last picture: At all of the shrines and temples there are purification stations where you wash your hands or drink from the water to purify yourself. Sometimes they have things guarding or protecting the water, like this dragon: