Yesterday I walked around East Kyoto. There were a lot of temples and some of the streets were built to match what it traditionally looked like.
I walked to Kiyomizu-dera temple, on the way I walked through a cemetery. It was a very large cemetery but they didn't waste any space. Every grave was right next to the next one. I am guessing everyone was cremated so it doesn't take up as much space, but it does seem strange with them very tightly packed in.
I carried on up to the temple. It is a very old site, with a temple being on there since 778 AD. Behind the temple there are quite a few shrines, which is dedicated to the Shinto gods. A lot of people come here to write prayers asking to be lucky in love. Also if you drank some of the water from the fountain it was supposed to cure you of any illness or make you beautiful. Well I am already beautiful so I didn't need to drink from the fountain.
After, I walked around through streets that were designed to mimic what it may have looked like in olden times. It was quite interesting. This also lead onto a park, which probably would look amazing if the cherry blossoms were out.
I then went back to my hostel as it was starting to rain, luckily I just got back before it really poured it down and it didn't stop until the next morning. I did quickly pop out to get dinner which was some Chinese dumplings and pork rolls.
This morning I visited the International Manga museum. It was interesting with many different pieces of artwork and how manga has evolved over the years. It also had walls and walls of different series of manga, but these were all in Japanese. They did have an English section so I had a nice relaxing morning reading manga.
This afternoon I went to the golden pavilion. It was in a beautiful garden surrounded by a lake and the building was painted gold. It did take some time to get there as it was a bit out of town but luckily buses ran there.
Well I am hopefully off to Osaka tomorrow.
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