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Published: January 7th 2008
Wednesday was spent in a bit of a slow approach. I met up with my friend Yuki for a couple hours for a little shopping, talking, and some lunch. It was so great to catch up with her and hear about her plans for the future. I wish her the best of luck at the Hilton in Nagoya!
After chatting with Yuki I headed into Kyoto for the afternoon and head out to a couple of the big temples/shrines that I had missed the first time that I was in Japan. My first stop was Fushimi-inari and it was full of people preforming hatsumo-de. I felt like a small sardine while I was walking around the main alters and prayer observation areas and was more than happy to play around in the lines of torii gates. Fushimi-inari was used in MOAG, in the early part of the movie where a young Sayuri is running through long red lines of torii gates. Once I got away from the main hatsumo-de seekers it was a nice and much more relaxing walk around the torii. It was still rather busy while I was there but it was the kind of busy that I
don't really mind. It was obvious that money was being made but it was also really nice to see families out together for hatsumo-de or see some how were offering prayers. The long trails around the mountain twist and turn and finally come back to the main deck and hub of activity.
After leaving Fushimi-inari I headed out to Kinkaku-ji. Kinkaku-ji is the Golden Pavilion that is gold plated. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is very popular with tourists and also the mall group of hatsumo-de goers. I got to the station and decided that I would walk. In retrospect, I wish that I had just jumped on a bus because I might have made it to another temple before it got really dark and started to lightly rain. Kinkaku-ji is beautiful and well worth the hike that I took to get there. There is a really nice path way all around the pavilion and up into the temple area. Even if I was pretty crowded with people taking pictures. There are little areas where you can get matcha and snacks while your enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of the temple. Only ¥400 and it was great
that I saw it toward the end of the day. It wasn't as crowded as it could have been.
Afterwards I ran back to the station, got some dinner and then headed back to Kuzuha and read for a while in Starbucks before meeting up with Chiaki and enjoying some of their awesome sushi. Her manager let me eat a bunch of sushi they had left over because it was just going to be thrown away otherwise! It deserved to be eaten!
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