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Published: August 6th 2007
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Kyoto is a beautiful area, surrounded by green mountains, with many cultural and historical things to see. It's full of parks, gardens, temples, and shrines. First stop was "The Golden Pavilion", a beautiful gold-colored temple with surrounding gardens. The place was full of school children dressed in their uniforms, some in kimonos.
Then it was off to the Heian Shrine, a huge shrine complex painted with a red/orange color, believed to ward off evil spirits, with an accompanying huge Torii gate over a street. The complex includes a nice garden that we strolled through.
We then visited the Sanjusangendo Temple's Hall of 1,001 statues of Buddha. No photography was allowed inside.
After lunch, we cruised over to Nara and saw the Todai-ji temple. This was originally built in the 700's AD, was destroyed twice, and was re-built. The current structure was rebuilt 35%!s(MISSING)maller than the original structure, but still remains the largest wooden structure in the world. This thing is big! Inside sits a huge statue of Buddha. Also, deer roam freely on the grounds.
Check out "A Day in Kyoto" video below! I didn't just want to see picturesque views and cultural sites,
I really wanted to interact with people. I asked a lady at the hotel desk about night spots, and she suggested an area. I took a cab over there. A lot of people were gathered here. There is this large river basin, and alongside the river are sidewalks where people can ride their bikes, hang out, whatever. Pretty nice. I went to a Starbucks, which had an outdoor deck with a nice view. (I saw a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks in Japan). It was a little cool, but a hot chocolate warmed me up. It was starting to get dark. I went across the street to get some dinner. The waitress was asking me something, and I didn't understand. This guy that was sitting at the table next to me, whom I hadn't noticed yet, said that she was asking me if I smoked (which I don't). "Are you American", I asked. Yes, and he proceeded to tell me that he had been teaching English there for about 4 years, and hadn't been to the US in about 3 years. Wow, I thought, pretty interesting. I later went with him to this cool bar called "The Hub". This was
the kind of bar that I really like. It was easy to interact with people, they were playing cool rock music, it wasn't overly dark or smoky or loud. He introduced me to some people who were students studying English at a local university. I had a great time talking with them.
I found it relatively easy to strike up nice conversations with women. Just start it out with "Konbanwa" ("good evening"), then "Eigo ga wakarimas ka?" (do you understand english?), "Watashi wa amerikajin desu" (I'm American), and it would go from there, mainly due to their ability to speak English.
I was talking to this girl, and then an American guy came up, with whom she had apparently made prior arrangements to meet. I was going to leave them alone, but he said, come on, let's go to this other place. We walked down to this bar called "ING", a cool place with a unique long haired guy running the place. They were playing good rock and roll, had posters of rock bands on the wall, etc. I thought the joint was pretty cool. I wish there were cool places like ING and The Hub where I
live.
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