Shrine on me!

Well after the travel day before from Tokyo, we awoke to our first day in Kyoto. The clouds were covering the sky but due to the humidity it was still boiling. I kind of get what lobsters must go through.

Just over the bridge to the east from our hostel was Sansusangendo, which has featured in a lot of Samurai films. The temple houses over a thousand statues, which we were not allowed to take pictures of. A main statue of Kannon flanked by 1000 smaller versions to left and right, whilst around these stand 28 deitiesas well as Fujin and Raijin. Across the road was the Kyoto Museum, which was undergoing work at the moment so on we went. We found another temple straight away that was closed, so was the next but we managed to make it into some of the grounds here to take a look around.

North some more was the Kyomizu-dera Temple which was quite big and contained a modern style temple for a new religion. It looked ugly so stayed clear.The sun broke out and the clouds dissaperared at this point.

A bit more north and we saw a Pogoda, Yasaha Tower, so decided to walk towards that and the back roads to the next temple. Down here were lots of little back streets that contained funky shops, one selling awesome steampunk watches that I had to drag myself away from as they were quite expensive. Also around here were several girls walking around in traditional dress.

Breaking from these we were at the Kodairji Temple which contained a massive statue on top of a shrine for the unnammed world war ii soldier.

A quick trip west over the bridge was the Gion area, which is tiny, where the Geishas live. As we rounded the corner we were lucky to see a group possing for photos, we managed to grab one before they were ushered in.

Quick lunch and a few bank stops finding an international ATM we arrived at the Manga museum. This was like a big library of Manga from 1946 to present. By the time we left here and made it round the corner to Nijo Castle it was closed.

Day done.