Location: Kyoto, Japan
We checked out of the hotel and traveled to the Golden Pavilion, which we skipped a few days ago due to rain. Wow, am I glad that decision was made.
The views were spectacular. The upper two floors of the building are covered by gold leaf, and its reflections were stunning. By chance, our guide recognized the artisan in the crowd who was on the team that applied the gold leaf on the new building after the original burned down in 1950.
The lake was full of koi, looking to mooch whatever food they could. How do birds not spot the shiny fish more easily, and reduce their numbers?
This pine tree is over 600 years old, and started as a bonsai much loved by the then-Shogun.
After I offered incense and bought a lucky cat, we moved to the Tenryu Temple. We began our visit by all gathering in a single hall and experiencing two meditation sessions. The monks walked between us corrected our posture Upon request they would wack us with a stick to reinforce the lesson – I’m not kidding.
After achieving inner peace, it was time for lunch, vegetarian of course. They fed us all at the same time in several different rooms. I enjoyed the meal.
We then visited the “Water Dragon” temple, the highlight being the ceiling painting of a dragon (no pictures allowed). The reason is similar to the fish on building roofs: dragons are associated with water, thus provide protection from fire. Which Tenryu really needs, as the complex has burned down several times of the centuries.
As we left the temple complex, I spotted these faces. I was told they we Oni, and are mounted on the roof kind of like Western gargoyles.
From the temple we traveled to the train station to board a Shinkansen high-speed train to Tokyo, a 2 1/2-hour journey. I don’t have any sexy train images, but the surrounding landscape did seem to zoom by. I got to enjoy my first bento.
As we zipped, along I worked on this blog (and still managed to be two days late with posting. I suck so much.). We stepped out of the Tokyo train station onto buses that took us to the Silver Whisper. But not before I had a glance at night time Tokyo. Not the name of the boy-band in the center: “Sexy Zone”. Oh, yeah.
