Saturday, July 7, 2012

first real day in kyoto

So today we woke up as allways at 9.a.m. since we have noticed that this is a good time to wake up if not even earlier. Today we ate our bread and strawberry jelly with our coffee, cortecy of the ryokan of course, and then made our way outside. Today the weather was not the best possible since it was raining quite alot.
We started of by walking to the famous Sanjuusangendo temple that was actually right next to our ryokan. This particular temple is known for it's 1001 Buddha statues sculptured by hand and gilded. The sight, even though I've already seen it once, was immaculate, astonishing, breath taking ! Each and every one of them unik, no one was completely the same. After spending a good while here we finally left. We then proceeded to spin around for awhile not really sure where to go since it was a kind of damp and rainy weather so we thought that it might be best to stay inside. We thought for a while of going to the Kyoto national museum but then hesitated after seeing the outsides being renovated and decided that we didn't want to go. So we went to look at nearby shrines and found a few and man were they beautiful with their gardens. We then went to the nearby seven eleven to withdraw some money as it started to rain a bit again. We decided that, since we were hungry, we would eat. We walked to the nearest CoCoIchi restuarant and had a delicious curry meal before continuing. The weather was looking a bit better so we went on with my original plans of visiting the Kyomizudera, or "pure water tempel" that is a landmark for Kyoto. It's picturesque beauty and it's charming surrounding really make it on of the many "must see's" of Kyoto.
Kyoto has so many things to see and offers new experiences for every day so it is a perfect place for a longer stay.
Well on we went and saw the grounds and the temple and drank some of the famous pure water since it was the temple for pure water :)
Afterwards we walked down the long streets filled with stands selling everything, I bough a packet of local sweets and ate a macha ice-cream. [Macha = Japanese powdered green tea].
It started soon raining so we turned back towards our ryokan to rest for a while. On our way I popped in to a local pottery shop and bought a tea cup and a pan. Now I just need the tea, (note to self ).
We bought some cup noodles and other goods from the convenience store and ate them at the ryokan. It was getting pretty late already so we decided to quickly take a shower and go to the mall since the weather had gotten worse and there was nothing to do outside. I bought some clothes and Kimi looked around. We are going to come back tomorrow to by him a new belt since they took his belt buckle at the helsinki-vantaa airport since it was in a form of a grenade, lucky him huh?
After all this we came back and went on the computer for a while and then strait to bed so that we would be well rested for tomorrow.

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