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Today started out cold and cloudy but not rainy, so we caught the subway to Nanzen-ji temple to look around and follow the Philosopher's Walk between Eikan-do and Ginkaku-ji temples. FIRST, we visited the Turtle and Crane garden as recommended by Charles' parents. It was lovely! Some of the garden's we've visited have been a bit sad because it's the middle of winter, but this garden was full of evergreen plants and moss and was beautiful. We wandered through the grounds and spent a long time contemplating the rock garden.
Our next stop was Nanzen-ji temple which has a huge wooden gate. The grounds of Nanzen-ji are fun to look around and we explored and took photos and sound recorded etc. We followed the aqueduct as far as we could in both directions. One way led to a tunnel and we had to stop, the other way went around the mountain on a perilous path to a big, cool, strange, pumping station. Awesome. Very "Wonder Japan".
We wandered along the path of philosophy looking at cats and shops, but it was quiet and cold so we didn't stop anywhere for too long. Before Ginkaku-ji temple we stopped at a Japanese restaurant for lunch. The menu seemed to be in hiragana so we turned down extra help, but it turned out to be mostly in kanji. We ended up ordering the first two items. "Nishisoba" and "Tororosoba". We knew that "soba" means soba buckwheat noodles, but we weren't sure what Nishi and Tororo were. Nishi turned out to be the black dried strong fish that we had tried a few days before and Tororo was a kind of broth with semi-raw egg on top. Both were O.K, maybe a combination of difficult food and a sort of lame restaurant. Our menu reading skills are improving a lot over this trip. We can read kanji for lots of meats and can read words for noodles etc. We can also identify the kanji for "teishoku" which means "set meal". That's a good one to know.
After the restaurant we walked up to Ginkaku-ji temple for the second ever time. We had a nice walk around and it started to rain so we didn't linger. It was nice, but after the amazing Crane and Turtle garden we weren't as impressed. We did get a nice rainy view of Kyoto though!
After temple exploring we caught a bus into town to do some more city exploring. We got off the bus near the bridge over the "duck river" Kamokawa and walked across looking at the nice view. School was just out and we got to observe some classic Japanese teenager nonsense involving two girls, a bicycle, two policeman and a convenience store. It was all very interesting. Apparently the girls gave Charles a threatening/horrified look in the convenience store.
We walked from the bridge to the centre of fashionable Sanjo-dori and wandered around little shops and had coffee. It got very cold and started to rain a little bit so we took refuge in one of Kyoto's museums and looked at a free exhibition of japanese classical style artworks (kimonos, vases, dolls, prints etc). The lady gave us an inpenetrable pamphlet so we gave it back.
After the museum we zig-zagged through the streets finding interesting new places. We found a Uniqlo and Christina bought Charles some pants. They have three sorts of pockets on the front on each side, a regular jeans-style pocket, a zip pocket AND a button flap pocket. Flexibility plus!
We also went to a Loft so that Christina could look at BB cream (makeup) for ages. She *finally* found the one she wanted and bought a proper sized packet. Charles got to look at more Porter bags.
By this time we had gotten *ridiculously* tired from all of our exploring, so we walked back to our restaurant near home and had a nice teishoku each and then went back to the hotel. After relaxing for a bit we went out to the sento to warm up. We've mostly got the hang of public baths in Japan now. Christina says that the women all giggle and chat in bath. Charles says that groups of men sit down seriously with their elbows on their knees and growl things to each other.
Now we're all warmed up we're going to sleep in preparation for our trip to Takayama tomorrow. Yay!
