Anyway, Kyoto sure takes a lot out of a guy. Let's see how much I can remember from the tour...
Kyoto, which means capital in Japanese, was the longstanding center of Japan for 1000 years before Tokyo. It's now the religious and cultural capital of the country. Tokyo actually means East Kyoto: To = East, Kyo = Kyoto. It seems like a smaller and older city, but downtown and Kyoto station are pretty new/nice/high tech. There are just tons of gardens, temples and palaces here.
It's 1/33th the size of Tokyo and there's only 2 subway lines in the city, so joining the tour was a good thing because getting around was a pain in my feet. The unfortunate part of the tour was that in a lot of places photography was strictly forboden.
The Shoguns hizzouse.
At some of the Shinto temples you can get a fortune on a piece of paper. If it is a good one you keep it, if it sucks you leave it at the temple and hope it doesn't stick with you (like this).
This building is one of the longest Buddhist temples in Japan. Inside there is 1000 life size, hand carved statues of Buddha as well as several others which are Japanese national treasures. It was an amazing sight. The statues were all hand carved from wood and in the center was a huge Buddha statue. No photography allowed, the monks literally took away your camera to check if they suspected it.
From this temple, you get an amazing view overlooking Kyoto. The support structure of the shrine on the right was impressive to say the least.
There's also this fountain with three fresh water streams. Each stream has a different meaning, I think intelligence, wealth and longevity. I wished that I don't get AIDS from using the public cups where literally thousands of people go through them a day. My sister did the smart thing and bought a souvenir cup to use...
We actually spent the evening in this dept. store that they just opened one week ago and had tons of sales - it was right behind Kyoto tower (which despite the name is not impressive at all). Department stores in Tokyo are no joke. Add some more clothes and shoes to the body count.
Back to Canada!
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