So a month and a half ago i went to Kyoto...

Okay so Kyoto is one of those places in Japan that you are supposed to see. Its about 2.5 hours by train from the city and I had heard, even when I was still in the states and all I knew was Konichiwa and the Styx song, that there are loads of gorgeous temples and shrines there. I knew I wanted to get there for a weekend and realized about the time that I got home from Nikko that I was starting to run out of weekends to plan things. My friend David, the trip leader from Kyoto who was less than pleased with our tardiness, and I had discussed going the weekend of the 13th. (On a side note, David is quite pleasant to travel with and is not at all a schedule gestapo as I might have implied... however broad generalizations make for much better blogposts.) About Wednesday we revisited the idea of going to Kyoto the upcoming weekend and decided to make a decision by Thursday. However, with the logistics and the last minute train ticket he found we just booked our tickets and figured we would let the rest of our gang know so that they could join.However, we booked Thursday afternoon. I had to go get a camera and David had to pick up the tickets and then we both had night class and our train left at 7 am Friday morning. We both sort of thought the other person was going to tell everyone else. Granted, this seems a bit ridiculous because I can't even get myself together let alone an entire group of people but logistically no one else could book.I was a bit concerned about the dynamic as we traveled because it seemed that David was equally as focused as I was flighty, but we had an amaazinggggg time. We got to see a lot of the big sites but also many things off the beaten path. We were there for 4 days and it was the perfect amount of time to squeeze lots of stuff in, while not cramming too many temples in. As much as I love seeing temples for me, sort of like the castles in London, its nice to spread out the temples so you don't start to appreciate their beauty less.We took the Shinkansen which is one of those Japan things you're supposed to do... check! We arrived at about 11 am Friday morning and dropped our bags off at the hostel.

Kyoto Tower:

Lost Already:

Our next stop that day was the Shosei-en Garden near the station. The grounds were beautiful!

Gorgeous:

I love the fishes cause they're delciousssss:

Jenni says all the cool kids like rocks:

After a bit we checked out the Market. Lots of smelly fish but we did get these incredible soy donuts which sound disgusting but were quite good!

Big deal market:

I sort of was hoping I could shop for things other than fish:

This is how you say baltimore in Japanese:

We checked out some of the zen gardens. While I suppose part of me felt at peace and zen-ed out another part of me desperately wanted to jump in the middle and make gravel angel prints. I suppose I just don't get art...

These lines symbolize it might rain tomorrow:

Everything Zen:

Pretttttty:

We also checked out the Kinkakuji Temple commonly called the Golden Pavilion. It was slightly awesome. The temple is covered entirely in gold leave and its orgins date back to 1397. The actual building we saw only dates back to 1955 though because apparently the previous one was burnt down by a fanatic monk!

Traveling with just one other person
resulted in lots of pictures of me in front of things:

Bling Bling:

Practicing my beer pong shot .... I missed:

La LA laaaaaaaaa:

We also checked out Kiyomizu-dera. This was sort of like a complex of temples. When we looked at the guide book this was top on my list because apparently one of the temples was supposed to be designed to be the inside of the belly (or we also heard womb) of Buddha. You like climb inside of it. The appeal of this is quite obvious given my deranged sense of humor. It was a little disappointing with the build up but still very cool and interesting. There were a bunch of other temples and Buddhist things to check out... it was pretty cool!

Temple-San:

Even when i try to pray it looks like i am feeling up the Buddha:
Templesssssss:
Preparing to enter the womb:
Without this sign no one would
have known we were riding inside buddha:

HILARIOUS Gajin directions on how to do rituals:
This Buddha is for Jenni:
Pretty View:

Now this might seem like a lot of walking around to you.... but we fortunately for us (and not so fortunately for the people on the streets) we rented bikes to make the trek a bit easier. I almost fell off my bike so many times that video was necessary to illustrate. My lack of faith in cliches was affirmed as I tried what i thought would be "just like riding a bike".

As it was starting to approach dusk we headed over to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Alexis had told us this was a must see and it seemed cool that it was open 24 hours. We get there and from the first looks of it it appears to be just like a normal shrine. Sort of touristy with all these souvenir shops, but otherwise normal. We head over to the entrance of the gates. Fushimi Inari is famous for the thousands and thousands of torii gates that makes up a trail around the complex. Torii gates are the bright orange entrances to shrines. At first it was super super cool, but after a while I sort of felt like I was in a weird tourist trap. In addition to the torii gate trail there were also pathways off the trail leading to piles of torii gates left as offerings by worshipers. They were legit everywhere. It sort of reminded me of a cracked out tourist trap with a South of the Border feel mixed with the sort of "Disneyworld's Its a Small World"creepiness you just cant seem to articulately define. Especially once it got dark and we got a bit lost I found myself in what would be a brilliant setting for a slasher movie. Not to offend culture or anything...

prob the onyl pic with both of us:

Piles and Piles:

My thighs look monstrous:
The gates:Like even on the door of the bathroom... CREEPY:You can ring my beeeeeeelll: