Kyoto, Day 3

Our next day in Kyoto we set out fairly early after our hearty miso and rice breakfast (Jeremy actually commented that he felt like he was starving on low cal asian fare for the first few days of our trip).
We rode the bus out to see some more temples. Kyoto literally has thousands of temples within the city. At one of the busstops we got stopped by a group of schoolgirls who interviewed Jeremy in broken English. They were giggling the whole time. We got a big kick out of it.


Our first stop was a world reknowned Zen Buddhist temple. This rock garden has 16 stones, but you can never see all 16 at once from any position. Here's Jeremy getting his zen on.


There was also a mossy patch where people could sit to meditate. Overall, quite a beautiful place.


We moved on to see the Golden Pavillion next. While we were waiting to meet Alex and the kids we ate some shave ice with mochi balls, drizzled with condensed milk. It was so refreshing!
Here's me and my favorite Evan at the golden pavillion. It was real gold!




The temples themselves are amazing, but so are the grounds. We really enjoyed the grounds here.

We saw this enormous beetle! It literally could've taken off one of our fingers.

Juni got more practice just being cute

After we got our fill we went out to lunch at a nearby restaurant. I had another delicious bowl of noodles and we tried some mochi that was made from ferns! It had a different texture.
Our next adventure was to go to the Secret temple. As we went on the walk to get there Alex told us the historical story related to this temple's construction. Often temples are built in honor of something or someone. When we got to the temple we sat down in the serene environment and he finished the story, revealing the "secret" behind this temple.

Note sweat on shirts...it was a HOT day!

The secret was that this temple had been built in honor of some samurai who had fought long and hard but were going to have to surrender, so they killed themselves. The ceiling in the temple is built from the floor of the place where the suicide occurred. Upon this revelation, Alex pointed up, and we looked to see a distinct bloody footprint directly above us on the ceiling. Talk about shivers up our spine!!
The contrast between the violent history and serene setting was interesting. This was also a Zen temple and had these meditation windows, which I loved.
Jeremy could really get used to this Zen thing.

We walked back down to the bus stop and again split up. Jeremy, Alex, Michael and Amanda went back to the hotel to get our luggage and Emily, Amy, the kids and I rode over to the river to wait for them. We would be taking a bus from the river to the next town on the outskirts of Kyoto.

Let me just take this opportunity to say how amazing Alex and Amy were. We didn't have to figure out a thing about this trip. They knew exactly what bus we needed to take and where we needed to get off. They knew the details of how to buy tickets, how much they were etc. They found and booked great, affordable hotels for us as well as selected highlights and planned our days so we could see them. They picked menu items for us at restaurants based on what they knew we would like. That is a lot of work, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to take on, and all with shouldering 3 small children and leading a college study abroad program. Jeremy and I were so grateful to them for making this experience so seamless for us while putting themselves through so much.

After getting ice cream and playing in the river we all met up again and got on another bus. This was another beautiful ride. Here is another great T-shirt that reads, "Even if form is wrong flight music library."
This poor little lady fell asleep on the bus and was practically sleeping on michael eventually.
When michael moved seats so he didn't have to hold his bag she almost fell over. I think michael just wanted to be in both pictures.

The evening that Alex had arranged for our last night in Japan was awesome, but I'm going to save that for the next post.