Kyoto and Nara

Last weekend I went to Kyoto and Nara with my parents and Mark. We left Monday morning and that evening we visited the Golden Temple, kinkaku-ji, which is in the bottom picture. It was originally a retirement villa for a shogun, but now I guess it's a Zen temple (thank you, wikipedia). It's covered in gold leaf, so it's a really striking structure, and I enjoyed seeing it again (I also visited it last time I was in Japan, three years ago).

The next day we went to Nara, which is famous for its big Buddha statue and herds of tame deer. The deer are actually pretty pushy and as soon as they saw me going to buy food they surrounded me and put their pushy little faces in my bag. One of them even bit me, which surprised the heck out of me, but I guess they know an easy target when they see one. They are all trained to bow their heads for food though I didn't know that at the time so I didn't get to try it out. The picture above the Golden Temple is of the building that houses the big Buddha and that's me lighting incense before going in.

That afternoon Mark and I went to Kiyomizu Temple, one of the most popular temples in Kyoto. It's on a hillside supported by big stilts (you can kinda see them in the top picture) and it gives you a really nice view of the city. The second picture shows three waterfalls coming from the hill that you can drink from. You can get one of three things, depending on which fall you drink from: money, beauty, or wisdom. We didn't know which was which but found out later that I drank from money and Mark drank from wisdom.

Thanks for reading! Next week we leave for Vietnam and I can't wait for that! I'll post pictures when we get back.

Cate