Kyoto

Well, it has been two days since I’ve arrived in Kyoto. We took the overnight bus on the 1st and arrived in Kyoto at 6 a.m. on the 2nd. We went to go find a Starbucks, but got completely lost and ended up running into a temple. We enjoyed the sight, then finally went all the way back to the station and found a Starbucks. After relaxing for awhile, we went on to find our hostel…..but we ended up getting lost again. After searching for our hostel for a good hour or two, we finally made it. We dropped off our stuff and went to go get a tour in the imperial palace. It was so amazing. I was baffled when I thought about how the emperor of Japan used to walk the same grounds I was walking on.

After the palace, we went back to our hostel and relaxed for a bit before going to Gion, the geisha district. We wondered around, but saw no geishas. However, we did see two temples at night all lit up. One being the famous water temple. It was breathe taking. It almost didn’t look like it was real. The trees were full of red, and the lanterns lit up the place. However, we had to leave to go catch our bus. We went back to Gion (and finally saw a geisha), then got completely lost again. However, we found our way eventually and got back to our hostel.

Today, we went to the two places that I really wanted to go. One, being the fox temple. It was everything I could have imagined. The thousands of tori gates all lined up to make a perfect pattern of orange and black. We sadly didn’t make it to the top since it would have taken too long, but we did manage to go far enough to take some pretty cool pictures of me waving the flag (Go Cougs!)

After the fox temple, we went to the Golden Pavilion. We made it just in time before they were about to close the park. Since we didn’t get to stay for too long, I can’t say much about it except that it looks exactly like the pictures I’ve seen before. It was like a dream come true.

We ended up finishing our night by going to a bar close by our hostel. It was super small and cute, and best of all the name of it was “Bow Country”. Or as my friend Kyle Collins would put it, “Boooooooow Country”. We ended up practicing our Japanese with the owner and his daughter. It was an unique experience that I would have never gotten to do in the states. 

Well, that’s it for now. But, I will be hopefully posting more soon.

 

– Amy