16 April 2009

Today was a very intense travel day. We started by meeting at the Kyoto Station bus terminal at 10am. It was nice to sleep in for a change. We took the express bus for at least 30 minutes to get to the western side of Kyoto. As always, we were touring more temples and Zen gardens. We split into two groups so that we wouldn’t overwhelm any one temple or garden. My group consisted of 9 of us, and we began by visiting Daisen Temple. It was a beautiful Zen garden surrounded by a series of wooden structures. We enjoyed this area for a very long time and sat on the engawa (veranda) with our feet swinging below us. It was a cloudy day, but the humidity kept the air fairly warm. Our next stop was the Obaiin temple. This was also a very nice temple with a beautiful Zen garden. Next, we visited the Korin Temple, and it was once again another Zen garden. Each garden and temple had a different feel and presented itself differently upon the users. It was really cool. After Korin, we visited Daitokuji Temple. This garden was very nice, and most of the monks spoke very good English. It was a single small structure that we walked around, but we had a storyboard to follow as we walked. It was really neat to hear the story behind the placement of the rocks in the garden. Ryokuonji Temple was next, and it is also known as the Gold Pavilion. This was probably one of the most iconic and amazing buildings I have seen during my recent travels. It was so beautiful, and since the building is completely leafed in gold, it shone very brightly as the sunlight bounced off of it. It was a form of beauty that I will never forget.
It was about 2pm when we finished walking through these temples, so it was lunchtime. About half of us ended up going to a convenience store to just purchase some cheap bento boxes. Mine had 6 small onigiris, fried potato, one dumpling, spaghetti, and shrimp tempura. It only cost 450 yen, so it was an amazing deal! After lunch, we lastly visited Ryoanji Temple and garden. The rock garden is easily one of the most famous ones in Japan, but it was sadly in the midst of renovation. Part of the rock garden was covered up, and there was scaffolding and construction materials everywhere around the building. To be perfectly honest, it was a huge disappointment. It was a horrible way to end our long day of travelling, and everyone was equally upset. I guess that just gives me another reason to return to Japan in the near future. Haha!
On the walk back to the bus, we came upon a cherry blossom garden. Many of the petals have begun to fall, and the garden looked like it had been snowed on since there were so many petals on the grass and path. What a mystical feeling the park had! After wandering around for a descent amount of time, we wandered back to the bus stop and caught the local bus back to Kyoto Station. Once we were back at the station, I got some Chinese food for dinner with Norio, Blake, Seth, Derrick, and Jeff. I got six gyoza, fried rice, fried chicken, and soup for 720 yen. It was really good and extremely filling. I wanted to make sure I was really full since the rest of my night was spent doing homework and readings for tomorrow’s class. Everyone is becoming increasingly busy, so I hope that we can still enjoy our last weekend in Kyoto since we already leave next week!