Days 8-10 - Temples, Temples, and More Temples in Kyoto

Highlights

- Autumn in Kyoto HAS to rival NYC - leaves changing from deep green to all shades of red, orange, and yellow. Breathtaking.
- We can never find what we're looking for when we are looking for it, but that something will be everywhere the day after we're looking for it. Always.
- Kyoto is more our speed. Sorry Tokyo.
- The 1001 buddha statues (each with 40 arms) at Sanjusangen Temple is indescribable.  Another marvel of man's hands.  Thanks for the reco, Tony S!
- Nijo Castle was the best highlight of Kyoto.  Not a better setting in which to stroll and take in the changing seasons and morphing colors of the city.
- The Silver Pavilion was a close second in beauty.  Mr. Myagi's backyard x100000.
- Cafe du Monde is in Japan.  YAY!  But it doesn't have beignets.  POLICE!!!!

Drawn-out Blog

Okay, sorry for the lapse in reporting.  We didn't have wireless in John and Acco's ryokan, so us digital-types were stuck in the dark ages for a few days.  The pain.

Instead of going into massive details about what we did in Kyoto, let's just say that it's either our favorite city in the world, or it's one of them.  It's sleepy yet lively.  It's small yet large.  It's authentic yet welcoming to foreigners.  Simply, it's a city we could see ourselves living in.

We visited the Sanjusangen Temple on Saturday afternoon after a lazy morning, and Tania's dad (and my new father in law!) nailed it with this recommendation.  The temple contains one thousand life-size statues of the Thousand Armed Kannon, which stand on both the right and left sides of the main statue in 10 rows and 50 columns. Of these, 124 statues are from the original temple, rescued from the fire of 1249, while the remaining 876 statues were constructed in the 13th century. The statues are made of Japanese cypress. Around the 1000 Kannon statues stand 28 statues of guardian deities. (Thanks Wikipedia).  It's a marvel to be seen.

We then went on a mission to find pizza.  Any kind of pizza.  Yes, we took off from partaking in local fare.  We're allowed.  Yet we couldn't find any.  Not after walking for over an hour up to Kiyomizu-dera Temple could we find pizza, so we settled for snacks we had brought with us. 
Not sure if this put us is foul moods, but we decided not to fork over the 800 yen to enter the temple.  We did enjoy the incredible view of the city from outside the temple, so at least we have that going for us, which is nice.

The city was packed at this point.  No wonder we had such a difficult time finding housing this weekend.  So many people had swarmed the city to visit all of the temples as well as enjoy the changing leaves.  Justifiably so.  Kyoto was stunning.  There was a slight chill in the air, which complemented the views we were enjoying.  Such a perfect fall setting.

After the worst earl gray tea I'd ever had, we stomped back and forth around the same city block for about an hour looking for an REI-type store so Tania could buy hiking shoes.  Apparently, her knee-high suede boots weren't fit for so much site seeing.  And apparently, REI-type stores are as anonymous as any basement dwelling store, and not as eye-poppingly gaudy as in the US.  Luckily her attendant knew what "light", "6.5", and "waterproof" meant, because Tania found the perfect pair of moon boots to cushion and protect her feet.  Now we can trek through Asia with the best of them.

So frustrated trying to find the damn store, we rewarded ourselves with a drink at the little bar in the adjacent alley that was calling our name by playing the Beatles.  The two bartenders and lone patron enjoyed entertaining us with custom drinks (vodka, ginger syrup, apple brandy - sounds like that's quite popular around these parts) and discussing music.  Although we decided to leave when the patron excitedly proclaimed that Boston and Damn Yankees were in the same league as Led Zeppelin and Hendrix.  I guess the Japanese know as much about music as we know about good sushi.  They do know a lot about good Italian food because we had a delicious meal, including our better-late-than-never pizza.  And we finally exchanged our vows that were unfortunately missing from the wedding ceremony, amongst other things (THE KISS!!).  Then it was back to Kitayama for a good night's rest on our futon.

We took Sunday at a little slower pace because our bodies were starting to wear out from all of the non-stop touristing.  Luckily, the first place we decided to visit was our favorite of the city, the Nijo Castle.  The grounds are vast, around which we lazily strolled and took some gorgeous photos (see below).  We thought that we knew how beautiful this season was before the castle, but now we really knew how good it could get.

A quick stop into the International Manga Museum (Japanese cartoons) led into another no-end-in-site journey through the city.  Not able to find a Japanese curry restaurant like we were craving, we settled on a quick sushi fix.  We did walk by about 1000 Italian restaurants which offered as much pizza as we could handle, but they came a day too late for our cravings.  That combined with the fact that we couldn't find an ATM or bank (since we were almost out of the yen purchased before we left the US), we were convinced that we'd always find what we're looking for the day after we were looking for it.  And yup, no ATM on Sunday, but a plethora of them found us today, Monday.  The day after we needed one.  Thanks travel karma Gods.

(Here's where Tania asked me not to mention the fact that we took a bus across the entire city to see the Tenryu-ji Temple, only to get there 2 minutes after it closed, and after it was already pitch black dark outside.  So I won't mention it.)

Any way, we settled on another Italian dinner after nothing else was open at 10pm.  I guess we stuck around the Irish pub with free wifi too long.  Funny because it didn't seem like long while I finished two glasses of 15% barley wine.  Hmm, weird.  Yet, we're ashamed of having Italian two straight nights in Japan, but we forgive ourselves because good Italian is made from quality, fresh ingredients, which this country knows how to do, so we forgave ourselves.

Another futon sleep, another granola breakfast with John and Acco, and off to another temple.  This time, the Silver Pavilion.  Dear Lord what a breathtaking place.  Second only to the Nijo Castle, this place showed the changing leaves begging to be posted on a postcard, which is funny because we bought a handful of postcards from this place.  It's a temple built by a Buddhist who spent his entire life creating it so that he could retire in it.  Imagine Mr. Myagi's backyard on a hillside, then multiply that by 1000000.  Pristinely manicured trees.  Finely designed sand sculptures.  Gentlely dribbling creeks.  Layers of the season's finest colors climbing the hillside.  And a view of Kyoto meant for day's of pondering during retirement.  All so amazing, and thank God I forgot my camera and Tania forgot hers.  I was soooo happy about that.  Why would I ever want to take pictures of this crap?  It might ruin your impression of Kyoto, so luckily I won't be able to subject you all to that.

Luckily we made it out of that hellhole and back to the ryokan so we could grab our bags and head to Kyoto station for our train ride to Osaka.  We stopped ourselves from eating any French pastries all day so that we could stop by the Cafe du Monde (yes, that Cafe du Monde that I love in New Orleans) for some beignets.  Except this Cafe du Monde didn't have beignets.  You heard it right, no beignets.  Which is like McDonald's not having hamburgers.  Needless to say I was depressed for a few minutes while they made my cafe au lait, which helped the pain a bit.  But I'll be sending a scathing email to the Cafe's headquarters letting them know they need to get it right overseas.

Oh, time to go.  Tania just finished Twilight (in record time) and needs to fill the void left by no Edward Collins with some Japanese curry.  No more blogging for today, but I will finish with a YEAH CARDS!  Way to take control of the division with the stomp down over Seattle.  AWWW AWWWW!!!

Night.