Kyoto, day 2: Daitakuji and the Golden Pavilion

I decided Friday would be a Buddhist day, so I hopped on the metro headed north to a couple of temples I wanted to see. I only had a vague clue as to where they were, so I stopped at a Starbucks outside the metro station to orient myself. The directions were basically 'follow the big road 'til you see it,' so that's what I did.

I found the branching road that led to my first goal, Daitokuji temple, and stopped to grab lunch before heading in at a sushi place. The place served Kansai style sushi (which is slightly different that what we're used to), and I was the only customer at the time. My phone was dying, so I sniped an empty wall socket I saw while the chefs made sushi, which cracked the waitress up. After that, I watched them prep ingredients for the day (it was a little early for lunch), which was entertaining. One guy was trimming fish down to size, while the other was chopping omelette into super duper fine strips. After that he started cutting those weird green plastic 'grass' decorations you see in sushi sets you get at the grocery store, except these were actually cut out of banana leaves.

Thoroughly be-sushi'd, I walked out the door to see...a Cafe du Mon (note the mispelling). I thought it was hilarious to see the knock off here. I later found out that Cafe du Monde actually DOES have a shop in Kyoto Station. I went for breakfast one day, but was thoroughly disappointed when I found out they didn't sell beignets. They sold...hotdogs? Wat?

Anyway, giggling done, I went inside Daitokuji, which is a compound made of several buddhist temples that share an outer wall. I didn't have time (or the attention span) to see them all, so I decided on the two that aren't usually open, but were for a special exhibition, plus one of the usual ones. Neither of the special exhibitions allowed photos, unfortunately, which was a shame. The buildings were cool enough, but the gardens were AMAZING. These were exactly what you'd expect from Zen gardens. Some were just giant beds of gray pebbles, raked into patterns of lines around large boulders, others were moss gardens, with mosses and lichens growing over rocks and trees. The biggest moss garden even had a cat wandering about in it, just lazily chewing on the plants.

I headed up the street once I felt Zen enough (though that had been difficult to obtain; I lost my combination ticket between the two special temples and had to buy another) and went to visit Kyoto's famous Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji temple. The pavilion allegedly houses some of Buddha's ashes, hence the importance. The area across the pond from the pavilion was PACKED with people getting photos. I managed to squeeze
up to the railing and grab a few though. I meandered up the path through the compound, passing a group of kids playing 'get the coin in the donation cup from ten feet away,' and got to the top, which had a little tea house and some shops. I got a bowl of matcha tea (made from ground green tea powder instead of the whole leaves) and a sweet at the tea shop's garden, then some souvenirs from the shop before heading back.

Kinkakuji

The trip home was a little tricky. I meant to catch a bus back to the station, but it was right as the temple was starting to close, so the bus was too full. Instead, I just walked back to the metro station the way I'd come. I grabbed dinner at a full-service tempura place that had some surprisingly tasty miso soup (it had little clams in it) and would fry each order piece by piece, so it didn't sit around getting soggy.