We boarded the tour bus without any complications, and after we'd collected all of the other tourists, we approached our first destination, Nishi Honganji Temple.
The moat looked pretty dry.
But the ceilings, lanterns and gold leaf detail, even just on the gate, were spectacular.
Of course they paled in significance to the rest of the attractions...
Just kidding. The temple is split up into a couple of buildings (or actually I think our guide mentioned that it's two temples in the same complex), and they were enormous!
Our guide spent a lot of time describing the temples in the front courtyard and trying to figure out whether we had all members of our group together, so we amused ourselves while she was sorting herself out, with self portraits...
And taking photos of everything in our near vicinity (which Tom conveniently photo-bombed).
We all dutifully removed our shoes, and finally entered the temple. It was beautiful.
I went a little nuts with the camera, taking photos of the lanterns...
The wooden carvings along the ceiling...
The wooden carvings up the walls...
More lanterns...
And the view along the lovely wide verandah at the front of the buildings.
Possibly the most exciting thing we came across, though, was this quaint little fire cart, on our way out to the bus!
Next stop on the tour was Nijo Castle, the gate to which was clearly less for decorative purposes than it was for fortress-ey purposes.
Although the gates were pretty attractive.
In what would originally have been the guard house in the castle grounds, they had a little scene enacted with mannequins. I don't know why, but I found it a little bit creepy.
There were also some very intriguing art installations spaced along the wide path to the innermost area of the castle grounds.
And then we approached the Ninomaru Palace, which was the residence in which the Shogun lived inside the walls of the castle. We weren't allowed pictures inside, but it's very impressive. Almost all of the rooms inside the palace are intricately painted, and they're all in the process of being restored and/or replaced with imitations so that the originals can be preserved.
The floors in the corridors of the palace are famous because they were designed to squeak as people walk over them, as a defense mechanism. They've been called 'nightingale floors' because all of the squeaks sound a lot like birds. Once we were outside again I decided to crouch underneath the corridor and inspect the metal plates that make the squeaky noises.
The gardens near the palace (or at least the garden we visited) was filled with rocks, much more so than the other Japanese gardens we had visited. Apparently this was because it was the for the Shogun's pleasure, so it was made more masculine.
The final detail that impressed us on the way out was this intricate timber gate. Amazing, isn't it?
Next stop on the tour was Kinkakuji, otherwise known as the Golden Pavilion. We were one of many tour groups visiting the pavilion that day, but in typical Japanese style, they were prepared. This pedestrian traffic conductor took his role very seriously.
The grounds around the pavilion were beautiful. And beautifully shady, which was a relief, since this, like all other days we had experienced in Japan, was a hot day!
But of course, the star of the show was the Golden Pavilion itself. We were directed to a spot where we could admire it from across the lake first.
And of course, we did the tourist thing.
We then made our way around the lake, which afforded us slightly different views of the pavilion as we went. I of course felt that I absolutely had to document each view.
The second and third tiers are covered entirely in pure gold leaf. Incredible!
On top of the Pavilion is a little gold bird, apparently a ho-o, a Chinese mythical bird that is essentially a phoenix.
Once we'd oohed and aahed at the Pavilion enough, we were given some free time to explore the rest of the grounds. Nearby is this tree that is supposed to resemble a boat, suspended over raked gravel that represents the sea.
Dotted throughout the gardens were little statues with a bowl that you were supposed to try to throw coins into, for good luck. A genius way of encouraging donations, in my opinion! It was almost impossible to resist the urge to try to get a coin into the bowl. We didn't succeed, I'm sorry to say.
And of course, as is always the case in Japanese gardens, as we made our way around the park, we got glimpses here and there of the Golden Pavilion.
This is a little stone pagoda on an island in the Anmintaku Pond, which is said to never dry up.
Even the walls of the garden were beautiful and well maintained.
Our morning of touring ended with a feast for lunch at a little restaurant somewhere in Kyoto. It was quite an entertaining experience. Tom and I were so hungry that we demolished virtually everything in front of us with relish, but it was very interesting observing the behaviour of our fellow tourists, who were much more inclined to complain and get upset over what they did or did not think they should be served. The poor little staff were running around like madmen trying to sort it all out.
So that's our morning of touring Kyoto! The afternoon was equally eventful! Details of that to come soon.
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