We were both pleasantly surprised at how well we slept on those "camping" mattresses, it was definitely more comfortable than I thought it would be and I was not sore in the morning so that was good:-). We got a delicious breakfast delivered to us in our room as we soaked up the last of the luxury Ryokan experience. We also filled the tub one last time for the road! We left our bags at the front desk after checkout and headed to the Bamboo Forest and some other temples in the area. There are so many little temples in Kyoto and it was hard to decide which ones we needed to see, but when Brian showed me the Kinaku-ji Temple on Google maps I knew I wanted to see that one. It was a bit out of the way and there was no good train route to get there so we took a taxi. It truly was spectacular, probably the most beautiful temple we saw with the gold exterior and water surrounding it. Really glad we took the taxi out there!
There is a picture of Brian disposing of his soda bottle in a trash can because I have to mention this - there are NO trash cans in public in Japan! If you can find one it's like finding a unicorn! We found out early on in this trip that if you get food from a street vendor, you are expected to eat it right there and then bring your trash back to the vendor and they will take it from you. It made you very aware of buying things that would make trash because now you are carrying it with you for hours on end! So, anytime we found a trash can, it was worthy of some attention haha.
After that we took another taxi back to the area where our Ryokan was to have lunch. We ended up eating at this Tempura place in a like a food court, it was good. I don't know if we have any bad food on this trip, there are so many options for food and they are all good somehow! We also loved how all the restaurants have these plastic models of all the options, makes it easy to visualize your options:-).
We went back to the Ryokan to get our bags and took a taxi over to our next hotel in a different part of Kyoto. The Ryokan was a very cool experience but quite a pricey one, so one night was really all that was feasible. This other hotel was not too shabby either! The bed was pretty much the biggest bed we've ever seen (we think they pushed two doubles together) and very comfortable, it was definitely another luxury experience! We got settled and took a walk over to Yasaka Shrine and wandered around there for a bit. Then we kept walking over to Hokan-ji Temple (Yasaka Pagoda) which was quite spectacular - and very busy! There were several streets surrounding it that had so many street vendors with food and souvenirs, it was a really cool atmosphere. There were also lots of little restaurants surrounding it as well. The street vendors in Japan aren't pushy at all, it's really pleasant to just walk through and not worry about being accosted.
Brian had made a reservation at this fancy-ish sushi place for dinner so we made our way over there. We both had a set course menu, but Brian had a much bigger one (I only did Tuna because I knew that I would be way too full with his choice!). It was a really great experience, and the food was fantastic! Such good sushi! I still got too full even with just the tuna so I guess I made the right choice. We walked back to the hotel and saw the restaurants on the other side of the river, so we decided to walk over there and saw a huge shopping complex on that side of the river. We decided to come back there the next day and check it out:-).
Another great day in Kyoto comes to an end!
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