Day 8: Many Temples

Our day of exploring started off very early and I cannot get up and get out of this hotel any faster. We started early to get to Ryonaji Temple before it got crowded and I am very glad we did. As soon as we got to the gate a giant tour group from Europe showed up and we were able to beat them in. We started at the rock garden, which is meant to be viewed in silence, and we were lucky it was empty when we got in there.

After the garden we explored the complex which also had a pond and a few other small temples to see. After this temple we went to go see the Rokuon-ji temple, or the golden temple. I was very excited to see this and the place was insane. I thought going to see Stonehenge was a lot of people, but this was way worse. Luckily the complex was very big, but there were just people everywhere. It was almost impossible to get decent pictures of it, but I had a really good time getting to see it. I never would have thought I would ever get to see this in person. Luckily we could actually take pictures here because we couldn't go inside the temple.

We walked around this complex as well which included a lot of gardens and pretty scenery and little shops to buy souvenirs. At the end there was a tourist trap with a bunch of sellers trying to sell foods and candy and teas. They did have free samples though so we tried everything we could. Then ended up getting ice cream which was a mix of green tea and black sesame, yum!

We headed back into town to get some lunch at a place that our Japanese friends recommended: Mos Burger. We equated this to about the Japanese version of In-n-out burger. After lunch we went on a hike at the 1,000 gates site, I'm not really sure what it was called. But two of our friends from Kyoto Seika came to join us and show us around. We hiked up the steps under the bright orange gates and made it up to a spot with a beautiful view of the city.

When we realized this spot was only the halfway point we decided not to continue up all the way to the top. The view could not have gotten much better than this anyways. We spent some time at the halfway point getting some refreshments and learning Japanese words and phrases from people who actually know Japanese. After this we just went out to eat and wandered the city a bit and then returned to our wonderful hotel for one last night!