After an hour on the train we arrived and walked around the Nara park. There were deer everywhere! On the side walks and grass and road median. We took some pics and then headed to the wooden temple.
It was a really neat structure and I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Eliza bought some souvenirs for her book club friends and I bought a Japanese fan (it was hot that day and we knew we would use it lots throughout the rest of our trip.
After the temple we went for an udon lunch before heading back toward Kyoto. Along the way back we stopped at the Inari Tori gates stop which was lined with over 10,000 red gates.
A little older man overheard us asking for directions and offered to guide us in the right direction. He took us through several temple areas connected by long paths lined with red torii gates. About 10 minutes up the path we had a group photo and went our separate ways. The torii gate path was filled with lots of little shrines adorned with foxes, some of the foxes even wore red capes. The meaning escaped me.
Back down the hill we raced as we wanted to see the kiramizu temple that we had missed the previous day.
We took a bus that dropped us off within a 15 min walk of the temple. We hiked up through the tiny streets and made it to the temple. It was quite crowded with tourists and school children and I imagined that it would be very peaceful and beautiful had the crowds been greatly reduced. Never the less we wandered around and enjoyed the view of Kyoto.
After the temple we walked down the hill through a different path than what we took up. This path was filled with gift and food shops. There were dozens of free samples of otabe which is a thin motchi filled with red bean. Yumm.
When we made it back down and to the hotel Eliza and I went for a walk and grabbed some food by ourselves. We went to a restauraunt where you order your food from a vending machine that spits out a ticket that you give the lady at the desk. Eliza ordered another curry katsu and I ordered some chicken egg rice thing. It was a nice and simple meal followed by a good nights sleep.
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