This morning, I wanted a band-aid. I went to the front desk and said “Anata wa ego ga wakarimasu ka?” which means “Do you understand English?” The three girls behind the counter looked at each other and kind of giggled. I took this as a No. I thought about it for a second and said “Bandu-aidu?” and she understood perfectly. Take that, language barrier.

First stop in the Kyoto area was Ryoan-ji. The suffix “ji” means temple, so it’s Ryoan Temple. Temples are Buddhist in origin. So when I say “temple” it is a Buddhist place of worship. There are different kinds of Buddhism that I won’t get into, I suppose. Ryoan-ji is a Zen Buddhist temple. Zen Buddhism is based around the idea of using meditation to achieve enlightenment. So this is one of those sort of temples. The main focus of Ryoan-ji is their rock garden, something you’ve probably seen before. It was a [mostly] sand garden with 15 rocks in it. The 15 rocks, however, were placed in such a way that no matter what vantage point you stand at, you cannot see more than 14 of the rocks. Pretty cool. This was our first real run-in with the throngs of school children we wound up encountering. Apparently it was the time of year that all of the elementary and junior high schools take field trips to all of the places Japanese children apparently need to go to, including temples, shrines, museums, and etcetera. You know, every place we were going. It was cool, though, to see Japanese school children. I can’t entirely put into words why it was, it just was. At pretty much any chance I got in public, I would make groups of Japanese girls smile and giggle at me. That’s the power I have as a handsome gaijin in Japan. I enjoyed Ryoan-ji, but I wasn’t in much of a mood to relax or anything as I was still very excited about the whole “Japan” thing that was going on. And the reasonable amount of people there didn’t make it particularly easy, anyway.

After Ryoan-ji was Kinkaku-ji (Kinkaku Temple). This was a much larger Buddhist temple and we were allowed to walk around much more of the grounds. All of these temples and shrines are huge and logically produce very little money, but somehow, they are all over Japan. Despite it being one of the most densely populated places in the world, Japan still reserves all of this space for these temples and as far as I know does not complain about them not being the most effective use of space. I really would find it hard to believe that groceries or department stores would ever try to buy the land and turn it into a consumer place. These temples and shrines seem free from the worries of the rest of the world and operate on their own space, something that really doesn’t happen in America, except I suppose in our National Park system… It’s nice to see that they have a reverence for their past, though. God knows we don’t. Kinkaku-ji is a place that requires little of me to write about, as my pictures will speak for me. It was a huge place with a very enjoyable layout to walk around.

Following Kinkaku-ji was the Heian-jingu. The suffix “jingu” is a sort of modified form for “shrine” I think. I don’t really know the intricacies of the language to explain it. The place is a shrine erected to commemorate the Heian era of Japan. The Heian period is typically considered a high point in Japanese history. In front of Heian-jingu (well, in the road to it actually) is the largest torii in Japan (and I would suppose the world, logically, since Japan invented the torii (I think?)). A “torii” is a gate found at the entrance to Shinto shrines (whenever I say “shrine” it is a Shinto building… Shinto => Shrine, Buddhist => temple). It basically symbolizes the idea that the area beyond this gate is a pure area and not part of the earthly world. You know, something to that effect. If you would like some more knowledge, here you go: on many torii are “shimenawa,” rice straw ropes that symbolize a place where the Shinto gods (“kami”) come down to earth. Attached to shimenawa are usually “shide,” something anime fans will probably recognize. They are those diamond shaped chains of paper that act as wards against evil spirits. Anyway, back to Heian-jingu. It was really awesome that there was a place so big in a country as dense as Japan. It was just open space. Wide, open space.

The use of space in Japan is really… interesting.

Heian-jingu was followed by Rokuon-ji, the Golden Pavilion. I did not like it. It felt like an affront to Buddhism. It was a big temple, plated in real gold. It was very picturesque, especially since it was out on the water, but you couldn’t go near it. And the gold just felt showy and gaudy, which is not what Buddhism is about. The pictures are really good though.

The Kyoto Handicraft Center came next. I did not like the Kyoto Handicraft Center much at all. It was just a five story building for tourists. All the employees tried to speak English to me and it made me very uncomfortable. I didn’t come to Japan so these people could try and speak English to me. I hated it, I really did. My mind began to think in Japanese, and, very curiously, even though I lack access to the words, I feel that I know much more Japanese than I… do. I know very precisely what it sounds like and how to pronounce it and all… I have a very intimate relationship with the language, just not an expansive knowledge of the words. But for the first time in my life I understood how people can say they think or dream in other languages. We ate lunch at a buffet at the top of the building. It was terrible, and everyone hated it. The problem was that last year Lance had a bad group, 11 girls and one guy (who I actually went to grammar school with!) and of course, we all know how girls are: “Ew I’m not trying that are you trying that?” “No way that’s gross” “No way I’m eating that” “I think I’d rather die” etcetera. So the girls gave Lance a very poor impression of what people wanted to eat. The one cool place in the Kyoto Handicraft Center was a floor where they sold real woodblock prints of famous works. The guy who does the prints was in there, making them right in front of everyone. I found it terribly awesome.

Beyond that, I went outside. I walked around Kyoto for a few hours before it was time to go. I visited at least half a dozen alley shrines, and I was the only person to do so. I explored the area on my own and it felt good. I went to a grocery, I took tons of pictures, and I bought a waffle fish. I asked Shigeki what it was called but I failed to write it down. It was a waffle cooked in a fish shaped metal plate that had either custard or sweet bean paste on the inside. I got one with custard. It was pretty good. Just cool to have for 100 yen. I thought they were cookies at first and that’s what I really wanted, but waffle fish was cool too. Walking around the Kyoto area by myself was terribly relaxing and I highly recommend it to all. All of the alley shrines were completely deserted, and I have no idea if there were ever people there. Some of them were really big, some were not. I felt nervous going into most of them because I didn’t know if they were… closed, or something. No bad came of it though.

After the Kyoto Handicraft Center, we went to Sanjusangendo. “San juu san” means “three ten three” which, because of how they make their numbers, means 33 in Japanese. Anyway, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It was essentially a long hallway that you walked down. Inside were 1001 statues of the bodhisattva Kannon, the goddess of mercy. She has 1000 arms to help you. So there are 1001 statues, each with 27-32 arms, all about six feet tall. In the center is a giant, elaborate Kannon. In the 33 gendo in front of the statues were statues of each of the 28 guardian deities. No pictures were allowed, thankfully. They would only ruin the effect of the building. I bought postcards and a book because I felt I desperately needed to remind myself what the inside of this building looked like.

Fushimi Inari-Taisha was the last stop of the day. This was a mountain covered with shrines, and, supposedly, 10,000 torii on the way to the top. The pictures will talk for me. I thoroughly enjoyed hiking up the mountain and I wanted it to be longer, but the shrine at the top was a bit of a let down.

I was so tired at the end of this day.

Tonight’s dinner was one of those sushi-on-an-assembly-line places. You order something via a screen if there is something specific you want (i.e. dessert), but otherwise you just wait till something you like comes around and you pull it off and keep the plates. It was hella cheap, 100 yen a plate. Then at the end was the craziest thing. You put the plates from the table into a collector and it counts them and every 5 plates, something crazy happens. A game starts playing. A fellow would start fishing, or there would be some kind of race, or a slot machine, or something. If you won, you got a capsule toy. I thought it was pretty interesting. The sushi was good, it was definitely real sushi. Real, raw fish just isn’t up my alley though. It’s not just like tuna and salmon. There are a lot of fish out there, some of which have very unpleasant textures. It was an interesting experience though.

This was the best day of the trip, because we went to many amazing places, and the Sanjusangendo specifically blew my mind.

For more pictures from Day 3, click here.