 |
| You pray to foxes here...moe~ |
Warning: Long ass post up ahead with lots of pictures
Kyoto, the previous capital of Japan. Filled with temples, mountains, and most importantly... school field trips filled with schoolgirls! HUUZZZAHHHH
The first thing we did when we arrived in Kyoto was go to this fox temple called Fushimi Inari-Taisha.
 |
| Shrines after staircase into shrine |
 |
| You can wash your hands here...not sure about drinking |
 |
| Ended up splitting into 2 paths...they go to the same place though |
Going even deeper into the temple, there are sections in the forest and partially on the mountains. There was a god-level amount of mosquitoes here. Within 5 minutes, my friends and I were bitten around 3 times so we quickly ditched. Here's a few more pictures of the temple.
Afterwards, we went to check in at our hotel. It was Japanese style, our whole room's floor was made of tatami mats, we had a tea-set, futons and yukata in the closet.
 |
| Us being cheesy with tea + timed camera |
We took a bath in the nice communal bath and then went to Gion Matsuri. It is one of Japan's most famous festivals and lasts a whole month. There were many festival food stands and lots of cute girls in Yukata ~_~ I ate shaved ice, takoyaki and fried chicken. It was extremely chaotic and very tiring since you could never stop moving due to the torrent of human bodies.
 |
| There were a shitton of people |
 |
| There were a lot of people and couples sitting alongside the river |
The next day, we went straight to Kiyomizudera, a temple connected to the side of a mountain.
 |
| The entrance to the temple |
 |
| View of the mountain off the temple side |
 |
| You can wash your hands and drink this water |
After Kiyomizudera, we decided to go to Ginkakuji. On the map, it looked really close, but it ended up taking us 1 hour in the hot blazing sun, with big backpacks and 4 bottles of drinks each to walk there from Kiyomizudera. We raged when we realized there was a bus that went directly there from the station while going back (it stopped at Kiyomizudera too).
 |
| The Philosopher's Path (Tetsugaku no Michi), the path to the temple |
Cool trivia: The building that you capture Ho-Oh from in Pokemon is actually based on Ginkakuji. You can't really see it in my photo, but there's a small little metal looking bird/phoenix decoration on the top.
 |
| Dat building. |
By the time we finished going though Ginkakuji, we were tired and went back to the shinkansen to go to our next destination. However, before leaving, we decided to buy 2 boxes of the local snacks called Yatsuhashi.
 |
| Aww yeahh |
