We woke up this morning fully planning to rent bikes and trek around town. Unfortunately the rain had something to say about those plans. We thought we might wait out the weather and walk to the nearby Nishi Hongan-ji, but 5 hours later we were still walking!
Right: The Nishi Hongan Temple is representative of the interesting balance of history and present day found everywhere in Kyoto. Half of the temple is under construction, covered by a temporary metal roof, while the traffic speeds by.
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One of the highlights of our day was visiting the Gion area of Kyoto, the only neighbourhood in Japan where Geishas can be seen. We were lucky enough to see three Geishas. Jill spotted the first two walking down the main street. As we followed them down a side street, we came face to face with another Geisha coming out of her tea house! We have to admit that we felt a little bit like tourists in St. Jacobs taking pictures of the Old Order Mennonites, but, seeing a Geisha up close in their authentic kimonos and obis was very exciting, something most tourists aren't lucky enough to witness.
We walked through a few more temples, found Chris a 'Daniel san' karate head band and a cotton kimono for Jill then headed back to Kyoto station to take the train back to Osaka.
We felt our visit to Japan wouldn't be complete without a little pampering so we went to a Japanese spa called Spa World. It was an 8 floor building that had a water park on the top floor equipped with water slides and indoor/outdoor hot tubs. We enjoyed the first hour together at the water park and then split up for the next two hours and headed down to our gender specific floors to enjoy the spa.
Since each floor separates the men from the women, no bathing suits were necessary. This was both a liberating yet vulnerable experience for both of us. Although scary at first, we quickly enjoyed the many styles of saunas and hot tubs available to us. Jill especially enjoyed being able to blow dry her hair - something she hasn't done since being in Korea. All in all, it was an extremely relaxing evening and a great way to end a busy week of walking. We are definitely planning on visiting some spas in Korea when we get back.
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Kyoto has so many beautiful gardens, we have a page of photos
devoted to them elsewhere on the web site, but here are a couple
of the best, the photo bottom right is of a local cemetery.
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