Kyoto Day 2

Since our first attempt to see Kiyomizu-dera was a bust, that was the first stop on our agenda Friday morning. We wised up and took a taxi to the entrance, which was worth every penny. Even though it was early, the place was totally packed! There were tons of school groups there, and lots of the kids tried to practice their English with us. 

Me and the kids at the entry gate.

Another awesome pagoda.

View of Kyoto from the Kiyomizu-dera balcony.

So, some cool stuff about this place that I learned from Wikipedia: The current construction was built in 1633, and they didn't use a single nail in the entire building. My favorite tidbit of information was that there's a Japanese expression "to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu," which is the English equivalent of the saying "to take the plunge." The expression was based on a belief that if one jumped from the 13m tall balcony and survived, they would get one wish. While jumping is now illegal, there were 234 jumps recorded from 1603-1868, 85% of whom survived! Yikes! There was no info on whether or not the survivors wishes were granted though :)

Lily, Sydney, & Gunnar

After Kiyomizu, we went across town to Arashiyama on the western side of Kyoto to see the bamboo forest and visit a monkey park. One of Sydney's major achievements during our trip was mastering the escalator. While she's never been afraid to get off, she was 100% terrified of stepping on. Since there were tons of escalators in the subway, she had many opportunities to practice. By the end of the trip, she was saying, "I get to practice another escalator!" and, "I did it all by myself!"

On this particular day, she was performing a little song and dance while we rode up.

The train station exit was really cool- the ceiling and posts were covered in green bamboo.

After a short walk down the quaint main street of Arashiyama, we turned onto a small side road and walked right into the bamboo forest.

For the super rich and lazy (kidding, I'm just cheap), you could pay big bucks to have a guy pull you in one of these cool rickshaws.

Shawn was so excited to get to walk around for a few minutes.

It was a really gorgeous day, and the landscape was beautiful. Spencer had a good time trying to be all artistic with the camera.

This was my favorite "landscape" shot he took.

Just past these boats, we came to the entrance of the monkey park. After paying, we had to walk up like a billion stairs, and then hiked about a half mile up a mountain to get to the monkeys. In true Japanese style, there were some pretty funny signs along the way giving us the rules to the monkey park.

My explaining the "Don't stare at the monkeys in the eye" rule to Sydney single handedly ruined this experience for her. She kept asking why we couldn't look at the monkeys, and I kept telling her if you look them in the eye they might think you want to fight. She took that as, "If you look at a monkey at all, it will attack you." She was scared the entire time.

The coolest part of our monkey experience was feeding them. We essentially went into a cage, bought little baggies of apples and peanuts, and fed the monkeys through the fence. They poked their arms through and took the food right out of our hands.

This little guy was the favorite to feed.

Even Shawn was brave enough to feed a few of them.

Some of the monkeys were really territorial and mean, and they'd come over to other monkeys and try to knock them off the cage or steal their food. That really helped calm Sydney's nerves. We didn't feed any of those ones.

Outside, the monkeys were pretty much just walking around right next to us. We were so high up that there was a great view of the city. Spencer was trying to take our picture, and he was getting really frustrated that the kids wouldn't look at him.

 Guess that's what happens when there are monkeys walking all around you.

Sydney trying to not look at the monkey.

Making our way back down the mountain.

Our final stop for the day was one of my favorites. After another long walk from the subway station- broken up with a quick visit to a yummy bakery (one of about ten we hit up on our trip)- we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Kinkaku-ji, also called the Golden Pavilion.

Once the site of a villa of a powerful statesman, the Golden Pavilion is now a Buddhist hall containing relics of Buddha. We couldn't go inside, but just the building itself and the grounds were pretty spectacular.

We got there as the sun was slowly making its way to the horizon, which really made the gold leaf on the building shine. I also loved the reflection in the water. It was so pretty and peaceful.

On our way out of this site, we came across several ladies wearing kimono and asked them for a picture. I like that we can use the ruse of "Can we get a picture of you with our cute kids?" to make it less weird that we're asking complete strangers to be in our photo.

Is it just me, or do I look like a giant?

Kyoto Day 1

Early the next day, we made our way over to the Toji Temple, which has a famous five tiered pagoda. I loved seeing all of the Japanese architecture that we don't really see a ton in Okinawa.

View from the road.

Inside the main gate.

This temple was full of golden Buddha's and other cool statues (no pictures allowed inside).

There were lots of cool shrines and temples all over the grounds- notice the "zen" raked rock garden in front of this one.

A monk going in to worship.

The pagoda was definitely the main attraction. At 187 feet, it's the tallest pagoda in Japan. It was originally built in the 826, then burned down four times after being struck by lightening. This one was built in 1644, and is now topped with a lightening rod.

I was expecting fall foliage to be in full force, but the leaves were just barely changing. Since Sydney, Lily, and Gunnar cared less about these buildings, they kept busy by collecting colored leaves that had fallen to the ground.

We couldn't go inside, but just looking at the architecture was incredible. I am always so fascinated to see incredibly old buildings that are just insanely beautiful. They make me wonder how on earth they pulled this off without modern machinery? (Aaron's answer to that question was time and slave labor.)

As we were snapping pictures, we saw a woman on the grounds in a traditional kimono. In true tourist fashion, we asked if it would be ok for the kids to get a picture with her.

Sydney and Lily, with the nice lady in a kimono.

If Shawn wasn't asleep or walking around, we wanted to be in his Daddy's arms.

Self portrait of our family- in a mirrored wall on our way back to the train station.

The crew: Gunnar, Kristen, Lily, Aaron, Me, Syd, & Shawn, waiting for our train.

Our next stop was the Gion District, famous for its geishas (which we didn't see). We walked down Shijo St. where we admired the little shops and stopped for lunch.

Shijo-dori was quite the hoppin' place.

At the end of the street was the Yasaka Shrine, a Shinto shrine with lots of other cool buildings around it.

Spencer & Sydney, inside the shrine gate.

Shawn & Me. I loved the cool lanterns decorating this stage.

Yasaka Shrine

Spencer & Syd, humoring me with a photo of the pretty grounds.

Just a bit more walking and we came to another ginormously impressive gate leading up to more shrines and temples.

Can you find Spencer?

Sydney was cracking me up crawling up the giant stairs.

See the giant gold Buddha inside? Would have gotten a closer shot, but there was a sign that said no pictures allowed.

The main attraction up here was actually under construction, so it was all covered up. After checking out a few more buildings, we made our way back down to see one more site before we ran out of daylight.

Pretty leaves, and a pretty view of the city.

One of the places I really wanted to go was Fushimi Inari, mainly because it was pretty high up on the rankings for Kyoto on tripadvisor.com. It's a series of Torii gates that go on, and on, and on. I read that it was built to honor Inari, the Shinto god of rice.

The kids and me in the main entrance to the torii gate tunnel.

These gates seriously went on forever. When we'd come out of one section, there would be another huge stretch of them in another direction. My legs were so tired from holding Shawn in the carrier! We walked for a good half hour and didn't even scratch the surface of how far these went on. We chose to cut it short and head back to the subway, and were pleasantly surprised with a beautiful sunset on our way downhill. It had been cloudy all day, so it was nice to see a colorful sky.

We took a quick pitstop at the bathrooms near the main entrance. They only had "Japanese style" toilets, and I was cracking up at the diagram of proper squatty potty technique.

Judge me all you want, but my goal when I use these things is to not get any pee on my feet. I mean, really, do they expect girls to be able to aim into these things? Especially when you're about to pee your pants? C'mon!

By the time we were ready to head to a Buddhist temple called Kiyomizu-dera, it was already dark. We thought it might look cool all lit up, so we started heading in that direction. The walk from the subway to the entrance of the site was pretty far, and a lot of it was uphill. By that point all kids were whining from tired legs, so Aaron put Gunnar on his shoulders and Lily on his back and carried them the whole way up. Spencer was pushing Shawn in the stroller, and I was carrying Syd, but I made him switch when we were about 3/4 of the way there because I thought my arms were going to fall off. The only reason I'm writing all of this is to help paint the picture of why we were so disappointed to find this:

Closed. Bam.

Seriously, it closed at 6pm! What major tourist attraction is closed at dinnertime? Lame. We were about forty minutes late, and all the security guards in the nearby booth were staring at us while we rested on the steps and still attempted to take pictures.

Shawn was completely engrossed in this treat we'd gotten en route to the temple. It was this squeezable thing filled with grape flavored gelatinous stuff. He was sucking it down like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

In fact, when Sydney was done with hers, he was happy to polish off the rest of it. We were cracking up at him sucking in his cheeks, making sure he got every last drop.

Don't worry, we brushed his teeth really well that night.