I caught the sonic train at 6:58 from my local station and transferred to the shinkansen at the closest major station. This was my first time on the bullet train, and I have to say I was impressed. It was spacious, comfortable, and of course super fast. I arrived at Kyoto Station a little before 11:00.
Kyoto Station is huge. I got all sorts of lost inside.
Then I met Jamie, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel, and started the trip with a bang. Our first stop: Kiyomizudera.
Out of the bajillion or so temples in Kyoto (that's a rough estimate), Kiyomizudera is one of the big ones, and was appropriately crowded by tourists. And it's pretty easy to see why--the place is gorgeous. And the best part was the view.
While we were there, we saw what at first we thought were actual maiko--geisha-in-training--but it turns out there's a tourist industry in Kyoto where girls pay to get dressed up as geisha and get their pictures taken around town, and these ones had a photographer in tow, so I think that's what they actually were. Still pretty, though:
.Kiyomizudera is in an area with a bunch of other temples, so Jamie and I followed the crowd through little streets lined with tourist shops, eventually ending up at Chion-in. This temple had a special thing going on for autumn--a "Light-up" where they put lights on certain areas of the temple grounds and...well, I'll show rather than tell.
Honestly, the pictures don't do it justice. (It didn't help that my camera's night setting was acting up.) The place was breath-taking, and I was lucky to come to Kyoto in autumn when the event was going on.
And that's all for day 1. Not bad, considering we didn't even get started until the afternoon. Stay tuned for days 2-4!
