***
Japan trip
Day 5 - 10th June - Kiyomizudera Temple, Kyoto (Part 7)
Mister Donut claims to have the best donuts. I am annoyed, since that title rightfully belongs to Krispy Kreme.
In the temple, I'd earlier met a Singapore guy with what seemed to be his Japanese girlfriend. They were there for a holiday (must be many Singaporean guys' dream, hurr hurr)
What looked like a holy forest
More stones with bibs
More Shrines
Main hall from below
Drinking freely of the spring water. Some friends who went a month after me (ie in July) said the water was Y200 a pop then. I wonder if it was a summer charge or a new permanent charge.
I had some spring water. It tasted normal. I thought of packing some to go, but figured unpurified water (even if it was Holy Healing Water) could cause a stomachache if consumed in sufficiently-large quantities.
Blurb on the spring
Ironically, considering the temple was named after the spring water ("清水寺"), the spring was last on the visitation route.
It took me a while to figure out that the UV steriliser was for the scoops and not the water. Maybe UV removes the holiness from the water.
In the fountain enclosure
2 Cantonese-speaking (probably from Hong Kong) women (one is behind a pillar) taking the water. For some reason the guy in their group wasn't dressed as a samurai.
No Japanese temple would be complete without a donations box.
There's also a sign with something about firefighting. I suspect it says: "If the temple is burning down, it's fine to use the Holy Water to put out the flames"
Stilts supporting main hall
Pond
Figurines
Very familiar-looking cream puffs ("Kiyomizuzaka"). Compare them to:
Ginkakuji syu Cream Puffs
The only difference was that the ones I had this day weren't hot (but this was probably because it was the end of the day, ie tourist cycle). Oh, and these had no sesame seeds on top.
At least the wrapper was nicer
The people outside Ginkakuji were better at merchandising: there was ice cream IIRC.
Green tea primer: Gyokuro, Sencha, Matcha, Genmaicha
"Kyoto Uji-cha. Uji district in Kyoto is the most famous Japanese tea in Japan" - I'm sure all the other districts say the same about theirs
Soy donuts
Mysterious fried shit (they turned out to be stuffed fishcakes on eating). I had a choice of Ginger, Yasai (vegetables), ???, ???, ebi (prawns) and cheese. I went for cheese.
??? dolls
As I went down the hill, just after 6, I noticed that all the restaurants were closed or closing. Presumably only tourists go up and down that hill.
Elephant taxi
One of the many Temples in Kyoto. This was on the way down the slope from Kiyomizudera to the bus stop.
Entrance to the temple
"Rice Ball Cafe - using only the purest water
& Pottery Water Filter Shop"
No, I am not eating rice balls from a shop that makes pottery water filters.
Shrine besides bus stop. If you throw a stone in Kyoto you'll hit a Shrine, Geisha or Yakuza.
Old people rummaging in dustbins must be an Asian Value
Toji, from the bus
"Curry House. Good smell, good curry"
People with kittens near my hostel
The Kyoto Foreign Language School's motto is "Pax Mundi Per Linguas" ("World Peace through Languages"). As if. The more languages you have, the less peace.
There was a 24 hour supermarket right beside my hostel, which was very convenient.
Van Houten which doesn't have palm oil in it. So it's not always shit chocolate.
Free curry with a bottle of Coke. Of all the possible free gifts...
The supermarket also had cooked food.
8 Treasures. How many can you count? I only see 4, since I doubt corn starch and MSG count.
More cooked food: tofu, takoyaki and more. I have no idea why, since fried stuff doesn't keep well.
Y208 solution to my lack of Vitamin C consumption.
Late dinner
My butt hurt, probably from all the walking, especially uphill. Gah. Besides that, I was so exhausted I took a short nap (~half an hour), which was a very bad idea since I then couldn't get to sleep, took more than an hour to doze off and slept less than 5 hours that night, and had to extend my projected waking time for the next day by an hour (which screwed it slightly).
