Today we headed off towards the Philosopher's Walk (Tetsugaku no Michi). It received its name because an old Kyoto University professor used to walk along it every day.. So, we took the subway to Keage station and proceeded to walk north. First we came to this set of railroad tracks with sakura trees lining it.
After a little bit of a walk, we came to the first major temple along this route, Nanzen-ji temple.
The garden in the back of the subtemple (I believe it was Konchi-in) was VERY beautiful and extremely peaceful. You could sit on the porch of the temple and just enjoy the beautiful view and warm weather.
Next we came up to the main entrance (below, left) and main temple building.
You could actually go up to the 2nd floor of the main building, so we went up to check out the view. Not too bad...
And finally, here are a few of the other buildings within the complex.
And another small garden in the back of one of them.
From Nanzen-ji, it was a short walk to the next temple, Eikan-do temple.
Eikando was huge! There were a lot of really neat buildings in this temple complex
And here are a few pics of the main building
Also, you could walk up a few sets of stairs and get to a final building, from which you had a great view of Kyoto.
The grounds were very pretty. After seeing Kinkakuji a couple of days ago, Ginkakuji was a little disappointing. (I later found out that this was on purpose. The leader who built Kinkakuji wanted to spend a lot of money and make a fancy temple, while the subsequent leader build Ginkakuji as an "opposite" to Kinkakuji). But, to the, the coolest part of this day happened while we were walking along the path. Being a weekend day (and a beautiful day at that), there were a TON of people walking along this path. Up ahead I could see a fairly large crowd of people gathered, but I couldn't tell why. It turns out there were 3 Maiko (apprentice geisha) who were out sightseeing themselves. There was a large crowd of people taking pictures of them (which I, of course, joined in). What a wonderful surprise. I was hoping to see a geisha (or maiko) in full makeup while i was in Kyoto, but I really didn't think that I actually was going to be able to. The best part of it was that I was able to get a picture with one of them. I originally wasn't going to bother them, but a person right in front of me asked to get a picture with them, and they obliged. So, right after that, I politely asked if I could get a picture and she said yes. Yay! Unfortunately, I look like a goof in the picture. ^_^ After spending time at the Philosopher's walk, we headed back to shopping areas of Kyoto to do some shopping. I didn't really buy anything special during this time, but I did find a "Hello Project" official store!! Unfortunately, the time that we were wandering around was a bit later in the evening and the store was already closed. I'll have to get back there when it's open. Man Jesse's gonna be jealous. We were supposed to meet Ted's friend from Nintendo, Ume, again but he was feeling sick, so we postponed that until tomorrow.
