Planning our trip to Japan was very challenging, so many different places to see. We decided to spend 2 nights in Kyoto. We found that was our favorite city, and hope to return. Kyoto is magical. Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan for over 1000 years. It is located in the Kansai region of Japan. It is known as the City of Ten Thousand Shrines.
We decided to visit the Arashiyama area west of Kyoto, it was challenging getting there as everything was in Japanese, and we had a very nice young Japanese man point us to the right track. Once on board figuring where to get off was a different story. We did get off at the right place; there was an English speaking Japanese man who pointed us in the right direction and off we went.
This is a very nice shopping and eating area with many shrines and temples and the bamboo forest path as well. We lucked out and met two very nice young Japanese ladies in a shop who spoke English; one was Ai and Ekubo. Ekubo was wearing a kimono and I asked if I could take a picture with her. She agreed. So we said our good byes. About 20 minutes later we saw them again and we asked them where one of the shrines was located; they said to follow them because they were going there too. In conversation, we realized we were hitting all the same places they asked us if they wanted us to hang with them. YEAH!! You speak English and Japanese, we‘re on. So we visited various sites such as the Golden Temple, the bamboo path. They took us to Tenryu (Temple of The Heavenly Dragon). We did not know about this temple; and it is only open to the public once a year. The Dragon’s eyes follow you no matter where you are in the room.
After visiting all these sites we went to eat a famous Kyoto dinner eel over rice it was so delicious. We were in the Gion region. We did the Geisha night walk and that is where we parted from our new friends Ai and Ekubo. Ekubo will be coming to the states this fall to study at University and our friend Ai is studying at the University in Kyoto. We hope to see them both again.
I will blog about all these places individually; as not to would be an injustice.
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