Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Highlights from Kyoto

Here are a few comments and highlights from our time in Kyoto (which is like Tokyo spelled inside-out).

From Kyoto


One of the things we enjoyed was renting bikes and riding all over town. It was a little scary at times, but all the pedestrians, cars and other bikers got out of the way and we survived!

We rode the bikes to the Golden Pavilion,

From Kyoto


and then to the Imperial Palace where we took a tour.

From Kyoto


You couldn't go in the buildings, but we had a tour guide who taught us a lot. It was interesting that there was far less color used on the buildings than what we saw in China. I thought the gardens were the most impressive sight as the buildings started to all look the same after a while.

From Kyoto


The next day we visited one of the many Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

From Buddhist Temple


Kyoto is supposedly the spiritual capital of Japan, and this was a working temple. The following pictures show a few of the hoops that you have to jump through to get your prayers answered in this belief system.

From Buddhist Temple


From Buddhist Temple


From Buddhist Temple


And here is the Japanese version of voodoo -

From Buddhist Temple


Rebecca and I thought this display was interesting. Apparently when they offer food to the gods, they put bibs on them -

From Buddhist Temple


The highlight of our second day in Kyoto was a visit to a studio where you could be made up as a geisha or samurai. It was hard for Nathan to be extremely convincing as a samurai without facial hair, but Rebecca's transformation was striking. I think these photos show that they had a lot of fun.

From geisha


From geisha


From geisha


From geisha


From geisha


From geisha

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Great costumes! I can't believe how geisha-like Rebecca looked.