Daibutsu (+pics)

Friday then, after a few hours of sleep and getting out around 10ish or so, I walked myself over to Kitano Tenman-gu, another temple in Kyoto, in the north west section of town. Luckily, the Uno House was more or less in the middle of town, and most things were fairly easy to get to. Also wandered, from there, to Kinkaku-ji, the entirely gold temple (gold leaf on laquered wood), which although impressive on it's lake, was very crowded as well. And, after seeing so many temples, it's along the lines of: "Oh well, this temple's gold... cool... (picture)... yeah, next?" Which is bad, so I needed to find a new way of doing things. Nice, but yeah, too many temples, and that's not including the little ones that are on every block or so.
Stopped off on the way through Funaokayama-koen (park and tempe), or was it Daitoku-ji. Pretty sure it was the former. Resisted against getting a pizza at Pizza Hut, and opted for some veggies and ramen. Still haven't had a good pizza in months. Probably better for me that way. The veggies nd ramen were probably the heathiest thing I've eaten here yet.

Saturday I made a day trip out to Nara, the prevous old capitol site of Japan. Got a day pass for the train as I was still waiting to activate the JR pass so as to use it to it's full potential.

Saw the Daibutsu and traveled around Nara park for awhile. Nara is the word for deer in Japanee, and there were lots of them. Had to be careful though, as I found out, even if you're just petting them, they'll nible on things, like my map, that didn't come away intact. God forbid you should try to feed them with the ￥150 food cakes that vendors offer; you give one out and the herd of them follows you until you run out and are obviously not carrying any more of themw, and even that doesn't always deter them. Several children were quite distressed and in the process of fleeing deer being a bit on the agressive side during my walk.

Big Buddha was cool, as well as the accompanying statuary (pictures, soon, I promise). Forgot to go through the Daibutu nose though; there's a hole in one of the pillars of the temple that is supposedly as wide as the buddha's nostril (yes, *big* buddha), and if you go through it you'll be ensured of englightenment. I forgot where it was and left before re-reading of its location. But, ah well. I'm still not too worried. ;-) Apparently it's a treat for the locals to watch big westerners try to squeeze through as it is, still, a fairly small hole.

Back to Kyoto and the Uno House. Caught another sento. A guy from New York was there and mentioned that on his previous trip through Kyoto there was a bunch of locals on the bank of the river for saturday night. So, went to that, and caught a group of rather talented fire dancers (poi and flaming sticks, though no swords or other implements I've seen used before), along with some drumming and some didjeridoo. Tried out the didj a bit after they were done, but that was about it. Caught some beers. Then the rain caught the rest of us and that was the end of it.

Mind you, these are in a random and mostly reverse order. No time to fix now.

Yet another. I should figure out what these are called sometime. I think they might actually be in the shot though.
Another statue in the area.
Nifty statuary near the Daibutsu.
That would be the Daibutsu. Looks smaller in the picture.
Nara in nara.
Happy teeth!
Best Engrish I've found all trip. Mind you, this was not an impressive car by far. Some kind of compact, ignorable type. Fantastic.
Kinkaku-ji in all it's magnificent spleandor.
So, funny story. Coming back from Nara I accidentally got on the Green Car train to make the return trip. Had to pay an extra 500 yen. Not horrible, but, Cthulhu got an extra special ride. Picture, 500 yen.