23 Days in Japan: Catching up in Kyoto and some photos

We are getting ready to leave Kyoto this morning, so I will try to catch up on what we've been doing here.
Kenny and I have both been to Kyoto before, so there was, perhaps, a little less pressure to try to do and see everything. A person could spend a year in Kyoto and still not visit all the temples, shrines and gardens. And then there is the shopping.

Schoolchildren on a field trip leaving Ise with us.

Astroboy greets us at Kyoto Station.

After checking in to our hotel, we made a trip to Kiyomizu-dera, and more specifically, Otowa-no-taki Spring, which is supposed to have healing powers.

I drink from the spring.

Kenny and I then walked, and shopped, through Gion, the old part of the city, and across the river and down a long and street full of tiny restaurants.

A shop sign. Notice the date.

We emerged into a bustling intersection, and found our way to Musashi Sushi, a conveyor belt, or kaiten-zushi place. I love sushi, and this was very good sushi. I was entranced with the tempting little plates going around and around.
And that was all of Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Kenny wanted to visit a small garden that he hadn't seen before, and then nearby, the Myoshin-ji compound, which includes 46 sub-temples.

A small temple garden at Hokongoin

The entrance to the Myoshin-ji complex.

In Kyoto, until next Wednesday, many temples are opening areas not usually available to the public. At Myoshin-ji, this included a third-story room (up some steep stairs) where the ceiling was covered with paintings of angels and dragons, and collection of statues lined three walls. We sat on tatami mats, and listened to a lecture in Japanese and took the time to savor the artwork and architecture. After climbing back down, we took a guided tour. This included a visit to the lecture hall, an enormous room that featured another painted dragon on the ceiling. This dragon is painted in such a way that its eyes seem to be watching you no matter where you are standing. We also toured the monks' bathhouse and a few other areas. Then we spent a while walking around on our own, poking our heads into the gates of a few of the sub-temples to peek at the little gardens.
We also fit in a visit to the garden of Taizo-in Temple.

After the temple, we visited a great little restaurant that cooked me up a nice wheat-free meal, and then it was time to visit the Kodai Yuzen-in, where we were able to learn about the process for creating the intricate images on kimonos, and watch two artists at work. Of course there is a gift shop. And of course we went shopping.
I set out on my own later in the afternoon to visit Takashimaya and do a little more shopping. This is a great place to get the experience of shopping in Japan. Every package is wrapped like it's for Christmas and the service is, of course, amazing.
My day ended on a strange little note. I was taking a break on one of the chairs at the front of the store when an older man stopped and asked me if I was American. He shook my hand very enthusiastically, then sat down and started pulling little scraps of paper from his backpack. He had written out a number of sentences in English, but in each one he had a question about the grammar (why, for instance, was it incorrect to say "a moonlight"). I'll admit I was too tired to even think about what was going on, and he was pleasant and engaging. We talked for a while about America and Japan and food and culture, and he told me he's a professor of English in the process of compiling a dictionary of English usage. Or something like that.
Kenny and I finished the day with Italian food in the restaurant here at the hotel. I used the Japanese no-wheat card there, too.
For Thursday, Kenny and I headed out separately.
I first visited Sanjusangen-do. I had been here before, in 2007, but found it so affecting that I needed to visit again. I'll admit this felt more like a pilgrimage than a museum tour.
In the early afternoon, I met up with Mauricio, who had been in the Tokyo Noh workshop. (He is in Japan working on a Spanish-language encyclopedia of Japanese performing arts) We had tea (at Starbucks!) and then took a bus to the outside of Gion, where we wandered through some temples and a into an enormous hill-side cemetery. We were high up in the cemetery, looking out over the city toward the west when the five o'clock temple bells were ringing.
We wandered around Gion for a while and then met Kenny for dinner in a tiny little restaurant, where we had simple hot pots - rice and salmon for me.
It's Friday morning now, time to pack for Matsuyama.