Continued from Kyoto Day 2 Part 2.

Another day of not sleeping well. Our hotel is filled with…yup, you guessed it, Chinese tourists. Early in the morning, groups of them would leave their hotel rooms, and they would converse SUPER LOUDLY in the hallways for what seems like an eternity. Fuckers!!

Another day where we wanted to get out of the door early and it didn’t happen. It’s a tad bit past 11 by the time we got out the door. Good thing we don’t plan on seeing as much today. It’s also forecast to rain today, and the sky looks like it just might rain today.

Back to the bus station.

We are using the same strategy that we applied yesterday, we are going to take this bus as far as we can and work our way backwards to try to minimize the amount of other tourists that we come across.

Nearly 40 minutes later, we’ve arrived at our first sight of the day.

Entrance to Kinkakuji, the most famous sight of Kyoto.

Surprisingly, not nearly as many people as we thought. It’s noon, so I am guessing that all the tour bus tourists are off somewhere having lunch!!! Yes!!! All the travelers here at this moment are all independent travelers.

The whole time we’ve been in Kyoto, there have been hordes of students in school uniform touring the city. We think they are students from all over Japan here on extended field trips.

There you go, the most famous sight of Kyoto.

RL took a spy photo of this lady. Umbrella, check. Mismatched outfit, check. Heels, check. Let us guess….Chinese.

Despite this pavilion being so famous, the gardens here are just ok. I much prefer many of the other gardens in Kyoto.

We snapped a few photos of the pavilion and then we got our move on to the exit.

But not before the ice cream vending machine!!

Winning.

Found our bus stop by accident. We were going to walk to a different intersection, then we saw our bus, going the opposite direction on this street. I guess the stop is on this street and not the street over.

Doing imitation of my drink.

Oh look, the bus is here!

A man who loves his car. He’s waxing the door in a parking lot to a temple…he’s a taxi driver. They have amazing sense of pride in their jobs here in Japan.

Ryoanji Temple, famous for its rock garden.

Looks like the forecast may be right today, rain seems to be coming.

Tons of students here too.

Entering the main building. All shoes come off.

The famous rock garden. It’s a lot smaller than we thought.

Yup…that’s it.

Zen…or so they say.

A little rock garden.

OK, well, saw the rock garden. It was ok…time to head back out.

Moss everywhere!!

Interestingly trimmed trees.

What’s a temple without some sort of renovation.

Wash my hands.

A stupa, though, they called it a pagoda here.

It starts to rain. I break out my umbrella, which matches my shirt…because I am cool like that.

Now, time to move on. We got back onto the bus.

Need to make a transfer to a different bus.

Here’s our next bus.

Nice and empty.

Tenryuji. Known for…actually, I don’t know what it’s known for.

It has started to rain.

It has started to pour rain…oh oh…

That’s a very little umbrella.

Kimonos do not make good rain gear. It’s POURING rain now.

It’s raining so hard that we had to stop to seek shelter under an intermediate gate in the temple complex. We didn’t even make it out the front door.

Maybe it’ll slow down…

Maybe it’ll slow down after this round of downpour…

OK, it’s not slowing down…it’s actually picking up big time. Time to make a run for it.

We ran out of the temple to try to find a restaurant to duck into and have lunch, but no luck. There are no eating establishments that we want to eat at here.

It was raining so hard that our umbrellas were pretty useless. Our feet are soaked through and through.

We did finally manage to make it to this small train station.

Still pouring rain.

How about some unfocused green tea ice cream!?

Ugh…

All caught in the rain.

After about 15 minutes, the rain slowed a little…just a little. Screw it, we are going to head out there. Our feet are fully soaked anyway, there’s really not too much left to lose.

Yup, stepped right into that giant puddle…I hate wet shoes.

Up ahead is the bamboo grooves, and it’s the reason why we are risking melting in the rain. The bamboo better be awesome.

OK, this is promising.

The graveyard behind Tenryuji.

We realized that bamboo, unlike most trees, make terrible rain cover. It’s still pouring rain and our cheapo umbrellas have started leaking on us along the seams. Damnit!

But this place is magical! I think it might be even better in the rain because most of the other tourists are not here.

More graves around here.

For a while, it was raining so hard that we thought about turning around…glad we didn’t make that mistake.

Pretty fucking epic.

It’s hard to take photos in here. There’s the pouring rain, and holding our umbrellas. Then there’s the huge contrast between the darkness of the ground and the light of the sky.

I think this is my favorite place in Kyoto.

Seriously cool. I love how the rain turns the chalky green of the bamboo into this verdant green. Photos came straight from the camera with no photoshop.

At the end of the bamboo walk, there’s a train station…we went down to the train station only to find out that this station only serves an outbound scenic train. Doh!

I guess we’ll have to walk back in this awesomeness again.

RL spots this snake on this tree. Smart snake to try to blend in on the few nonbamboo trees.

Love the yellow dried leafs contrast with the bright green.

Human centipede!! Haha.

The rain has more or less stopped by now. Seeing more tourists heading into the bamboo grove as we are leaving. I guess the heavy rain was a hidden blessing.

Out of the bamboo and back into the city.

Found the correct train station.

An rare occurrence in Japan. Our train is running late due to the huge storm that we were just caught up in.

It’s here! Can’t wait to get back and take off these wet shoes.

Kyoto after a good soaking.

Back at Kyoto Station.

We got back to our hotel, and wet shoes and wet socks come off. Yes! One of the greatest feelings ever. Then straight to the coin laundry inside our hotel to do some laundry that we’ve been piling up. I think we paid $7 total to do a huge load of laundry….it still pisses me off to think that I had to pay $81 to do a load of laundry in China. Fuckers!

After laundry, it was time for dinner. The fake food displays in Japan never fails to amuse me.

Went back to the food court where we had dinner last night. We are gonna try a curry place, and they have this vending machine as cashier. We’ve got this!

Ohhhh!!! Looks good! Ate it all, I was hungry.

Then it’s time to sit on some outdoor tables and have my green beer. There aren’t too many outdoor tables out here in Japan, unlike Austin.

Green beer is beer with green tea and some sort of sweet syrup. Good, but once is enough.

Some wedge fries to finish the night.

Tonight, we pack because tomorrow we are heading to Tokyo. As we were packing in our hotel room, a group of people walked past our room door talking very loudly. Just as they were passing by our door, we heard a loud fart and then everyone starts laughing!! LOL!!!

To be continued at Tokyo Day 1.