Kyoto Day 5 - Last of the temples...

The last full day in Kyoto we bought day passes and decided to criss-cross the city to catch up on the last must see temples.  This might be a good time to confess that we've been travelling by the seat of our pants (as they say and I don't really get).  We've rarely planned based on bus or train times but magically we seem to be on time.  But we seem to have exhausted our magic juju in the last day.  First we had to rely just on buses, took us a while to figure out the actual number and at one point in the afternoon we hopped a bus to a temple we saw a day ago.  In our defense we realized the area seem familiar and recognized that it was a repeat temple before we actually hiked up to it!

But the two temples we saw were amazing and glad we left it till the last day...a good lasting memory.  First was the Kinkaku-ji temple (aka Golden Pavilion .

Again as with most temples this started out as a retirement villa for a shogun that was later converted to a temple by his son.  It was originally built in 1397 but in 1950 a monk was so obsessed with the temple he burned it down to the ground.

Next was Kiyomizudera (the "pure water" temple.  The town leading up to the uphill (of course!) temple is lined with little shops - food, souvenirs, fans etc.  We also saw a huge number of young (and not so young) women in kimonos.  At first we thought we stumbled on some sort of holiday.  But no, apparently the thing to do is rent kimonos, get all dressed up and hang out in the area with their boyfriends.  

Once beyond the main gates, there was a wooden stage that juts out from the main hall.  Great views of the city and surrounding forest.  Supposed to be amazing in spring with the numerous cherry tress and filled with colour in autumn due to all the maples.

On our way back post dinner we went up th Kyoto tower.  I somehow didn't take a pic of the tower, but it's very CN tower like.  The construction is supposed to be particulary interesting as they stacked steel rings on top of each other instead of the typical metal lattice frames.  Overall it's meant to look like a Japanese candle. 

We aimed for dusk to watch the sunset

Can get 360 deg view of the city.  They provide free binoculars and helpful signs to the major city attractions.

and later for the lights to spring up.

I am not sure if pic is clear enough but there are two bullet trains passing each other...