Kyoto -- The First Day

Home to 17 UNESCO World Heritage sites, and more than 2000 religious and cultural artifacts, (1600 temples, 400 shrines, countless gardens, narrow alleys, streets lined with paper lanterns, hidden tea houses, etc.), Kyoto is the epicenter of Japanese culture and should be at the very top of any traveller's itinerary.

Our first destination was Adashino Nenbutsu-ji, a temple located in the foothills on the western outskirts of the city.  Inside of the temple grounds stand approximately 8000 stone-carved Buddhas, each marking the grave of an unknown or forgotten person.

  Most of the stones were being swallowed by moss...

...but some of the carvings still looked pristine.

I could have spent hours inspecting each of the rock carvings, but unfortunately we had only 30 minutes before the grounds would close.  

(I should also mention that we were handed pamphlets at the front gate.  We didn't bother to look at the pamphlets until we were back at the bus stop, and that's when we learned that photography was forbidden).  

Feeling rather bad about ourselves, we headed to Gion, (the famed geisha district), in search of our hostel.

geisha statue

geisha street

geisha house

geisha stroll

It's quite (definitely) possible that none of these captions* accurately describe the contents of the photographs, but it's fun to pretend.

*Except for the statue. That's actually a real statue.