DAY TWO
Nishi-Honganji Temple
The next day, after 11 hours sleep and a lovely free continental breakfast, we were ready to explore! First stop: Nishi Honganji Temple. It’s a massive complex and we even get to listen to a service. not that we could understand, but it was still interesting to see.
What you need to know about Kyoto, is that it is renowned for its amazing autmun leaves in autumn. lucky for us this is right now! Well, lucky in a way, as we get to see it, unlucky in another, as we find out later on, how busy it gets in the evening when the colours of the trees are at its best!!
We move on and bump into some gardens, which is the first real taster of the autumn colours. We also bump into some Kimono clad Japanese girls. These are not to be confused with Geisha’s, or as they call them here in Kyoto: Geiko’s or Meiko’s (apprentice Geiko’s) which are Japanese entertainers. We are not sure who or what the people in kimono’s are, they could be tourists who’ve hired the kimono for the day, or traditional Japanese who like wearing them in public. Either way, they are treated as a bit of a celebrity in Japan, by tourists anyway. On the way to the Kiyomizu-dera temple we saw a few walking around and the flashes were going off constantly!!!
Even the Kimono clad Japanese are amazed by the autumn colours (look at the mobile phone taking pictures.. they must be pretty damn good, as not many people seem to have an actual camera, and most use their mobile for photographs)
Before we get to the temple, we passed by a Shrine first. an interesting fact here: the Japanese word/sign for Shrine can be somewhat offensive to people who don’t realize what it means:
Japanese meaning for Hokoku-jinja Shrine
at first it was a bit of a shock to us too. And a handy thing to know is the Japanese word (in Kanji) for train station, especially when trying to find a train station!! :
Japanese (Kanji) for Station
As we then perceded to walk to the Temple we wanted to see, the Kiyomizu-dera temple, it got busier and busier. So much so that eventually policemen where waving jedi-type swords (they really did look like it, lit up and everything!!!) towards us, telling us where to walk as not to cause a walking traffic jam. Little did we know that on the way back it was 10 times worse and we actually did get stuck in a walking traffic jam!!!!
Anyway, the temple was absolutely amazingly lit in the midday sunlight, and the forest n the mountain backdrop behind it even more so, with it’s autumn colours on show.
Kiyomizu-dera temple
our student guides
A few Japanese youngsters addressed my dad and told him they were English students and to practise their English, could they please show us around the temple for free? Well how can you say no to that? So we did and it was a pleasure 
They told us a few interesting facts about the temple, such as the wealth god where you can pray for wealth (really? yes, really), the ‘bad forcasts’ that are tied up by many temples in the hope that they will be blessed and will not come true and the massive iron stick weighing 120kg: if a Japanese boy can lift it, he is very cool for Japanese girls. Off course we all proceeded to try and lift it, but none of us could, it is almost impossible. They do make it hard for us though as they positioned it in a wooden thing, making it very awkward to get to so you can’t use your full strength.
The waterfall was the most interesting, 3 streams of water coming out of a waterfall, each meaning a different thing: love + beauty, wealth + wisdom or health + longlife. You can choose one of the streams and drink from it, which one would you choose? I would go for health and long life, although the choice is hard, don’t we all want all of them? Japanese people certainly do, we saw many drinking from all 3!! There was a massive que though, so we didn’t bother giving it a go.
After the tour we had our picture taken with our tour guides and said our goodbyes. As said, we got stuck in a human traffic jam, but it was totally worth it
PS pictures of the wealth god, the iron stick, the tied up bad forcasts and the waterfall didn’t fit in the post but are posted in Japan, The Photos, Day TWO, below
