June 16th - Wednesday

The will be a girls' day out! Nick is taking a hiatus from our very different methods of sightseeing and giving his back a chance to rest up. The extremely-helpful young lady at the hostel sells us all-day bus passes for 500 yen which is a great deal since a single trip is 220! She also tells us which bus to take to get to the Golden Pavilion to start our day's adventure. It is overcast and warm but we take our umbrellas just in case it turns into a drizzle.

We're getting pretty good at getting around! We go down into a new train station and are confronted with a ticket-vending machine. Hmmm. As we dither about which stop we need and how to work the machine two young women giggle about who will be brave enough to help us! The winner (?) shows us how to work the machine and we see our stop on the map. As we head for the tracks they make sure that we go to line 2, not 1 and wave us on our way amid more giggles! We're giggling, too, of course!!

We get off at the right stop and and are oh so proud of ourselves! Our first target is the Golden Pavilion and it is justly named. Even in the gray light it fairly gleams, especially the golden phoenix on top! Naturally there are a million school kids all vying for a spot to get the "ideal" photo and we are right in there with them! At least we don't elbow anyone aside! There are lovely gardens to walk through and we get to see the pavilion from almost all sides and as we walk the sun begins to shine. We are sneaky and go all the way through the exit and use our tickets to come in again to see if we can catch the sun shining on the gold. The Universe sees through our ruse, though, and as we get back to that ideal spot the clouds close over and we have the exact same conditons as the first time! That's okay; our shots will be fine!


We follow our rule of following the school kids and find a restaurant with both kinds of seating and delicious food (okay, so all the food has been delicious!) We choose from the plastic offerings in the window and even without any common language we get just what we want and thoroughly enjoy it! The kids are sitting on the floor with their legs tucked under them. They're kids. We sit at a real table! There is no way to read the bill but we notice that the back side has prices and we figure that they are close enough that we can just split it three ways and be done!

Onward to the Ryoanji Temple and the most beautiful and well known example of a traditional dry landscape garden the Hojo Garden. It contains fifteen rocks arranged on a bed of raked sand and cries out for one to sit and meditate upon its meaning. There are many people seated along it's long side and quietly starring. It is amazing! The gardens are as well.