Bamboo, a monastery, and art

This morning we ate breakfast at the bakery in our hotel. We had bagel sandwiches and a mochi lemon donut - excellent! We took a taxi up the mountain to see a temple and it was about a 45 minute drive away. When we arrived, we discovered that, unfortunately, the temple is closed on Wednesdays! Lucky for us, we hadn’t left the taxi and so we just asked the driver to take us to the second temple we were going to see anyway.

The Adashino Temple used to be a graveyard, so there are some places you cannot take photos. It is now covered with many stone statues, and the ones in the shade have become covered in moss. There are also areas where you can pray to Buddha for different things like family safety, etc. There’s also a small bamboo forest you can hike through, which was really beautiful!

We started down the mountain so that we had time to get to our monastery lunch. We stopped at a cute cafe for a latte and chocolate mousse cake (delicious!) and to cool down. Onward, our path eventually took us past a beautiful lotus pond and then through the famous Arishiyana bamboo forest. Once through the forest, we went onto the monastery grounds, which featured meticulous gardens, and found the monastery. Lunch was served to us as we sat on the floor and the food was strictly vegetarian. We had cold potato soup, a warm broth soup, rice, a selection of pickled and raw vegetables, cucumber salad, mochi with red bean paste, eggplant with miso, melon, tofu with soy sauce, and probably other things that we weren’t sure what they were. It was a lovely lunch spread and a nice place to stop.

We then took a trolley and a bus back to the hotel to refresh ourselves and make an afternoon plan.

We decided to head to the Kyoto City Kocera Museum of Art. Once our bus got us there, we bought tickets to the Young British Artists and Beyond exhibit which featured works by Damien Hirst and others that were working prolifically in the 90s. It was organized thematically and featured a lot of timely (for the period) art pieces. After that show, we still had time until the museum closed, so we took in a show that displayed works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who was producing wood cuts in the 19th century. That show ended with an immersive video, which I will try to post a short snippet of!

After the museum closed, we wandered over to Kyoto Brewing and met some very nice guys from Ohio! One of the bartenders was from New Zealand, so we all shared some English-language conversation. Brad and I shared some fried squid with malt vinegar and that is definitely a winning combo!

Next, we popped in to a tiny eight seat taproom and had one quick beer while deciding what to do for dinner. Since we were in a shopping area, we decided to go to the food hall as it was almost 8. We picked a spot that served rice omelettes with curry sauce and it was really good comfort food. We then walked “home” for the night. Tomorrow we are taking a bus tour to Nara to see the bowing deer and then to Uji for a matcha making experience!Read more