Power walking and temple hunting.

We've been worried about how badly we've had to eat in Japan simply because we cannot afford to buy healthy food, therefore today we decided to power walk across the city to see a wide array of temples and shrines. This part of Kyoto is also known for it's traditional-style Japanese houses and streets where many men and women walk around wearing beautifully decorated kimonos. It took us around 45 minutes to walk from our hostel to the first temple and unfortunately it seemed everyone had the same idea as us because it was incredibly busy. Not only this but the place was a little bit spoilt by the fact that the grounds around the sacred buildings were being used to host a variety of food and entertainment stalls, making the place seem more of an attraction than a religious site. We still had a lovely wander around; looking at the bright-red decorated buildings and small pond which housed turtles in the middle. We made our way through the old traditional streets and visited another temple which was very different- white and brown architecture and was far less popular with the tourists. After seeing Japan's tallest pagoda the other day we saw, what we think, is a close second today. There were so many people dressed-up, taking pictures in their kimonos around us. We were lead down the windy streets to another temple at the top of a hill. Here we got some lovely views of the city and surrounding hills. After spending some time exploring we decided to head back to a shopping area and to find some tea. On route we crossed a bridge where we saw a woman throwing bread off the side to a heron below. This was attracting some large birds of prey. She saw us watching her and came over to give Nick some bread but the next thing we knew one had swooped down and had took it out of her hand. We had some bread as well so began throwing bread up in the air and watching them swoop and dive to catch it. It was an amazing thing to see and they swooped in and about our heads quite a few times. We collected quite a crowd watching troop- all taking pictures. Clearly our bird feeding hobby is something to be admired!Read more