Fall day in Kyoto

Activity > Kyoto > Sightseeing > Kyoto East

I went down to Kyoto a while back to visit an old friend from University.  She had married and was living in Kyoto and she asked me to visit her.  I'm quite busy (especially on my days off!) but I decided to go down and visit her for the day.  Kyoto is not very far on the Bullet Train (Shinkansen), just a bit over 2 hours, and I left very early in the morning to arrive around 9:00 a.m..  I had a reserved seat on the Shinkansen and was able to sleep the whole way to Kyoto Station!

My friend met me at the exit gate of the Shinkansen and we first went out for some tea. Yes... as girls do we talked and talked and talked lol.  Around 11:00 a.m.. we decided to take a walk and visit Sanjusangen-do (三十三間堂), A Buddhist temple in the Higashiyama District of Kyoto. This temple is not far from the main Kyoto Station, you can actually walk if you like (it's just under a mile to Sanjusangen-do from the main Kyoto Station).  The temple name literally means, "Hall with thirty three spaces between columns", which describes the architecture of the main hall.

The temple contains various statues of Kannon (bodhisattva associated with compassion as venerated by Mahayana Buddhists) and there are various old wooden structures that house them.  It was very hot the day we visited and we were constantly trying to find shade to get out of the hot sun (and humidity).  All in all it was a nice temple... but, 1 temple is enough temples for a day so after all that walking around we decided to have some Udon and a little shop we passed in an alley.  The udon shop had your normal basic udon plates but I decided on the Hourumon Udon.  "Hourumon" means... literally "discarded goods"... so, basically it is the "left-over" parts of a pig after the "good parts" (edible muscle parts) have been removed.  Yeah, I know it sounds a little disgusting but really it's good!  In postwar Japan, people held the belief that internal animal organs would raise their energy level as it contains this "Hourumon" substance.

After lunch (well, a late lunch) I jumped back on the Shinkansen and arrived home... very tired... in the late evening.

Sanjusangen-do (三十三間堂)
657 Sanjūsangendōmawari, Higashiyama-ku
Kyōto-shi, Kyōto-fu 605-0941, Japan
Website: http://www.sanjusangendo.j