Kyoto at night
Kyōto by night, from a bridge over the Kamo river (bigger image),

Tuesday, 27 May: our first day in Kyōto ( part II )

The first unvisited temple

Unvisited #1 (big image, small).

The second unvisited temple

The Yasaka Shrine
(big image, small).

Dog at Yasaka Temple

At Yasaka Shrine, a heraldic
animal (big image, small).

This evening was our chance to get out in the touristy, seamy-side, part of Kyōto. We set out from the ryokan and took a train, and walked past the first temple shown at the left, and started the walk at the Yasaka Shrine, which we (amazingly!) did not enter. We had serious sight-seeing business to attend to, namely the district called Gion, an area famous for its geisha.

street scene, I

6:58PM (big image, small).

street scene, II

7:04 (big image, small).

My journal is no help from here on: all it mentions is our restaurant meal, which I will mention later on, but there’s nothing to help me with all the touristy snapshots that I took, of which I’m putting up only a fraction on this page. It’s all just street scenes, and the only information I can give is to tell you the time of day when each was shot.

street scene, III

7:06 (big image, small).

street scene, IV

7:11 (big image, small).

street scene, V

7:11 (big image, small).

street scene, VI

7:13 (big image, small).

street scene, VII

7:20 (big image, small).

street scene, VIII

7:21 (big image, small).

street scene, IX

7:25 (big image, small).

street scene, X

7:39 (big image, small).

street scene, XI

9:26 (big image, small).

Our supper fit in between the two last pictures above. We had trouble finding a restaurant that seemed in the right range and with the right kind of food. We hit on one where the food was certainly no worse than most of the meals we had had up to this time, but the service was astonishingly slow. I was all the more irritated at this because we hadn’t had lunch. We did have a bottle or Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir, and I imagine this calmed my hunger somewhat before the food finally came.

From there back to our nice first-floor rooms at the Matsubaya Ryokan, and sleep, to make us ready for the next day.

another river scene
And finally, one more water scene (bigger image).