On my last day in Osaka, I went to Kyoto. After wandering around for a while I went to the tourist office or something like that, where I bought a daypass for all busses for 500 yen, and I got a map of the city. Very nice, so off I went, to Kinkakuji, the golden pavilion. The building’s walls are actually covered in gold, while its little brother, Ginkakuji (the silver pavilion) is not really made of silver.
I noticed there was another foreign guy, he was alone as well, so I approached him and started to talk to him. It was a French guy who was travelling around the world. He just came from China and was in Japan until September or so. We decided to walk around together.
We went to the Ryoanji temple then, because the Frenchman wanted to check out the garden, which turned out to be a rock garden. Apparently you may decide what it means yourself… It was rather boring, but it was nice to sit down for a while. Gravel and fifteen stones.
Then we went to Gion, which used to be the Geisha part of the town. We had lunch there, and then we parted. I went to Ginkakuji, but when I arrived there it was almost 5 and it would close at 5 o’clock, so I decided not to go there and to go back to Gion instead to check out the shops.
