Just a few more shots of the temple. As you can see, it's built on stilts jutting out over the water, which is quite impressive. In low tide, the temples stilts are all exposed and it sits in a huge mud flat. Not so impressive. Most of the temple is closed, but you can walk around the walkways at the edge of the temple, and clamber up back to the pagoda as well. If you've got time, an overnight stay in one of the traditional ryokan is highly recommended by the guidebooks, although we didn't have time. And I would recommend against it if you're pregnant or not feeling very good, or you may have a bunch of pissed off locals on your hands.

The temple can be approached by land through a traditional gate, or, more impressively by sea, where the famous torii (gate) surrounded by the sea marks the spiritual boundaries. A very photogenic sight, so we have lots of photos of it, but I'll spare you the others. Miyajima is ranked one of the Big Three Scenic Attractions. In the US, anyone can say anything to create a tourist trap. For example, Monroe, Connecticut may call itself "the prettiest town in northeast Fairfield County" and that goes unchallenged. But in Japan there are hordes of government bureaucrats who measure all these things and dole out the appropriate titles, so the Big Three claim is the official word. Even weirder, Japan has a complicated system of National Treasures, Cultural Treasures etc. and they're numbered, so as you travel, a particular temple, or a vase in a museum or whatever gets a precise title and number, like National Treasure No. 6832. Weirder still, people are often given these titles too, especially famous artists, calligraphers, dancers etc. I'd love to be able to call myself National Treasure No. 354.

24. Miyajima

After lunch, took a ferry from Hiroshima to the vacation island of Miyajima, only to be greeted by the killer deer from Nara, only this time, they travel in packs! If you run your eyes quickly over the two pictures, it vaguely resembles the running of the bulls in Pamplona, no?

Miyajima is a sacred island, and one of those odd Shinto rules dictates that nobody can be born or die on the island, so they maintain an emergency evacuation service for those people rude enough to try to do either of those things on the island. It's quite beautiful as well, but most people (including us) don't see much of the mountainous island. Instead, it's a straight shot from the ferry terminal down the village main street to their famous temple, Itsukushima Jinja.

Across the river from the A Bomb Dome lies the Peace Park,which contains a number of poignant memorials. The photo at bottom shows the memorial museum, not much to look at from the outside, but a very powerful series of exhibits, movies, photos etc. about the day Hiroshima disappeared. Also in the park is a memorial to the 75,000 people who died that day and the 200,000 who died later from the radiation. Top left is the memorial to the most famous victim, Sadako, who was 2 years old when the bomb fell. She survived but got leukemia when she was ten. According to Japanese legend, if you make 1,000 paper cranes you'll get a wish granted. Unfortunately she died before completing them all, so her friends finished them and she was buried with the cranes. The paper crane has become a symbol of peace, and students all over Japan and overseas send millions of cranes to Hiroshima every year, which are displayed in the park. The park also has a peace flame that will burn until the last nuclear weapon is gone. Moving on to happier subjects...

23. Hiroshima

Aided by this helpful photo of the bullet train, I'm much clearer on our schedule the next day. Took the amazing train to Hiroshima, a couple hours' south of Kyoto. Hiroshima is one of the few cities in the world whose name will always be connected with tragedy. It's not an obvious choice to include on a holiday, but it's a fascinating place and I really recommend it. It doesn't really lend itself to a breezy vacation blog, though, so I'll move through it quickly. At right is the A Bomb dome. It's the only building left standing after the atom bomb leveled the city, and is left in its ruined state as a memorial.

This is starting to sound like the scene in Naked Gun (I think) where Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley have their first date, and the movie cuts to a montage showing them frolicking on the beach, shopping in NY, at a bull fight, skiing, and ten other things, at the end of which Priscilla thanks him for a great first date. But to continue, after touring the construction site/temple, we went into the little town of Uji, which is famous as the source of the country's best green tea. We bought a bag, notwithstanding it tastes terrible. I'm also surprised that it comes in powder form rather than leaf like Chinese and most other green teas. This looks like instant to me, but it was expensive so I bought it. We then went down to the river and hung out a while watching the sun set, then back to Kyoto for dinner.

22. Uji

Stubbornly I'm sticking with the timeline I laid out for the day, i.e. Kyoto temple, then I guess go to hotel and change clothes, train to Nara for a long day of hiking and temples. It gets a bit more complicated, because I'm sure that on the way back to Kyoto we stopped at the small town of Uji, pictured here. This is Byodo-in, built in the 10th century as a home for one of the Fujiwara clan. As usual, it was converted into a Buddhist temple after his death. It's incredibly elaborate for a Japanese building, which generally lean heavily toward minimalism. Unfortunately, it was also under renovation, so it was pretty much a big construction site when we were there, so I'm impressed we were able to cover up most of the ugliness in these photos.

The Fujiwara family built Kojuku-ji temple in Kyoto in the 600's, but decided to move it to Nara 100 years later to consolidate their religious complexes in the new capital. While they were powerful, they clearly weren't prescient, as the capital promptly moved to Kyoto almost as soon as they had moved this temple in the opposite direction. This was a Shinto shrine as well, but did something of a merger with a neighboring Buddhist temple, and now it's a bit of both, just like Japan. There are two pagodas, both pictured here, with the five story one at left the second tallest in Japan. I didn't see many Japanese pagodas in my travels, mostly I think due to the fact that they attract lightning so most burn down over the years, but you'll see lots of exuberant pagodas when/if I get to blogging about our Nepal trip.

The temple itself has both the stone lanterns and these beautiful hanging lanterns that gave me all sorts of interior decorating ideas. As I mentioned before, this is a Shinto shrine, whereas most other temples in Nara are Buddhist, which became hugely popular in Japan while Nara was capital. I'm a big fan of Buddhism, so I think it's natural that it should win such a big following, but it must be said that Shinto is a pretty easy religion to beat. First, they worship the emperor, and I'm not going there again. Second, they had that stupid rule about destroying capitals and moving every time the emperor died, which I'm sure thrilled the people forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods and start building from scratch over and over. Third, they have another awful rule that all their temples need to be destroyed and completely rebuilt every 20 years. This temple has been completely rebuilt over 50 times, although mercifully they stopped here in 1893. Putting aside the huge expense wasted constantly rebuilding and destroying things, it also is a bit of a killjoy for tourists. You'll go to a beautifully situated temple, and learn all these special things about it, and then learn it was last rebuilt in the 1980's or something. I think Shinto was founded by the carpenters' union.

After lunch, we walked deep into the forest to get to our next temple, Kasuga Taisha, which I think is the coolest of the bunch although quite out of the way. There are lots of windy paths through the forest that eventually will take you here, but once you get anywhere near the place, the path is lined with thousands of stone lanterns, which is a really striking sight. The temple itself has lots more lanterns inside, as you'll see, and twice a year, it has a lantern festival where all the walkway and temple lanterns are lit, which must take forever. It's a Shinto temple, built by the powerful Fujiwara family as their family temple when Nara was capital.

We then kept hiking through the park until we got to Mt. Wakasuka, just outside the park. The street in the right photo is a vaguely Alpine feeling street that serves as a fueling and equiping stop for hikers. Well, we thought it resembled Switzerland at the time, although the photo makes it look pretty disheveled. We had lunch at a restaurant at this street, which is of no interest to you but I don't remember many specific restaurant stops on this trip, so when I do I feel compelled to share. The restaurant definitely felt like an apres ski place, decked out in blonde wood and very airy, with a weird collection of souvenirs and knick knacks in the accompanying shop. Not really going anywhere with this memory.

Once you're suitably overwhelmed with the scale of this place, and it is gargantuan, the rest of a Nara sightseeing visit feels quite intimate. The main park with the aggressive deer is a huge open field, but the rest of the site is forested and hilly, and there are various temples hidden in the woods that aren't nearly as crowded and lots of fun to explore. The first logical stop, Nigatsu-do, is a bit hard to find. It's connected to the giant Buddha via a small path that winds uphill, which eventually connects to a wide staircase lined with stone lanterns, which then leads to a monastic compound that feels really sleepy. It's about a dozen buildings, mostly monk's quarters and one main temple from which you get a good view of Nara below.

Once through the gate, you're at the star attraction, Daibutsu-den, which is, as you know, the largest wooden building in Japan (and probably the world). It's about five stories tall, and inside is one of the largest Buddha figures, made of bronze. It was built in 752, along with the latest in fire protection technology, those two yellow horns sticking out of the roof that are meant to ward off the fire demons. The hall and the horns continued to be rebuilt after each fire, although the current version, built in 1709, is only 2/3 the size of the original.

21. Nara

OK, I'm sticking with my story that we took the train to Nara after a morning visit to one last temple in Kyoto, notwithstanding that we're wearing different clothes. Nara was the first "permanent" capital of Japan. Shinto tradition dictated that the capital had to be destroyed every time the emperor died and a new capital built. As Buddhism replaced Shinto this pretty impractical rule disappeared around 650 AD, although it's hard to notice. The first two permanent capitals built after dropping the rule were abandoned before they finally settled down in Nara in 710 AD. The capital became the focal point for the spreading of Buddhism and Chinese culture, writing etc. into Japan, which lasted for a whole 70 years, when the capital was moved to Kyoto, where it stayed put for the following 1,000 years. Once Nara was declared (erroneously) to be the permanent capital, the noble families all built their estates and family temples there, and supported the huge number of Buddhist temples sprouting up. In fact, this concentration of religious power in Nara ended up strangling itself, as one ambitious monk seduced the empress and almost took over the throne. Not to keep banging on about the emperors, but their reaction was not to get even, but to leave Nara and move the capital to Kyoto, where his wife could be kept away from the seductive monks.

Most of Nara's historical sights are maintained in an enormous park called Nara Goen. The biggest temple complex, Todai-ji, is entered through this huge wooden gate called the Nandai-mon, which is flanked by a couple of monsters to protect the Buddha image inside. But the real protectors are these deer. There are more than a 1,000 of them and they pounce on anyone that might be carrying food. You've been warned!

So I lied about the cherry blossoms picture, I didn't really lose patience, I just decided to use this photo instead for my dramatic ending to Kyoto. Thanks for your patience in staying with us through a pretty thorough trip down memory lane. It really is an amazing city, and even though you're suffering from Kyoto overload, remember there's over 1,000 more temples to see, and some major sights that were closed while we were there. So we've got to go back at some point, maybe we'll see you there.

Somchai is certainly getting his money's worth out of this temple, moving from risking his life drinking unknown fluids, to tempting death by pecking. As you can see by the top left picture, it looks a bit touch and go there for a while, but, as in the drinking incident, he survives.

This temple is the second largest wooden structure in Japan. By a strange coincidence, we're now leaving Kyoto by train to nearby Nara, to see the country's largest.

Woke up very hungry after our micro-banquet the night before, and probably finished off a big bowl of salad for breakfast to fortify myself for our last Kyoto temple, Higashi-Hongan-ji. We stay in Kyoto a few more days but do day trips outside of Kyoto, so we stopped by this temple on the way to the train station. Somewhat bravely I must say, Somchai decides to take a drink from the liquid pouring out of the old dragon's mouth. I'm not sure what the sign next to him is saying. It looks like it's saying this is not a faucet, but that's obvious, so my best guess is it's saying DO NOT DRINK.

This is sort of a catch-all post before we move on to our last Kyoto post! At left is a very cool but very unphotogenic temple, Sanjusangen-do. It's really a big wooden barn with not much garden or anything surrounding it. But inside (the cool part where you can't take pictures) is a big statue surrounded by 1,000 smaller statues standing guard, each unique. You're supposed to come here and look for resemblances between the statues and recently departed loved ones. This could take a very long time with so many statues, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't find a match so it was a pretty quick stop. In the evening, we had an elaborate Japanese meal called kaiseki. Kaiseki is famous throughout Japan, but Kyoto is the most famous place for it. As expected, it consists of large numbers of microscopic dishes, served with a very elaborate ritual. It's a set menu, and it has to change with the seasons, and, uneconomically, all the silverware and plates have to change each time and be exactly matched to each course. So a restaurant has to have huge numbers of specially made china and utensils each season, then throw them out every three months. It was interesting, although after the twelfth hour of ritual eating, interest waned a bit.

Oh, I've been saving the close up photo of the cherry blossom this whole time, figuring I'd use it at the end as a bit of a dramatically Zen finish to my Kyoto writing, but I've lost patience so decided to chuck it in now.

I usually hate crowds, but they actually made this a fun day out, especially because Japanese schoolkids make such a nice backdrop to a photo. If this were back home, I could only imagine the sight of hordes of high schoolers being dragged through a temple. Smiles and giggles? Not so much.

Oh, the reverse suspense is killing me. So, this is the view you're rewarded with if you make it up here, which is really quite nice. Those wooden plaques have nothing to do with this, but I think they're cute. They're special prayers, mostly to do with doing well on exams or finding a boyfriend, with the occasional Hello Kitty added to help it stand out from the crowd. Speaking of crowds...

Here's the real attraction of the temple. It's built in a bucolic setting on a mountain side, with the temple hanging over the edge supported by a bunch of beams. Supposedly a popular Japanese saying when talking about someone's courage is "have you the courage to jump from the veranda of Kiyomizu?" I would bet that's not a very popular saying unless it's much easier on the tongue in Japanese.