Ginkaju-ji

I then walked much too far to get to the Ginkaju-ji, or Silver Pavilion. But it was an enchantingly lovely place. It was built in 1482 and the gardens are by far and away the most beautiful Japanese gardens I've ever seen. From there I walked down the "philosopher's path" for awhile, got bored, took a bus to where I THOUGHT I wanted to go but I was reading the map wrong and found myself several miles from where I wanted to be, caught a taxi to get there and finally then was back to the Kiromizu Temple. The light actually wasn't much better today than it was yesterday, and the children were more omnipresent, but I do find the place most impressive, partly because of its gorgeous location. There were a couple of geishas there, letting people take pictures of them and also for some reason taking pictures of the temple themselves, as if they were visitors. They were NOT "employed" by the temple or anything; they were just being nice, I gather, to let people take their pictures.

I found the toads I wanted for CDEG and JDSM, and had a bowl of somen noodles before catching a cab back to the minshuku. I would have been more willing to deal with the bus situation in other times, but my timing was fairly crucial to get to Kobe by 4:00, which i didn't QUITE make but came close. The train is very fast, less than half an hour between Kyoto and Kobe.