Kinki Trip - Kyoto Day 1

Day One in Kyoto was actually spent mostly outside of Kyoto, although I did go to the club/bar district that night. The two main attractions were Miho Museum in the morning, and Mt. Hiei and the Enryaku temples in the afternoon.

Before heading to Miho, I got an early start and hit the once-a-month flea market at Toji Temple at around 6:30. I was one of the first there, and I enjoyed checking out the stalls. Sadly, all the nice stuff was too expensive for the amount of cash I brought, and the cheap stuff just looked touristy.

Miho Museum is about an hour out of Kyoto, but it's really gorgeous. The $250+ million museum houses the artwork of some Japanese cult head. The cult isn't too bad, though. Basically, they think that living in harmony with nature and viewing beautiful things makes people happy. So they built a place where like-minded individuals can live in harmony with nature through green-farming methods and view pretty old things. It works for me, although there's a definitely commune-like feel to the place, you have to go looking to figure out what the cult actually does. The museum is modeled after an old Chinese about a land of peach blossoms or something. To show my support for the "viewing pretty things makes people happy" cult, I bought a little poster out of a cult picture book for my bathroom.

The art ranged from ancient Egyptian to Greco-Roman to Asian. The gardens were nice and the natural black tea at their cafe was excellent.

The later half of the day was spent at the temple complexes of Enryaku on Mt. Hiei. There are 3 main groups, and after the first group of temples the crowds dwindled noticeably (almost to nothingness. sasuga japanese tourists).