day 145, Kyoto

Met up with Mark the English guy to head off to Arashiyama. We thought about taking the train though it was very expensive so we went back and got the bus out . The place was beautiful and relatively quiet, right next to the mountains with a river running through. We stopped off for some udon (noodles with something, in my case prawn in a tempura batter) then walked on, past a few temples in search of the bamboo groove, a walkway between a bamboo park which was stunning. From there we chose a path that went up and walked to nowhere in particular, following the river for a bit till we decided to head back. On our way back we stumbled across this lookout point of the city which was ridiculous, literally took my breath away and we sat there for 20mins just looking out. We headed back down and through quiet streets in search of a certain temple. We accidentally found ourselves at another one, though it was amazing, no one else was there, the gardens were beautiful, the temple building was understated but elegant, there was a very impressive thatched roof building, gorgeous trees, I loved it. From there we started walking back then stumbled upon a massive pond which was so tranquil that we got an ice cream and just sat there for a while. We  wandered back down then caught the bus back to Kyoto station. Jason told me of a sky garden at Kyoto station which he said I should check out, so went in search of that. Kyoto station is over 13 floors, 2 below the ground and 11 on top, the bottom 3 act as the station, the rest act as a mall, restaurants and business premises. The place is architecturally awesome, with escalators going up between the 11 floors all in a line, and weirdly they had escalators which weren’t covered by a roof. We reached the sky garden to look out over a night time view of Kyoto which was incredible, though they had put Perspex sheets in front which slightly hindered the viewing experience. Took a bus back to the hostel, had a much needed dinner, showered and chilled for a bit, then settled down  in the common room to relax for a bit. They had a tv which flicked through, watched some intense Japanese boxing which finished abruptly then x-men 2 came on, only it was in Japanese. Really fancied a film though they didn’t have any dvds, so fetched Shantaram and carried on reading. By this time it was 9 and I was knackered, and had a good plan to get an early night, however Shantram was immense and I couldn’t put it down, ended up finishing the book sprawled across the couch covered in blankets at half one in the morning. I decided then to not set an alarm for the next day, with no real plans and will see where the wind takes me.