Crazy Digest: Autumn in Kyoto - Day 3 (24 Nov 2013)

Shinnyo-do Temple. No other humans in this photo except me!

Today we visited the first of two favourite temples from this trip: Shinnyo-do Temple. Why is Shinnyo-do Temple so good? Because the colours were really red, it's free, and there weren't many people there at all.

We left our hotel at the standard time of 8:00am. When we arrived Shinnyo-do, there were less than 10 people visible. How great is that? We had the grounds all to ourselves to take many many photos here.

Quite an uphill climb to the top of the temple. An old aunty told me to Gambateh! Hmph!

Towards 10am, more people started appearing

This is us getting lost, and trying hard to find our next destination. Autumn is great!

Our next stop was lunch and Nanzenji. But because I did not want to climb back to the top of the hill and locate the bus stop on the other side of the hill, we somehow walked and walked till we found the main road. Our super-duper navigator got us on a bus for the final 2km to Nanzenji, and we found our lunch spot - only to discover that it was their rest day. Bummer. So we hung around Philosopher's Path for a bit before heading into Nanzenji.

Philosopher's Path - with the barren cheery blossom trees on the right

Snack stop at Philosopher's Path

Nanzenji was predictably full of people. On hindsight, I would have skipped this place entirely. Nothing spectacular, except for gigantic structures like the N/S/E/W gates and some water way system.

At the entrance to Nanzenji

Either the N/S/E/W gate

What's the queue for? A special tofu restaurant. At least an hour's wait

Having had too many temples in the past 3 days, we went for some much needed retail therapy. First up, lunch at Kyoto Station. This is again a revisit of the excellent Tempura Restaurant from my previous trip, followed by shopping at Bic Camera and Isetan.

Tempura in Japan is heavenly - because it does not feel oily since it's fried in pure sesame oil

The Kyoto Tower

Christmas comes early at Isetan, Kyoto

LED lights decorate this 10-storey staircase. Many different themes of lighting

Next was dinner. We wanted to revisit Macchaya from our previous trip, but we got off on the 5th floor instead of the 4th floor. It looked similar at first, and already sat down before we realised it was a different restaurant entirely. It turned out to be a good thing for me, as this was the cheapest meal of our trip. 390¥ per person for anything in the menu. So we had shabu shabu, 4 persons for 1560¥. And we had the nerve to bring our raw scallops from Isetan to this restaurant, and shabu shabu it together hahaha.