Day 8 - Second Day in Kyoto

Day 2! Woke up early and travelled to the Northern part of Kyoto. We rented bikes to help us get around this part of the city. Our group split up into smaller groups so we headed off to our own destinations. My brother and I headed to a mountain temple. It was quite the climb; after 10 minutes I was sweating so hard that you can see beads of sweat on my arm. 

The view at the top of the mountain was beautiful though. You can view the city at a distance, but it's mostly about the trees that surround you from all around. It's unlike the coniferous trees that you see on the Rocky Mountains. 

After the temple, we rode our bikes around the town till we found the Bamboo forest. It was quite crowded so we had to disembark and walk through the crowd. It's nice, but I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary. After going through the forest, we biked back to our starting point to meet with the others. We then took a train to our next location: The Golden Pavilion. 

We ended up walking the 30ish minutes instead of taking the bus, but it was worth the walk. The Golden Pavilion was an amazing sight: a building that brilliantly shone when light bounced off the surface of the building. 

After the Golden Pavilion, we moved onto the final location for the night: the Inari shrine with the 1000 torii gates. It was another mountain, so we started climbing   up it, going through a multitude of these gates. It was getting quite dark, so I made the executive decision to turn back instead of climbing to the top. I admit, it was quite spooky to climb up the mountain in the darkness with barely any other humans around you. 

After trudging back home, we went to go eat at a Yakiniku restaurant. The protein was quite delightful after a full day of walking!

And that pretty much marked my 2nd day. Today, we'll have some time to finish up tasks in Kyoto before we take the bullet train to Tokyo! I'm essentially at the halfway point of my adventure to touch root with half of my identity =(.