22/11/15 - Silver Temple

Early in the morning, we set out to see the Silver Temple (Ginkakuji) in Kyoto. It took almost 3 hours to get there by train and bus. It was really a terrible experience. Buses in Japan are really small, and everyone is tightly crammed into it. You enter through the back and get off at the front, so when you have been shoved to the back it's a challenge to get off. I started to feel sick on the bus because there didn't feel like much oxygen was flowing through there. After that we made a group decision to find a different way home.

When we got off the bus, we had to walk up a long street of food vendors. They sold ice cream and souvenirs and different kinds of common snack food. It was really nice and it made me seriously hungry. But, we carried on towards the temple.

There was a huge line to get inside, and I was getting so excited to go inside. But, after paying my 500 yen and walking inside, I found that the temple that I thought would be covered in silver was actually just wood. It was kind of disappointing, but nonetheless. Apparently, it was meant to be silver (like the golden temple is gold), but it was unfinished because the man who was making it died before it could be painted.

While the temple isn't that impressive, most people find beauty in the garden that surrounds it. Because we went there in autumn, the leaves in the garden were red. We had hoped that they would be more red when we went, before falling, but apparently due to weather it wasn't going to happen.

We wanted to go to the Golden Temple that day, however it took unexpectedly long to get there. Since the temples close at 5, it was impossible to get to the other temple in time (since they are quite a distance). But, it was a really nice day anyway.