Family Trip to Japan: Day 5 Tuesday

We woke up and toured around a Buddhist temple in Kyoto called Kiyomizu Temple. To get us excited before we left, I put a picture of a random Japanese temple on the computer screen saver. When we walked up, the kids and I were excited to actually visit the temple we'd been looking at for the past month! I didn't realize this is where we were going on this day!

We walked around the old part of town by the temple and bought souvenirs. There were a lot of Japanese/Asian people who had rented Kimonos to walk around in. Shota said they just do it for fun, there's no real meaning to it. I felt it would be inappropriate for me to rent one, I didn't want to insult their culture. I loved watching the locals wear them though. We saw mostly women dressed up, a few men, and 1 super cute child all dressed up!

For lunch we got ramen in another part of Kyoto. Then we walked to a bamboo Forest called Arashyama.

Merril and I were in Vegas for my birthday and we happened into an art gallery with a super cool picture of this exact bamboo forest! There are lanterns placed during the evening for a festival in December and makes it look awesome! We we came to the forest, I suddenly realized that this was the exact place from the art gallery!

After we walked through the bamboo forest, Merril and Shota walked to a bridge to look at something and Maxine read enough katakana to help the rest of us order ice cream. I know she's only been taking Japanese a short time but she was great!

We drove a short distance to Kinkaku-ji, the gold temple. It was a Buddhist temple with real gold leaf on the walls and on an ornamental bird on the roof.

There were nice grounds with manicured Japanese-style trees. We lit incense at the temple and rang the gong and threw money in the box. Merril missed twice. Shota said he's never seen or heard of that happening.

Then we drove to Osaka to meet one of Merril's missionary companions, Shun, for dinner, but first we had to find Mark a slice of pizza. Shun and his family gave us a present. We ate cabbage pancake / quiches called okonomiyaki. Maxine tried to talk to Shun' daughter, Megumi. She knew as much  English as Maxine knew Japanese.

Osaka remind me of Vegas a little. Bright lights and signs.

A restaurant called Meat Jack? We better get a picture.

Shun and his family! Once Mikayla has eaten dinner, she's out like a light. We can't seem to get her to adjust to the last few hours of the day.