– April 17th 2023 –
Today is Kinkaku-ji day! I tried to wake up at 8am : IMPOSSIBLE. So 9 am, it is! Leaving the hotel 30 min later to go to Karasuma Oike Station to buy the day pass subway + bus.
You have to know that you have to ask directly to the information tourist center in the station to the desk and not use the ticket machine.
Then up to Daitoku-ji temple and its garden, it is a buddhist zen temple, the entrance of the garden is 400 or 600 JPY, depending which garden you are doing. I walked to Kinkaku-ji temple and its garden, the golden temple. This temple is a Zen temple of Shokoku-ji School of Rinzai Buddhist denomination. This used to be a villa family. It was beautiful, and the garden was nice. A lot of people were there when I arrived around 12pm.
Then I looked for a restaurant, and I found a soba place, Sobashubo Ichii. It was a typical restaurant, I ate in front of the chef preparing the dish. It was an amazing experience. Do you remember that few days ago when I was telling you about me eating soba the wrong way? So I did not know how so again I poured the soup on the pasta on the plate. And the chef looked at me and said something in Japanese, making a sign that I should put the soba in the cup of soup and not the opposite. OF COURSE! Now you said it, it makes way more sense. IT WAS AMAZING! With the duck soft and really well cooked with perfection. Everything was just perfect.
Tenryu-ji
The next stop was Hirano Jinja and then Arashiyama to see the Togetsukyo Bridge. The bridge was just next to Monkey Park, I did not have the time to go up, it was already late in the afternoon. Before the closing, I wanted to go to Tenryu-ji temple, the entrance was 800 JPY, it is a world cultural site. The name means “Temple of the Heavenly Dragon ”. It is a Buddhist temple established in 1339, in the memory of Emperor Go-Daigo. The garden at the back is one of the oldest in Japan retaining the same form as when it was designed by Muso Soseki in the fourteenth century.
After visiting this wonderful garden full of flowers, I exit by the north gate to see the Bamboo Forest. It is really cool and impressive. I did not expect that it would be so dark and high, it brings a lot of shadows. I should have gone to see the preserved street just above the forest, however when I reached there it was already closed so I went back to the hotel to rest a bit.
For dinner I picked a place in the center of the city, Oryori Menami. It was fantastic, the food was so delicate and perfectly cooked. I had squid with mustard sauce, it was thin and delicate. Then a spring roll with yuba with a tasty umami sauce. And to finish a duck, cooked perfectly, served with thin onion.