I love last minutes adventures.

So I was eating breakfast in my pajamas this morning when I heard a knock at the door. It was the girl who lives downstairs who has just moved in. She asked me if I would like to go to Kyoto with her today. She knew how to get there, and she heard it was nice, and just wanted to go with someone. For those of you who don't know, I love spontaneity.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan before the Edo period, when the city of Edo, currently named Tokyo, became the captial. It is considered to be the cultural heart of Japan with plenty of shrines and attractions. It takes approximately 45 minutes to get from downtown Osaka to downtown Kyoto.

So we went to Kyoto by taking a subway then a train. I'm going to talk about the price to do things, because some people are curious. 100 yen is 0.96 dollars. The subway and train were about 800 yen. The subway system is actually really cool. There are tunnels and stores underground, and you buy tickets. For a certain price, you walk in, a machine punches your card, and when you leave the station, it takes your card, provided you paid enough. There's a police officer or security guard that stands beside the machine in case you're trying to mess with the system. They're actually really nice, and could see that the girl and I were clearly lost. They showed us around, and we eventually found ourselves at Kyoto.

We had a tour book with all sorts of places to go visit. There are far too many shrines and temples to see in a single day, and it was difficult to decide which was the one to go to. We went to the closest shrine, walked the 10 blocks or so, and saw a bit of Kyoto.

People live in small wooden houses. The outside looked worn down, but the inside must be better. We also ran into a few Buddhist shrines along the way. Explored a bit, but we kept on going to the closest shrine.

This shrine was the Toji Temple. It's a 5 story Pagoda, the tallest in Japan, with some temples with statues. It cost 500 yen to enter, and it was beautiful. There was a pond, and nice trees. the pagoda itself was the least impressive part. The statues were really cool and people were praying to them. I haven't seen anything quite like them. Unfortunately, due to Japanese laws, we could not take pictures of the statues.

We then went on to explore more temples around the pagoda, then walked back to Kyoto station. We noticed that they did tours, but those tours cost anywhere from 2100 yen to 9000 yen. We then saw that they had bus routes to various locations, and a day pass available for 1000 yen. By now, it was 1 pm, and we said that it was nice to know that, but today wasn't a good day to buy a day pass. We tried to look at something else to do, possibly indoors because with humidity, it felt like it was a mid to high-30 C. We boarded a random bus, to go to a shrine we didn't really notice on our maps of places to go. The Kiyomizu-dera Temple . Here's an excerpt from the description: "For over 1,000 years, pilgrims have climbed the slope to pray to the temple's 11-headed Kannon image and drink from its sacred spring"

So we thought it would be interesting. The Kyoto bus was crowded, and you paid on your way out. When we arrived, we didn't know quite where to go, but decided to follow Japanese people who left the bus. We kept on going up and up a hill, with tiny shops on each side. They were selling jewels, kimonos and fans. It was interesting to see all the different things that Kyoto had to offer.

When we reached the top, and looked down, we could see all of Kyoto with trees in the foreground and mountains in the background. The temple was beautiful, and before we went in, we saw some people preparing for something. We didn't know what it was then, and to be frank, I still don't know, but it was one of the most awesome things ever. There were people dressed up, playing instruments and some people holding a dragon. We thought it was awesome and then went into the temple, 300 yen admition. There were lavishly decorated 3 story pagodas and some shrines with beautiful statues. There was also purification water, where water was coming out of a dragon's head and people would wash their hands. We then saw the dragon again, and the people were making the dragon do movements. It was almost as if the dragon were a living thing.

We explored the grounds more, and took plenty of pictures. They will be up on facebook soon. We returned to Osaka afterwards very happy with our day, and tired. My recommendation to anyone going to Kyoto is to skip Toji temple and go to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. Also, to bring plenty of liquids. I'll be in Kyoto again I'm sure. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Golden Pavilion.