Kyoto, March 15

9:23PM JST - “Ginkaku-ji ‘The silver pavilion’ and other stuff”

Hello there! Another day another story! Today we finally went to Kawa Cafe again for some delicious breakfast. The woman who served us last time was there as well and recognized us! :) She was so kind and very smiley haha. We ordered the Kawa Brunch again which again was with Bacon, salad, yoghurt, orange juice, pancakes with maple syrup and scrambled eggs and coffee or tea. We enjoyed our Brunch over the sight of the river and the city and then came our hot drinks... The exact same thing happened as last time. Jo-anne orders coffee and then I say ‘For me Tea please!’ but just as last time I think she again understood ‘For me too please’ hahaha so two coffees were served XD I felt so burdened because I didn’t to complain again about wanting a tea but I don’t really like coffee. So Jo-anne and I were laughing because 1) The exact same situation and 2) Me having a conflict of wether I would say I had ordered a tea instead of a coffee or would just let it slide. In the end I did tell her and the waitress eyes went really big and said ‘Oh no! Same thing last time!’ Hahahahah she remembered it too XD all in all we could laugh about it and it wasn’t a problem to get it changed into Tea~
If you’re ever in Kyoto near Gion I recommend visiting Kawa cafe. It’s near the river there and it’s really cute and has a great view. The service is great and English friendly. The food is superb and the price is reasonable! I loved it!

After we were done eating we said our goodbyes and went on our way. We planned to go and visit Ginkaku-ji today. We took the bus to it and ended up a bit East in Kyoto. Once we left the bus we saw we were in quite a calm neighborhood. There weren’t a lot of people in the streets and we were once again very close to mountains! It was searching a bit for the right path to Ginkaku-ji and google maps gave us the scenic route XD it was nice to stroll around though and it wasn’t a very long walk so it was appreciated.
We found it in the end, paid the fee and entered the garden where Ginkakuj-ji was located. ‘The Silver pavilion’ was considerably smaller and less overwhelming than ‘the Golden pavilion’ but still pretty nonetheless!
Ginkaku-ji’s begin was in 1482, it started out as an elegant retirement villa named ‘Higashiyama Sansō’ (East Mountain Villa’ inspired by the Golden Pavillion. This villa became the center of Higashiyama culture and gave rise to many aesthetic ideals that have influenced Japanese culture ever since. At request the villa was formed into a temple and that’s how Ginkaku-ji came to be!

The silver pavilion isn’t coated in silver foil like Kinkaku-ji was in Gold foil. Instead it was a white building with it’s typical dark wood structure. There was however a silver phoenix on top like Kinkaku-ji had its gold phoenix.
The garden surrounding Ginkaku-ji were gorgeous and this one had a, so-called, ‘Sea of Silver sand’ (Ginshadan) Which was white-ish silver sand streaked in straight lines and looked just perfect. There was also a ‘Moon viewing Mound’ (Kogetsudai) which was this really weird smooth round rock thing hahaha I can’t really describe it but I’ll try as best as I can; (You can also see a picture of it haha to spare you to the trouble of reading this) It had like a cylinder form which spread out going down and the top was just flat. I don’t know the exact meaning or significance of this mount but I know it has something to do with Zen Culture haha.
Anyway we could also climb a part up onto the mountain from the garden and did so. The view at the highest point on the path was amazing!! You could overlook the whole garden including Ginkaku-ji itself and beyond that lay the city with even more mountains at the horizon! I think we’ve seen quite a few of these amazing sights and I still can’t get enough of them. They’re just beautiful and it’s so cool to be able to watch from such a high point. I really like the mountains here, it’s just such a different sight than the flat earth in the Netherlands XD It’s a kind of overwhelming feeling~

We descended again and roamed around the garden some more and left eventually. The road in front of Ginkaku-ji was full with stores and stuff which we had missed on the scenic route to it so we explored that for a bit! When we were done we decided to go back to Kyoto’s center to look for something to snack. We were a bit tired and just wanted to chill so we bought some convenience store snacks and relaxed in the lounge of our guesthouse watching Youtube and read etc.
It’s quite nice having such a lounge. Very cozy and comfortable :)
(I’m there while writing this XD)

We of course had to grab dinner too and Jo-anne found a nice Tonkatsu place not that far away from the guesthouse, like a 7min walk! So we went there~ In Japan it’s pretty normal that if a restaurant is esteemed or just very busy that you wait until there’s a table available and we had to do that today too. Well I’m saying we had to do that but we had to wait like 1 minute for a table to be free hahaha. We got to the second floor and had a nice table, they had hangers for your coats on the walls next to your tables! That was very handy and fun to see XD We both a plate with a bunch of cabbage and fried pork! With a serving of rice and miso soup. You got so much meat. That was crazy. We got cut strips of loin and 2 big pieces of tenderloin. It was super tasty and we almost couldn’t finish it. It really was quite a lot. I said this before you here you get a lot of good food for not that much money. You even could get free refills of rice! We couldn’t do that though since we were already really full XD Anyway that was a really good dinner and the friend pork was delicious. I don’t know what they used to make it this crunchy but I really liked the outer layer haha, that was my favorite part.

So back at the guesthouse lounge. We just had a conversation with another guest here. (That’s why I’m uploading so late. It’s 12:16AM here now) He comes from Germany and is here with a friend. He invited us to cook together tomorrow evening so we’ll see how that turns out... Hah I’m not so sure about suddenly doing something with people we barely know but I guess cooking can’t hurt. We’ll probably not see them after this though since we’re traveling to Tokyo in a day :D I’m excited!

I wanted to talk about some more stuff but because of the conversation it has gotten late and I want to rest. I felt a bit off at the end so I just want to sleep it off :)

Goodnight everyone. Once again thank you for reading~

- Yaru