We caught a cab outside of Ginkaku-ji and drove south to Sanjūsangen-dō.  We had planned to visit before catching our train the next day as it is near Kyoto Station but taking cabs around the city in the morning had saved us a lot of time so we could fit it in.  Since the historic sights around Kyoto are spread across the city, we would normally just take public transportation to visit them but since we only had 1 full day in Kyoto, we wanted to make the most of it so we splurged on cabs.

Back to the main thing: Sanjūsangen-dō.  The temple has a few distinctions, namely that it is the longest wooden building in Japan and that it contains 1000 individual Kannon statues in 10 rows of 100 columns.

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After our visit to Kiyomizu-dera, we caught a cab for Ginkaku-ji (aka Jisho-ji), the Silver Temple.  We heard that this temple had some of the best gardens in Kyoto and that was no exaggeration!  Our cabbie dropped us off in front of a street blocked off to traffic and from there we made our way on foot to the temple.

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Day 8 dawned clear and cold on our traditional house in Kyoto and we slowly thawed out before heading out for our first stop of the day: Kiyomizu-dera, the Pure Water Temple.  Fortunately, it is MUCH easier to hail a cab in Japan than it is in San Francisco and it’s a lot more likely that the cab drivers understand English as well (even if the cabbie says he doesn’t speak English, he can figure it out), so it’s a nice situation.  I just need to remember this won’t be the way things work back home. *sigh*

We were dropped off at the base of the temple area lined with souvenir and food shops.

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