After a very good meal at the pizzeria en boca, I set off to wander around and do some sightseeing.
There was another pizza place right nearby…
I’m sure somewhere like this is good too, but if I ever come back to Kyoto I’ll just end up at en boca again, won’t I? Which is why I don’t think a week-long trip tells you anything about a place. Somewhere like Kyoto, you’d have to live there at least a year before you could say you’d even scratched the surface.
Today’s authentic French
It’s a French restaurant, but they run a vending machine out front. The menu was proper French too. A leftover from the COVID years, I suppose.
The Kamo River
Lovely weather.
A shop selling kashiwa mochi, rice cakes wrapped in an oak leaf
They have places like this too.
A torii gate
Kyoto National Museum
A handsomely old-fashioned building.
The entrance
This wasn’t actually my destination – Sanjusangendo, the hall lined with a thousand Kannon statues, is right across the way.
Inside the grounds of Sanjusangendo
There are an enormous number of visitors.
It’s a hall with this long wooden veranda running down the side…
Inside it is packed with Buddhist statues. A spectacular sight, but photography isn’t allowed so I couldn’t take any. Search online and plenty of photos should come up…
The garden
This is about the only spot where you’re allowed to take photos…
Anyway, I finished looking around with time to spare, so I paid a visit to the Kyoto National Museum.
Splendid, as you’d expect.
There’s a fountain too…
And Rodin’s The Thinker.
The entrance
When I visited, they had works by a painter called Sesshu on show along with works by later artists he influenced, and he really did paint a great many wonderful things. It left me wondering how anyone could get such detailed, lifelike expression out of ink alone. The cranes in particular were extraordinary – this is what people mean when they talk about genius.
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