Climb Every Mountain .....

Day 8

Today we were going rural .... Sort of!!  We are going to Ohara.  Ohara is a rural town on the northern outskirts of Kyoto. It's about an hour away but is still classed as part of Kyoto.

There are no trains to get to Ohara and you can only get there by bus. No problem - just one subway trip to the bus depot and catch the No 19 to Ohara. How hard can it be???  Actually not hard at all!!! We only waited 10 minutes before the bus came ... But we were in a huge queue.... It appears Ohara is very popular with the Japanese, especially on a weekend!!!

So, it was at this point we discovered that Scott does not fit in a Japanese bus - he is just too tall. His poor knees were pushing right up against the seat in front of him. I just about fit but my knees were resting against the seat in front.  However, the fantastic scenery that passed by managed to take our minds off the pain in our knees.

We arrived at the main bus station in Ohara and helpfully, there was an information desk there with loads of maps and pamphlets - very helpful except for one thing ..... They were all in Japanese - doh!!  The big 'you are here' Map was also in Japanese .... Well I guess we are in Japan!!!!

Hmmmm .... What to do??? Did we try to ask anyone for directions or help??? Nooooo of course not - we did the only natural thing.... And followed the crowds!!

There are two main Temples in Ohara - Sanzenin and Jakkoin. We knew that one Temple was on one side of the road and the other temple was on the other side. But we didn't know which was where so we had no idea which temple we were going to first .....

Now, as I said Ohara is a rural town and is such on the side of a ruddy great mountain, so everywhere we were going was uphill ..... But again, the scenery and the landscapes were enough to take our minds off that.  On our way to the first Temple, we passed a lot of farming land so we think we know where some of the men with huge vegetables came from yesterday .... There was all sorts of veg growing (some I still don't know) and they were all huge!!!

After about half hour of walking (uphill - did I mention that??) we came across the first Temple and it was .... Jakkoin!!! We mooched round the Temple for a while and round the gardens.  We came out of the Temple and wandered along a path just to see what was about ...... However, when we saw the big sign with the picture of a big bear on it.... We turned round and went back!! We really didn't need to understand Japanese at that point........

We then made our way back to the bus station area and using amazing powers of deduction worked out that if we crossed the road we would be going to the Sanzenin Temple (plus we followed the other crowds!!).

Again, we were making our way up a ruddy great mountain side ..... Yeah yeah - well I suppose to some people it would have just been a bit of a steep slope - but it felt like a mountain at the time.

The Sanzenin Temple is the main tourist attraction in Ohara and you could guess that by the fact the the road up to the Temple was lined with shops, cafes and restaurants. Oh the things you can get at a food stall ......  On the way up I had some Takoyaki.  These are a battered ball filled with various different things - the most popular being octopus. There were a few stalls selling Takoyaki, so I guess this is the Japanese version of Kendal Mint Cake!!!

Spurred on by my new found energy, we made it to the top. I say again, there was a really steep slope and a LOT of steps to get to the top!!!

The Sanzenin Temple is huge .... There is the main Temple that holds highly valued statue of the Amida Buddha that dates back to the 900s, and a gorgeous garden to wander round with lots of little paths where we found some fantastic scenes and hidden waterfalls. 

In one part of the grounds, there is a moss garden and amongst the moss are 25 buddahvistas.  So cute!!!  I found most of them, but couldn't find a couple ... I'm sure they are out there somewhere.

Right at the top end of the grounds are Rows of miniature Kannon statues. These have been donated to the Temple and there are thousands of them. 

We made our way round the grounds and back to the start where we browsed round the shops where they seemed to be selling some fantastic food stuffs but again we didn't know what they were ... I really must brush up on my Japanese writing, though it has to be said, the ladies in the shop were more than willing to try and explain what everything was.

We've been here a while now and noticed that we have hardly seen any European tourists, in fact none at all. I know people are put off Ohara by the lack of English signage,  but it's really not difficult  and I'm glad we did it as Ohara is a beautiful town and once our  legs have recovered we would love to go back.

We made it back down the side of the mountain and back to the bus stop.... Where Everyman and his dog was waiting for the number 19 back to Kyoto!! We squeezed Scott back on the bus and made our way back to the apartment.

We've had a chilled out couple of hours and now we are sorting out tomorrow's adventure....... Tomorrow we are going to Takayama and Shirakawa-go and spending Sunday  night in a traditional Ryokan. Major excited!!!  Hopefully the hot springs will sort out our aching bodies .... Can't wait to get in there. Scott has even read up on hot bath etiquette to make sure he does it right.

So it's going to be a day or so before I update this as hopefully I'll be too relaxed to write anything tomorrow night!!

Until next time .....Oyasumi Nasai xxx