Colin's Photos, Day 11 (October 4): Kyoto

Here's my photos from our second day in Kyoto. We started by going to the very over-touristy but still very impressive Golden Temple, Kinkaku-ji. It's uh, very golden! ... quite ostentatious, even when compared to some of the gilded structures in Nikko's Toshogu shrine complex. It is nevertheless set in a very pretty grounds.

After that, I was feeling like some time without the press of people, so I went with Yuri to a bird sanctuary in the Kyoto suburb of Katsurazaka. Without having done much research, we kinda figured this would be an easy walk around some forests and lakes out in the (relative) countryside. It was instead basically a surprise mountain hike, on a very unmaintained trail... and the polar opposite to the Golden Temple as we saw literally only one other person in the entire two-and-a-half hours we were there!

We heard many birds, and saw a few with our eyes, but I didn't get many good camera shots because the trees were so thick. There were some great views of Kyoto from the trail, though, and we got to see some Japanese deer, which had eluded us on our previous nature hike in Nikko!

It was more intense than we expected, and we had to hurry back a bit to make it out of the sanctuary before darkness set in, but we both definitely enjoyed the experience as it was very different from all the rest of the Touristy Stuff in Kyoto.