Things got a little messy once we'd made our way out of the railway station and set off for the hotel, which turned out to be a bit further from the station than expected, and on the opposite side of the street. Still, things could have been worse.
The initial influence that brought things unstuck was lunch. That might seem like a minor matter, but for some reason The Supervisor set her mind on a particular French/Italian option that came highly rated and wasn't that far from the hotel. Actually, it was a bit further than expected (there's an emerging theme here) and was, when we eventually found it, booked out.
I'd initially suggested I wasn't particularly concerned about the nature of lunch, provided it was conveniently close, and we'd already passed a number of places I thought might have made perfectly acceptable options, but when a decision was called for I pushed us towards a curry place that wasn't that far from the booked out place, so at least we didn't have to go far.The meals, while they weren't anything to rave over, we're perfectly adequate and reasonably cheap.
With lunch out of the way, we set off for the afternoon's sightseeing, which involved a visit to Kiyomizu temple, which is, and I really should have picked up on this earlier, Kyoto's major temple attraction and is almost invariably packed. As it happens it's on the same side of the same river as the places we'd visited on the Sakura Sunday four and a half years before, and I really should have been looking at a map before I ventured an opinion on the relative wisdom of walking as opposed to catching a bus.
Given a slighter better grasp of the geography I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.
Given a slightly better grasp of our current location vis a vis the river and the city's major transport axes, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.
Given an awareness of the number of steps and winding uphill paths involved, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.
From which the astute reader will no doubt have inferred, we walked.
Now, it doesn't really matter whether you catch a bus or not. The bus doesn't get you that close to the actual temple, so you're going to be doing a fair bit of walking and walking wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that it was a bit further than either of us expected..
Actually, we'd made our way across town to the river, crossed the appropriate bridge and started the gradual ascent towards the temple precinct when I looked ahead and realized that we were headed for them there hills and them there hills weren't as close as you'd have liked. Still, the walk wasn't too bad in the early bit. The footpath wasn't that crowded, but as we headed uphill all roads, it seemed, lead to the temple, and each road was delivering its share of pilgrims and sightseers.
Founded in 798, Kiyomizu-dera (Pure Water Temple) isn't the only temple in Japan operating under that title. There's also a Kiyomizu-dera in Yasugi, Shimane, on the 33-temple route of the Chūgoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage through western Japan, but the one under consideration here gets its name from from the Otowa waterfall within the complex, which runs off nearby hills, splitting into three separate streams whose waters are supposed to bring a long life, ensure success at school and guarantee a successful love life. Visitors use cups attached to long poles to drink the water, though drinking from all three is considered greedy. You can't have everything, but I guess if you could manage two you'd be singing along with the Meatloaf song.