The next day we got up early and tried to head to Kiyomizu-Dera, which I'd heard was beautiful. This was Sunday, and everyone in Japan had decided to come to Kyoto and walk slowly in front of us. We took the 206 bus in the wrong direction and went to Nishi Hongan-Ji instead. This was an ace temple, half of it was peaceful and soothing and half of it was bustling with people attending services.
After that we tried again to get to Kiyomizu-Dera. This time we had more luck with the buses and made it out there. We stopped for lunch at a cafe on the hill (best pastrami sandwich in Japan) then slowly meandered up the hill. I had been frothing at the mouth at our leisurely pace and getting lost, I don't have a lot of holidays here and I want to see things when I've gone to the bother of leaving Nagoya to see things. All this vanished when I got to the entrance of the temple in perfect time to watch a bizarre ceremony involving dragons. I have no idea what it means (or even what Chinese dragons have to do with Buddhism) but it was spooky, exciting and reminded me that watching dramatic ceremonies like this (eerily dressed priests, green and gold dragons, conch horns wailing) would have creeped the bejeezus out of ordinary people in the past.
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