Why Let a Little Moisture Ruin Your Day? - July 3

We awoke, once again, to POURING rain.  Hmmm.  Not very motivating.  We ate breakfast, lollygagged, packed, lollygagged some more.  At 11:00 we had to check out, so we did.  We stood in the lobby and looked at the rain.  We took the shuttle to the train station, checked our luggage into coin lockers (they apparently aren't so worried about things being blown up), walked to the edge of the train station and looked at the rain some more.  Hmmmm.  Oh, heck!  Its our last few hours in Kyoto, for heaven's sake and we're Seattleites!  So off we went, splashing and laughing, to a bus that took us to Ginkakuji, the (so called) Silver Pavilion.  The Shogun who had it build planned on having it covered with silver leaf, but it never happened.  So it's just wood.  But very beautiful in a rustic, natural way.  And the gardens around it are wonderful.  There's a much more intimate feel to it than to the Kinkakuji, I think.  We got good and wet, but we both agreed it was well worth it.  We found a little restaurant nearby where we both had domburi (rice with yummy stuff on top), and a shop that was selling freshly made sembe (rice crackers).  Yummm!  By the time we walked back to the bus, the rain had stopped.

By 5:00 pm we were on a local train to our next destination, Nara.  It was almost dark by the time we got to our hotel and got settled.  It's a lovely, old-world type place and I'm looking forward to seeing the gardens in the morning.  We found a funky little hole-in-the-wall, local greasy-spoon just up the street for dinner.  (Or "greasy-hashi" as we used to call such places in high school.  "Hashi" being the Japanese word for chopstick.)  It was so tiny and cramped.  There was seating for maybe eight along an "L" shaped counter, behind which an older woman did all the cooking.  It was like sitting in her kitchen.  There were some colorful locals who ogled us with shameless curiosity when we came in.  I was delighted with the situation.  Julia was horrified.  Then one of the colorful folk started smoking in the hot, humid, cramped little space with the grills going... I started to giggle at the absurdity of the whole thing and Julia, well, she decided waiting outside for her food to finish cooking to be the best option.  But when it was ready, she came back in and scarfed her yakisoba (fried noodles) and felt much better.  I scarfed my okonomiyaki (an egg-pancake sort of thing) with shrimp and squid and felt much larger.  We'll just have to do a lot of walking tomorrow!