Japan 2023. Day 36. A quick trip to Kyoto

I had pledged to stay away from the big cities, but last night when I looked for "attractions near me" I found that the Kyoto National Museum is only 15 km from Otsu, so there I went. I remember the Tokyo National Museum as one of the best museums in the world, in that it gave a wonderful idea, through displays and life-size models, buildings, and streets, of the development of Japan as a nation. Unfortunately the Kyoto museum is not that informative; I saw some beautiful tea bowls, lacquer dining sets, kimonos and other textiles, and some fine bronze statues, but by now I have seen a lot of the same elsewhere. 

The museum is surrounded by grandiose temples, but after Nara I am templed out. So I went walking and reminded myself that Kyoto is a warren of small streets, where buildings are incredibly mashed against each other, such that a medical practice might be sandwiched between a clothes boutique and an electronics store, with narrow apartment buildings thrown in for good measure.

Then I found out that Kyoto has a Hop on-Hop off bus, so unashamedly living my motorcycle in the free parking lot of the museum I hopped on and spent a couple of hours taking a bird's eye view of the city. Man, these folks have a lot of temples! Buddhism doesn't have a formal structure, somehow alike to the Protestant church in the US, so each school of thought has sprouted its own following (e.g., the Esoteric Buddhist branch, or the Zen Buddhist branch, or the Pure Land Buddhism branch), and everyone of these branches had to have a main temple in Kyoto (which for over 1,000 years was the residence of the Emperor (until Emperor Meiji moved his residence to Edo (Tokyo) in 1868).

So, of course there are a couple of castles, but they happen to be flatlander castles. One was for the Shogun (the de facto ruler of Japan), and the other was for the Emperor (the divine ruler of Japan). Emperor Meiji fought his contemporary Shogun, won, and became both the political and divine ruler of Japan. 

I am running out of steam, and I am slo running out of yen. Should I pull US$ 150 out of the ATM (and risk having a lot of leftover yen before I fly to Australia), or seek to stretch my US$ 35 for the remaining three days? I finally talked myself into having too many yen on hand, rather than too few, so tonight I am treating myself to a fancy dinner. Maybe pizza?