Tenryuji Temple. Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama.

We woke up super early, it wasn't even 6 am, and since we both couldn't sleep, we decided to make use of the morning. It doesn't happen often that on days when we have to leave the apartment at 8 am, we don't have to hurry to do yoga and eat breakfast, and we even had time to read a paper (a scientific one, not the news) :)

We had to leave the apartment so early because we signed up for a

zen buddhism lecture from an American monk who lives in Japan. The lecture included the free entrance to the Tenryuji Temple with the famous old Sogenchi Garden. The temple is rather far away from us and we had to take two buses to get there for a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes. But the trip was worth it.

The lecture itself was cool, the monk was very charismatic and he explained zen buddhism in a simple and fun way. At the end we had a short meditation round. He mentioned that since monks don't sleep that much, sometimes (at least once a day) they fall asleep during the meditation. To prevent such a waste of time, during each meditation session a specially appointed monk goes around with a stick and hits the ones who fell asleep between the shoulder blade and spine twice on the right and twice on the left. They call it an acupuncture point and it is supposed to reinvigorate the body. Those

of us who wanted, could have signalled him during the meditation session and he used his stick on us. It stings a bit but it wasn't that bad at all.

We met a Nepali girl Bidhya at the lecture and together we ate lunch and visited the temple and gardens after the lecture. We ate udon and soba noodle soups from the food stalls nearby - it's a rather healthy version of cheap fast food! The bowl of soup costs 500 yen, which is only 4 euros.

The Sogenchi Garden was very picturesque with a bamboo forest and a lot of blooming hydrangea bushes. The garden is full of maple trees and it must really become gorgeous in autumn.

Afterwards Bidhya left and we went to the Monkey forest, cause it's Georg, and when there is Georg, one can't miss the monkeys. It was

a nice short trip up a small mountain with monkeys on top of it.

It was already 4 pm when we were done with the sightseeing and we started to get home. We had to change trains once and then catch a bus. The train part was ok, but catching the bus turned into searching for it at the busiest cross in Kyoto we have seen so far. The cross hosts 8 bus stops that are not clearly marked and none of them seemed to have the stop for the bus that we needed! We then tried to catch a different bus but ended up going the wrong direction.

Getting out at the next stop, we decided to be too exhausted to directly look for another bus back home. Instead we went hunting for food. Georg found a Takoyaki (octopus fried in dough) stand on the google maps and we started to walk towards it. To Zhenya's happiness, the stand happened to be inside the rows of the famous Nishiki Market! The Market is so clean and somehow cosy and full of small shops intermitted with street food stalls. Finally not hungry anymore, we got the correct bus and reached home!

At home we had some of the Sake that Kaoru presented to us, in honour of Georg's grandmother who passed away this night.