Thorougly lost in Uji

To try and cheer myself up after a depressing week of good-byes, last Saturday I decided to go sight-seeing. Hunter is all templed out. He told me he would rather clean the house than go to more temples. I went templing by myself, and Hunter stayed home, but didn't do much in the way of cleaning.

I decided to go to Uji, which is about halfway between Kyoto and Nara. When I got off the train, I bought myself some lunch, and ate it sitting by the river. As I was finishing, A Hong Kong/American tourist called Tak asked me to take a photo of him. I then made my way to Byodoin, the most famous temple in Uji. Along the way, I ran into the same tourist again, but we parted ways just after entering the temple. Then we bumped into each other again in the temple grounds.

In the temple grounds, I spent way too long trying to get a photo of the temple without people in it. The end result probably wasn't worth it

 
I left Byodoin, crossed a few bridges, and went up to the Uji shrine. The shrine was rather unspectacular, but guess who was there? We decided that we might as well sight-see together for a while. We went up to Ujigami shrine, which, for a World Heritage Listed site was underwhelming, and then decided to go for a bit of a hike up to Mimuroto Ji, which although not heritage listed was much more interesting. We had a great time walking and talking, both of us pleased to have some company.

After Mimuroto Ji, Tak needed to go back to the station, while I wanted to return to the area we'd previously been in and check out a few more temples and shrines. I thought I'd take a different path, which turned out to be a bad idea. The road I was following had no footpaths, was narrow, in the mountains, and appeared to be mostly frequented by trucks. The shape of the road also did not much resemble the shape of the road on the map (Japanese streets do not usually have names, so shape is all there is to go on). I walked for about half an hour, before coming to an intersection which did not much resemble the intersection on the map. I saw some people who I asked for help, but they were not locals. However, after studying the intersection and map for a while, we all agreed on which road I should take next. After walking for about 5 minutes, I started to get the suspicion that I was headed back the same direction I had come, but on a different road. After about 10 minutes, I was pretty sure I was looking at the back end of a building complex that I had passed on the other road. I
decided to duck into a shop to confirm exactly where I was before doubling back.

They're all shells. I have no idea why they're there...

The shopkeeper spoke with what must have been a strong Kansai dialect. I really struggled to understand what he was saying, but I did establish that I was in fact going the wrong way, that it was a long way for me to walk to get to where I wanted, and that while I could catch a bus back to the station, they only came by once an hour. Also, he seemed to think it was dangerous for me to be walking around the mountain roads on my own (whether  or not it's a reflection of reality, I have always felt very safe in Japan wherever I have been). He made a phone call, told me to wait, and then made another call a few minutes later. Then he gestured me to follow him. We went back down the stairs, out the door, and he said we would walk to the carpark. At this point, I realised that he was probably intending to drive me somewhere. If he had told me it earlier, I had missed it. I did a quick risk assessment in my head, and decided that he seemed nice enough, if largely unintelligible in his dialect, and I didn't really feel like walking for another hour.

He didn't much know where he was going, and had to stop twice to ask for directions, going the wrong way several times (which was funny as, by car, the temple was not to far at all from his shop, an in the main tourist district), but soon enough we had found Koshoji, and he dropped me off at the base of the temple. I was incredibly grateful.

The temple really wasn't worth all the effort, I would have been better off heading straight back to the station with Tak, but I had quite an experience