Enryaku-ji

This week's been pretty busy, with our first end-of-chapter test (turned out to be not at all scary) and a pizza party on Friday. Then, yesterday, I went to Enryaku-ji, a huge temple complex on Mt Hiei, apparently one of the most significant places for Japanese Buddhism. I went with an organisation called TISA, which runs trips out to interesting places or to do fun traditional Japanese things, for Japanese students as well as international students. Apart from me, there were international students from China, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan, and more than 10 Japanese students. Everyone was really friendly, and very patient with me speaking Japanese.
They told us to wrap up warm, and on my way to the meeting spot I could totally see why, with this view up to the mountains in the north of Kyoto:

The train journey there took over an hour; Mt Hiei isn't actually too far from where we were, but the cable car on the Kyoto side of the mountain wasn't running because of the weather. We had to travel around to the other side for the mountain train, which I didn't actually mind because it meant I could talk to everyone, and we also got to travel on this train:

(I didn't hear, but when we got off some of my new friends were talking about how creepy the announcements on the train had been - apparently they were in Thomas' voice, high pitched and weird)
From this station it's about a ten minute walk up to the Sakamoto cable car.

I've been planning to hike up to the top of Mt Hiei with some friends, but seeing how steep the mountain is on the way up made me want to think about that a little more...

Here's the view from the station at the top down to Lake Biwa (still a little overcast, even in person you couldn't see when the lake stopped and the mountains began, and then what was mountain and what was cloud):

From there we started a quiz about Enryaku-ji - the tour leaders asked us questions related to each temple we visited. (Spoiler: my team lost miserably, but it was still really fun~). First we went to Konpon Chu-do, where there's a flame that's been burning for 1,200 years. I knew about the flame but I didn't realise that this was the building where it's kept, so I didn't really pay attention to it (oops!). The temple's garden was pretty, though, and there was a very friendly monk inside who was chatting away to everyone.
This is a pole that was outside; my friend didn't know what its significance was, but I thought it was pretty.

We also went to Dai Ko-do, which is full of portraits of various monks, tracing right back to the Buddha himself.

Then we caught a bus up to the next area of the mountain. It was much much colder up there, everyone broke out their scarves. First we walked up past two temples called Nanai-do, that are connected by a bridge.

Honestly, they felt a little abandoned, so I was surprised when our tour leader shushed everyone and you could hear monks chanting from inside. Apparently, though no one actually lives there, monks still go there to pray. Without any visible heating, it must be pretty cold...

From Ninai-do, you go down a flight of stone steps and you get to Shaka-do.

On the edges of the courtyard there were lots of the little Buddha statues with red aprons. I asked a friend what they meant and he said it's probably for purity - and also suggested it might be to stop them from getting cold. Did I mention it was cold? It was cold.

People took turns ringing the big bell that sits above Shaka-do, then it was sadly time to go home. My friend got a couple of fun pictures on the way, though:

 

So we saw a lot, but actually there are 150 temples that make up Enryaku-ji, including a whole other area that we didn't go up to, so I'll definitely go back sometime soon to explore some more!

One last picture - after we got back to Kyoto I went shopping with my new friend from Taiwan, who introduced me to this great little Green Tea Cafe. We both went for the green tea hot cake, with butter, honey, azuki beans and ice cream. It was gooooood ~