Following up on “Temple Hopping in Kyoto with Katrin Philippar” from the other day, I left off as we entered the Kiyomizu Temple.

Photogenic sights abounded, but it was really crowded.

The lady in Kimono stood there for the longest time (multiple minutes), waiting for an opportunity for a nice shot for her photographer at the bottom of the stairs. Few people bothered to give her a wide berth, and I suppose that's understandable because it was crowded and the steps were for everyone, but the lady in black right next to her in the shot above seemed in particular determined to spoil any good shot, because she hovered in the immediate vicinity not just for a while, but for the entire time the girl stood there.

I eventually stopped paying attention, but later noticed them at the top of the steps when I was up there as well...

And later they moved to an unused set of stairs nearby...

At one point you come across a long set of stairs down, a favorite spot of mine to get people pictures...

Here's Anthony on these stairs six years ago, and a view looking up from halfway down.

It was very hazy, but Kyoto Tower still showed up in the background...

A nice atmosphere of fun and enjoyment can make up for otherwise-oppressive crowds. I saw it originally in “Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto” and many times since, including yesterday at Gosho. But it doesn't necessarily show up in photos, so something like this next shot is perhaps only cringe worthy...

The blossoms hadn't yet really started there yet:

I'm lacking a photo for context, but next to where I took the shot above was a wall with the most delicate little flowers. Each flower was little larger than the head of a pin....

After taking the winding path down to where the long stairway had descended to, we came across the Boy Scouts at the otowa no taki...

I write a bit about what they're doing here.

This looks like a path, but it's actually the sloped wall of a huge embankment, with folks leaning over a railing just out of frame to the top. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I took it, but the results are a bit disappointing.

I ended up using his camera to snap a shot of him and his lady. Sharp dressed and a gentleman to boot. I would have liked the chance to have a beer with him (but I suspect he drinks whiskey).

Leaving the temple grounds, the surrounding streets were packed well past the “pleasant” stage...

We escaped from the crowds down the pleasant alleyway that leads to the great restaurant that I wrote about last year in “Delicious Yuba Lunch at Junsei”....

The yuba lunch set at Junsei is a great value... for ¥2,150 you get a wide variety of little foods, all very Japanese, and the fun experience of combining it with yuba that forms in front of your eyes. Katrin, in her first trip to Japan, enjoyed every aspect of it, as do I every time I go there.

After lunch we dove back into the crowds...

Of course, when I complain about the crowds, the old billboard text comes to mind: “You're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic.” 🙂 In these cases, I try to turn the crowds to my advantage by snapping interesting(?) pictures of them.

As always, you can see other shots from the same area that have appeared on my blog over the years via the “nearby photos” link under each picture. There are plenty from this area.

It's in this mess of people that the lovely ladies in “Impromptu Kimono Photo Shoot Near the Kiyomizu Temple” found a wonderful background for their shots.

Somewhere in the small streets as we got further from the bedlam, we came across a display of art that clearly took skill to produce, but as with all art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in the eye of this beholder (me), this art was hideous beyond words.

I found the gall of this note to be amusing: