I'm finally getting around to photos from last November, when old Yahoo co-worker Sergey Kolychev paid me a visit. (He's not old, our co-worker status is).

In the intervening three years since his prior visit he'd become fluent in Japanese to the point that he can read novels, which just blows my mind. Japanese is at least his fourth language (after Ukrainian, Russian, and English), so maybe they get easier as they stack up.

We packed quite a bit into one day. We started out with a visit to the Heian Shrine...

We then popped over to the Nanzen Temple...

We somehow found a little hiking trail back beyond the Eikando Temple, which provided a nice view of the city through the trees...

People often put up little wooden plaques as a memorial of their hiking trip, such as the bigger board above placed by a group of 13 people ranging from 79 years old down to five months old. I wouldn't have paid the crow a second thought, but Sergey noticed that it was a three-legged crow, which is apparently a thing. You learn something new every day.

When then moved north to the Hounen-in Temple (法然院), which has appeared on my blog of late here, here, and here.

The thin depth of field in this next shot makes it looks a bit unreal...

This next shot, of Sergey standing under the gate, looks a bit unreal because I made a mistake and severely underexposed it, so had to employ HDR-like post processing to recover a usable image...

I sort of tried to replicate this old point-n-shoot shot that has for some reason always stuck in my mind...

We moved north to the Silver Pavilion and its famous sand sculptures, which I posted about the other day. Here's one more shot of the lush moss there...

Growing boys must be nourished, so we repaired over to a tea cafe for choux à la crème...

I opted for coffee, but Sergey is a connoisseur of fine tea, as Fumie can be sometimes, so I've been to this shop many times.

Sergey mentioned some knee pain that had been bothering him for a long time, so I brought him to the best masseur in Kyoto, Kentaro Kataoka. Sergey had never had a real massage before, so it was quite an experience.

I've had many massages in America, but after having had massages in Japan, I'd never classify what I had in America as a real massage. They're more like “shove some skin around a bit and hope it relaxes you” sessions. These in Japan are closer to physical therapy. In a blog post about Japanese massage a couple of years ago, I described this masseur's technique as “a ferocious pinpoint attack like his fingertips are tactical weapons trying to massage the muscle from the inside out”. It can be very effective, but painful at the time.

(I describe my hit-n-miss experiences with acupuncture here.)

Sergey thought the whole experience was great, so I'm glad that Kataoka-sensei was able to work us in at short notice. He'd been out for his daily jog when I called, and kindly cut it short just for us.

This was at a temporary location at the time, but since then he's opened a permanent shop near Teramachi Nijo. Highly recommend.

Anyway, newly refreshed, we popped over to the Chion'in Temple (知恩院) to see its big main gate...

A shot from this visit appeared in a post half a year ago, on “Huge Main Gate of Kyoto’s Chion’in Temple”.

We then moved to the famous Kiyomizu Temple (清水寺)....

The late-afternoon light was rich.

This World Heritage Site temple is perhaps most well known for its big balcony...

Better shots of it, from years past, appear here, and here, and here.

But it's best of all with a friendly face...