Saturday 29, we have done great things, starting with visiting the park of the Golden Pavilion (since the pavilion itself is not open).
My brother warned me, but it’s true: it’s a disappointing strand. The park is beautiful, wonderfully maintained, the lodge itself is impressive, although relatively small.
But it’s a factory. You take your ticket, hop hop, you queue at the entrance, zou, tail to best view on the roof, bam, there you have 30 seconds to make your photo, click clack, before be driven by the flow of the crowd to… elsewhere.
There are more and more tourists and we are part of them, of course.
Little aside on bus: we managed not to die suffocated between US and Chinese. Unlike France, you pay at the end of the course, there are coin for topping (the machine does not give change). People go out the front, where the driver launches into the litany of “shimaaaaaaaaas” because thank all passengers. It opened the back door where passengers boarded, when those who want to get off are almost all descended. And the drivers are very talkative: they talk all the time 🙂
We then left for the Ryoanji Temple, a Zen temple with its garden.
Except that there are 2000 people meditating in front of the expression of Zen serenity.
As there is still 2,000 people rave about the Mona Lisa.
I know: you have to make live with it.
We had lunch in a small park, then we went to our pottery classes given by the husband of Emi (who had given us the cooking class).
We first started with the tea ceremony.
Then in workshop are the craftsman showed us how creations made by hand on manual lathes. For pedagogy, Vallauris potters clearly have lessons to take. It was simple, clear, effective, very friendly while helping us to correct us. (Xim took pictures of our works).
We also had a very interesting exchange of aikido, sports practices in France and Japan, as well as the search for harmony.
On the way back we tried to go back to the restaurant where we were the first night, which was a serious error on a Saturday night: it was full, obviously.
Today we devoted the day to shopping: more detail when you open your gifts.
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