She says: Today's wrap-up!

Yay! Finally all caught up!
Today was a fairly laid back day, as we came to realize that Kyoto does not quite afford the same mobility that Tokyo does. The subway system is a bit confusing, the JR line is reserved for major transport (and is 10 blocks away anyway) and Kyoto is quite spread out. We have taken to hailing taxis instead.
Thi8s morning we walked across the street and visited Sanjusangendo, a national treasure of Japan and the longest wooden building in Japan for over 400 years. It is home to the famous 1,000-armed statue of Kwan Yin, which was still actively revered. We lit incense and candles while we were there and watched others do the same.
It was interesting for me as a Buddhist to see an active temple. There's not a lot like that in the states, and certainly not near me. It was an interesting change to be in a place where a reverent mentality is cultured towards Buddhist images.
We couldn't take pictures but they did sell booklets with photographs of the statues in the gift shop. The 1,000 armed Kwan Yin was one thing. The several hundred smaller Kwan Yin statues that were lined up on either side of her were another entirely. There were literally hundreds.
The grounds themselves were gorgeous and relatively serene despite having school children and tour groups running through constantly. We noted later that we didn't hear any of the traffic from the surrounding streets.
We picked up a lovely print of Buddha there along with calligraphy across the top that reads "We come together in this moment and will never get the chance again, so please breathe with me here." Or words to that affect. I liked the sentiment, and picked it up. Bob was sweet enough to buy me a hand-mala (prayer beads) and the aforementioned booklet of photos of all the lovely statues.
We then grabbed a cab and made our way to the Kyoto International Manga Museum.
Manga is the Asian version of the comic book, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, but they usually have more involved stories, and they don't center around super-heroes so much. They tend to focus on an average every-day person who is suddenly forced to deal with something unusual in their life. The favorite age for characters of these to be is between 12 and 18. But there are manga stories for children as well as the elderly and, yes, even "adult" manga.
They have walls and walls of manga from all around the world -manga having become so popular it has been picked up in style and format even in America and Europe- on each of the museum's 3 floors, and rotating exhibits of famous manga artists and authors.
We were lucky to hit it on a Sunday for two reasons.
The first is that on Saturday and Sunday only they have manga artists in the lobby for you to get a caricature from.
This is Yamano Saya, who did ours, and who is ~holding~ ours.

She spoke virtually no English and when we spoke a few Japanese phrases she was pleasantly surprised. She made us look adorable and she, herself, is very very adorable. We're going to get the super-adorable picture of Bob and I holding hands framed once we get back to the US.
The other reason is that the 24th was the last day the exhibits for the french artist Moebius and the very famous Japanese children's artist Sugiura were there. I'm really pleased we got to see them, as it gave insight to the background of the items I enjoy so much nowadays. A great deal of Anime and several video games come from popular Manga, and we are solid lovers of both.
There was also a quick rundown of the history of the modern distribution of manga in Japan outward in to the world, and by modern we mean 1950-present. Manga's apparently been around at least one hundred years prior to that. It was a treat to see some of the very early line art-only examples compared to today's slickly patterned stories.
By the way, as there are fewer and fewer children within Kyoto they have begun closing elementary schools and consolidating what's left. The Manga Museum was actually converted from an elemntary school that was there from the early 1900's.
Afterwards we hailed a cab and found our way back to the hotel where we had a solid crash, as we'd been walking a total of 7 hours at that point and figured for our first full day we'd done a good job of seeing some really damned cool stuff.
We didn't really learn any new words and we haven't had a WTF moment yet, so we're sorry for folks looking forward to that. At this point it's starting to look like your 2 adventurers might be just very accepting of whatever they see and it doesn't occur to them someone else might find it weird!
Pictures for the day can be found by making the clicky here.