Day 54: Kyoto, Japan

We are in the lovely city of Kyoto with a lot to see in less than 2 days, so Frank studied the maps and the recommendations for sightseeing and plotted our course...

First of all, to give everyone a sense of the city, this is the City Hall building across the street from our hotel.




This is our hotel - Kyoto Hotel Okura - which is relatively fancy and has extraordinarily good service.




Then we conquered the bus system, which is pretty easy, and set out for the Ginkakuji Temple. It's a Zen temple originally established in 1482 (although I don't think much remains from that point), built as a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa. It had absolutely stunning gardens. [Dad, we have some ideas




This is a structure made of sand meant to mirror the shape of Mt. Fuji. How they get it to stay that way and how often they must have to redo it, I can only imagine.




Here is a photo of some of the buildings which have beautiful interior courtyards (although this one was open on one side).




More beautiful garden/pond photos:






There was a hillside pathway on one side of the gardens that had views back towards Kyoto.




Here is our intrepid navigator on the wooded path around Ginkakuji:




After leaving the Temple, we walked along the Philosopher's Pathway which runs alongside a canal and is so named because historically philosophers and priests supposedly strolled along the peaceful path thinking deep thoughts. The Pathway is known for being particularly beautiful during cherry blossom season, but was still very pleasant now and had a number of older people sitting and painting along it.




Here is Frank on the street leading to the next temple:




Walking along in front of us was a woman dressed in a traditional kimono, which is something we have seen fairly frequently.




After about a 1.5 km walk, we arrived at the Nanzenji Temple complex, which was nice but not as beautiful as Ginkakuji. A palace was first built there in 1264 by Emperor Kameyama but he was a devout practicioner of Zen Buddhism and decided to turn the palace into a temple in 1291. Of course, the original buildings were destroyed by fire long ago and had to be restored multiple times.




It had an enormous aqueduct, which appears to still be working.

View from the bottom:


View from the top:



More of the gardens and temple buildings:






We then headed to another temple called Sanjusangen-do. On our way we passed an enormous torii (gate) that spans the street right in front of another shrine.




The Sanjusangendo is a temple established by the powerful warrior-politician Taira-no-Kiyomori in 1164. The original building was - of course - lost in a fire but was reconstructed in 1266. That structure has actually remained unchanged for 700 years with four renovations during that period.

You have to take off your shoes before entering and you aren't allowed to take any pictures.




The Hall is amazing - it is the longest wooden structure in Japan at 120 meters long and is filled with 1001 statues of the Buddhist deity, Juichimen-senju-sengon Kanzeon (often just simplified to Kannon). Since we couldn't take pictures, you can look at google images to get an idea or there is one photo on the wikipedia site that gives a hint of how incredible it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjusangendo

We were allowed to take photos outside, so here are some from around the complex:






This is the outside of the massive hall with the 1001 statues:



Since we just hadn't seen enough temples today, we then went off to Kiyomizu Temple which has a gorgeous location up on a hill with views of Kyoto. Here was the entrance way:




The complex was built into the hills and wraps around so you can see part of it across the way behind Frank:


This is the side facing the main street:



For dinner we decided to try something called yudofu which is a traditional style meal made pretty much entirely of tofu. We went to a place called Tousuiro, which has seasonal dishes made with homemade tofu in every form possible. It was excellent. We had a five-course tofu meal with rice and a blueberry/soy milk sorbet - all served in our private room.




It was slightly difficult to find since this is what the outside looked like (no English anywhere except in the website listing on the paper menus in a pile off to the side), but it makes you feel like you earned your dinner when it's such a challenge.




After dinner we walked around the Gion area, which is a district of Kyoto known for its geisha. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gion). We didn't actually see any, or just didn't know it if we did, we we absolutely loved the area. Parts of it look like a movie set, with old-fashioned looking traditional architecture and a section along the canal that was all lit up and had tons of cute restaurants overlooking the water.




This is a shrine that was at my favorite corner. The orange lamps were all around this area and reflected on the canal - gorgeous!!




We walked all the way back to our hotel, along the Kamo River, which had a ton of couples sitting on the banks.




Seeing the Gion area made me understand why people say Kyoto is so beautiful. We are hoping to squeeze a few more sights in tomorrow before we take the train back to Tokyo tomorrow night.

ILM