Kyoto

The word I find myself repeating as we wander around Kyoto is “unbelievable” (which is answered, in my head, by the voice of Inigo Montoya). What’s unbelievable isn’t just the striking grandeur and beauty of the city’s many shrines and temples, it’s also the massive amount of them. Though we’ve followed guidebook walking tours, you can quite easily stumble upon some stirring sights just walking around aimlessly. This is the heart of the “old Japan” I was looking to see, to go with the urban spectacle of Tokyo.

The first night, we heard from the tourist information desk about a lantern festival taking place at the Daigo-ji temple (wiki). This surpassed any expectations; a night-time walk up a hill lined with lanterns leading to a stunning temple complex and a 5-story pagoda. Families with their children, monks chanting, bells ringing, offerings, and good company. Not bad for the first night, right off the train.

Here’s a taste of what else we’ve seen. I’ve also linked to the wikipedia pages, in case you feel like getting a little background.

1. Kiyomizu-dera (wiki) – An immense temple set into the side of a mountain; walking around it, you are above the tree line.

2. Kodai-ji (wiki) – A smaller temple with a beautiful garden. While we were walking the grounds, thunder began to roll, so we waited it out in the temple’s Zen garden. It’s undoubtedly the best place I’ve ever taken shelter from a storm.

3. Yasaka-jinja (wiki) – A colorful shrine, full of hanging lanterns. As with most shrines we’ve seen, people provide offerings, and attach paper to make wishes.

4. Tenryu-ji (wiki) – Another Zen temple, this one in Kyoto’s western mountains. More time spent here at the Zen garden, and walking through the bamboo grove.

5. Nanzen-ji Oku-no-in (wiki) – A series of small shrines tucked away in the hills in a mountain glen behind the larger Nanzen-ji temple. The picture simply can not do it justice.

This represents only a portion of what we’ve seen. We also took a day trip to Nara, the second city in terms of Japan’s cultural heritage; believe it or not, we did get a little temple-and-shrined-out, but here are a few shots from there. An interesting quirk about the city is that 1,200 deer roam freely in its large park, having been considered in pre-Buddhist days to be messengers of the gods. Like most messengers of the gods, they’re mostly interested in anything that resembles food, like my guidebook.

We are off to China tomorrow, and I’m trying to get everything up before then, as who knows what access will be like. So, hopefully more to come…