Great thoughts of Fleeting substance

April 12, one day sightseeing in Kyoto and we’re already sick of temples.

Oh, and I'm trying a different image host for these pictures so they're...um...well, they're huge.

The plan for today was to walk through ‘eastern Kyoto’, a place as jam-packed with cultural properties and epic thousand-year-old blah blah blah that it’s a little bit numbing. Okay, a lot bit numbing. I had picked out some stops along a long, meandering walk through the city and we had our plan in hand, so the first thing we did was check out of our hostel and walk to Kyoto Station, nearby. From there we took a bus to our first stop, Ginkaku-ji temple. We were on the bus at ‘morning go to school’ time and so as we drove, it began to fill up with millions and millions of schoolgirls, all wearing the same uniform and, therefore, all going to the same school. There was one stop in particular where there were probably, no exaggerating, fifty students all waiting for the bus. The doors opened and people just kept on coming in and coming in until we just couldn’t fit anyone else. I was a little worried, actually, because if our stop happened before theirs, there was a good chance we just wouldn’t be able to get off of the bus. Luckily, they all drained out a few stops before us, and we got out and walked toward the temple.

Oh, and by the way, we were on the bus for a good 15 or 20 minutes. This will become more interesting later.



We started first at the philosopher’s path. Jess decided that simply ‘standing in the picture’ was no longer interesting enough. I think she’s probably right. The philosopher’s path is one of my favorite sights from the trip. We hit the timing dead on, and all of the cherry trees along this ancient, wandering path were in full bloom. It was spectacularly gorgeous, and really nice to just put Jess on my arm and walk along.



Our first temple was called ‘Ginkaku-ji’, an old temple with a really interesting garden. Parts of it were just pattern sand, like the abbreviated cone above. The rest was very specific, simple, and elegant, with lots of little rivers and trees in a field of moss. I got a picture of a display that evidently explained (in Japanese) the different kinds of moss to be found around the garden. I liked it mostly because it had three different classes of moss, and two of them were ‘VIP Moss’ and ‘Moss: The Interrupter’, which sounds like a great prime-time gardening drama.

We were joined at this stop, and on many subsequent stops, but another million schoolchildren on a field trip to see some temples along the philosophers walk. Each school group had a leader carrying a flag to keep everyone together. Jess and I made a point of setting a different pace from the school trips because otherwise we’d be swamped by schoolchildren and, no doubt, blinded by camera phones.



There was also a great view of Kyoto from the top ends of the garden. A nice place to spend a morning.



Next we continued along the philosophers walk to a temple called Honen-in. The guidebook did a good job of mixing up all the big, famous, extremely busy temples with smaller, quieter, but equally interesting ones, and this was one of the quieter ones. It was set up in the woods, seemingly away from the world, and was simple and unpretentious. We liked it a lot. Also, I’m not sure who did that rock stack, but it wasn’t me, and I was afraid to go anywhere near it in case I knocked it over.

The next stop was called Eikan-do, where we got to go up into the actual temple and look around at all the rooms. They had a statue of the Buddha ‘looking back’, and there’s a story around that that I found pretty interesting. I’m sure ‘the internet’ could tell it better than I could, though, so I’ll let you look it up on your own. No pictures, though, they don’t tend to let cameras inside of temples, which is a shame, but I liked the place a lot.



Fourth temple of the day was Nanzen-ni, a huge temple complex with a lot of interesting sights…that you had to pay to get in to. We didn’t really feel the need to pay admission for anything else that day, though, so we eschewed any of the details, though I did snap these pictures of the ‘triple gate’ entrance and a place where they burn incense. That right there? That is a whole lot of ash. I was impressed.



We walked through this garden called Muran-in hoping we could kick back here and rest for a while, but it was a pretty small garden, though quite pretty, and we didn’t really want to just lounge in the middle of it because there was really only one path through. So instead we skipped the next ancient, epic, crazy temple and decided to rest for a while. At this point we were feeling a little tired of temples and shrines. Sure, they’re pretty, but there is such a thing as too many temples, it seems.



So instead, Maruyama Koen (park), a good place to rest your feet. It was a pretty big park with lots of shops selling ice cream and various munchy foods. Also, tons and tons of schoolchildren grouped together like honeycombs. Jess took a nap while I walked around and checked out food. I ended up getting some fried octopus balls and some strange, but tasty, desert…things…on a stick. That’s what Jess is eating. We also got some nice soft-serve ice cream and just hung around letting our legs recharge.



After that, we walked out of the park through a shrine complex. Lots of shrines of all sizes, very neat.



And then on the way out, we walked through Gion, the old geisha district. Pretty neat place, but I’m sure it lights up a lot more at night when all the rich businessmen come to be very traditionally entertained. We saw a few geisha walking around, too. Well, geisha or meiko, trainee geisha. One of them wears shorter sleeves, but I can’t quite remember which. Serious footwear, too. That’s got to take some practice to walk around in.

We stopped at a place that sold quality Japanese crafts and did some shopping for gifts, though nothing really caught my eye for myself. Neat stuff, though. We also strolled through a shopping arcade and saw a lot of pachinko parlors, a lot of clothing stores, and a place that sold croissant-wrapped hot dogs. Jessie liked.

Then we took a subway a mere two stops back to Kyoto station. That 20 minute bus ride at the beginning of the day? We walked back. We crashed early, again, got some dinner and I reconsidered my plan for the next day. Less temple-centric.

-N

Labels: Food, Japan, Kyoto, Shrines, Temples