On Kyoto

I have just uploaded a lot of posts about being in Kyoto. You should click on "October" to the right to see all of them.

Daisen-in Temple

Praying Jizu
Temple
Rock Garden
The last temple that we had in our plan to visit before going to the train station was Daisen-in Temple. It was, of course, just one temple that was part of a larger complex of many temples and shrines. Apparently this temple is famous for its rock garden. When we got to the gate, we expected that we would have to pay. However, we did not expect to be told that we would not be able to take photos of the rock garden, or of anything else in the temple. What surprised us even more was that didn’t even allow people to go in and draw or sketch anything within the temple. I thought that was absurd, so we left. Since we were already tired, this only bothered us more, and so we decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to pay to go in and see it. Like I said, we were already tired, so this was the perfect excuse to cut it short and head to the train station.

On our way out of the temple grounds, we saw another small temple, and they allowed us to take photos, so we went in there instead. The experience was very pleasant since, at the end of the day, we were the only ones who were inside the temple, and we felt like we could do whatever we wanted (except that there was a guy who kept following us, probably making sure that we didn’t spit on the Buddha, or whatever). It was a rather small temple, and actually felt like it was a house. Paola and I decided that after we buy our first house, we will raze it to the ground, and rebuild it with the same design and layout as this temple.

After that, we jumped on the first bus that we saw that said it would take us to the train station. From there, we waited about five minutes, just enough time to buy some meals for the ride, and jumped on the train back to Tokyo.

Kinkaku-ji: the Golden Pavilion

Golden Pavilion up close
Golden Pavilion
The only thing that I had my mind set on seeing today was the Golden Pavilion. It was built by Yoshimitsu, the grandfather of Yoshimasa, who built the Silver Pavilion (in fact, Yoshimasa built the Silver Pavilion as a response, and in deference to his grandfather, who had already built the Golden Pavilion). Having walked through Kyoto for a couple of days now, we had already seen lots of postcards and other pictures of the Golden Pavilion, so I didn’t expect to be surprised when we saw it in person.

Walking through the gate, and seeing it through the trees, the Golden Pavilion’s size, and gold-leaf walls shocked me. It really was something. I don’t think that there is another building like it anywhere, all covered in gold like that. Standing in front of a lake, with his gold building reflecting off of the water, I am sure that Yoshimitsu was proud of what he had built.

Ryoanji Temple

Ryoanji Rock Garden
Buddha at Ryoanji
Shrine gate
It was said that Ryoanji Temple has a nice rock garden, and so that is why we wanted to come here. There are 15 large rocks that are masterly placed throughout the rock garden, and so it is beautiful, or so they say. I was rather disappointed by the rock garden. I guess that it was neat in some mystical sense, and I am sure that the Buddhist monks who first arranged the fifteen large rocks such knew something about feng-shui or something like that, but it didn’t appeal much to me. Perhaps I was a bit tired after three days of temples, shrines, and rock gardens. Another things that made this particular site less pleasant was all of the other people around. The whole area where people were allowed to sit and take pictures was crowded, and with everyone snapping away at their cameras (myself included) it didn’t seem that special.

Myoshin-ji

roof tiles
Myoshin-ji Buddha
The first temple that we went to, after getting lost, and going way out of our way, was Myoshin-ji . There was a great garden that also had a dry rock garden. Everything looked very pretty. One great thing was that since we went there relatively early, we were really the only ones in the garden, and having it all to ourselves, we felt that it was almost ours. One surprising thins was that next to a well, where people wash their hands, a frog had taken a rest in the fountain. We felt lucky to have seen it, and it turns out that a day that had started rather unlucky (having gotten lost on the way to our first temple, and not having intended to come here at all), it seemed like it would be a day that would go just fine.

Outside of the garden, in front of the main temples, there was some sort of celebration, or gathering for all of the people involved with the temple, including monks and nuns. It was neat to see all of this going on. I suppose that it takes this many people to keep the large temple grounds functioning.

Kyoto, day 3 – October 24, 2007

George, as a relaxing samurai
The main question of the day for us was, knowing that we had to check out, should we leave our heavy backpacks with the front desk after checking out, in order to walk easier, but necessitating us coming back at the end of the day to pick them up, or should we just carry all our stuff with us, which would be more of a burden, but then we could go straight to the train station? It so ends up that we decided to just take everything with us, since we didn’t feel that we had that much anyway, and since we had walked with all the same stuff our whole first day in Kyoto.

Conveyor belt sushi, again

We wanted a good deal for our money, so we went back to the conveyor belt sushi place. We had several plates of sushi again, and felt like we got a good meal.

Kiomizu-Dera Temple

Kiomizu-Dera
Paola and George
Kiomizu-Dera pagoda with moon
From there we walked around the streets of Eastern Gion some more. Like yesterday, it felt good to walk around in this traditional neighborhood that had a lot of nice little stores, and little shops.

We happened upon a temple, Kiomizu-Dera, where they were shooting a picture of what might have been some graduating class of students, and they were using the pagoda at the site as a backdrop. It so happens that the backdrop also appealed to me, so I stuck around and took some pictures too. Just like the other temples and shrines we had been to, this one had a lot of smaller little temples and shrines on the grounds. I think that what made this one stick out a little bit more for me was the pagaoda that was the centerpiece of the temple grounds.

Ryozen Kannon

Ryozen Kannon Buddha 1
Ryozen Kannon Buddha 2
I looked at our book, and realized that yesterday we had missed the Ryozen Kannon. Inside the grounds there is a large sculpture of a Buddha that is about 30 meters tall. I am sure that it is not the largest Buddha in the world, but it was the largest Buddha I had ever seen.

Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the place was closed. However, it was east to see the Buddha over the short walls of the grounds. Actually, it may have been better to see it from this far away, because if I were up close, I wouldn’t be able to allow the whole sight to be absorbed (at least that’s what I am telling myself since I didn’t have the choice to see it up close). In any case, it was quite a sight to see, and the low sun of the late afternoon lit it perfectly.

Philosopher’s Walk

Philosopher's Walk
George and Paola
Temple
The Silver Pavilion was at the north end of a path about a mile or two long called the Philosopher’s walk. I thought that it would be a nice pleasant walk that might inspire some thinking. It was basically a path that followed a stream that flowed down. On either side of the stream and the path were houses and little shops. I imagine that in the spring there might be cherry blossoms in bloom, but when we were there, none were. All that said, I didn’t find the walk to inspire any thinking, and I was glad when it was over.

At the south end of the Philosopher’s Walk there must have been some temple, or another, but it appears that it did not leave an impression on me (perhaps I had already seen too many temples and/ or shrines). One thing that I did want to see, that we had missed yesterday was back in Eastern Gion. Because it was getting late, we felt that it would be best to take a taxi, so we did.

Ginkaku-ji: The Silver Pavilion

Rock Garden
Silver Pavilion
Forest
I was very interested to see the Silver Pavilion. I already had a book about its maker, Yoshimasa, who was Shogun sometime in the 1300s (I think that it was the 1300s, I could be wrong). In fact, in the prelude of the book (which is all that I actually read) the author writes that he did not know much about the Silver Pavilion, or Yoshimasa. He commented that he didn’t understand why such a drab looking place got so much attention. Indeed, there is no Silver to be found anywhere in the Silver Pavilion, and it merely looks like an old wooden Japanese building. The original design was supposed to have silver leaf all around the outside of the building, but Yoshimasa died before that was able to happen, or there was some war that prevented such luxuries to be addressed. In any case, the building was never finished, and it still stands in its unfinished state.

The reason that I did want to see this place, though, is because of its function as a monument to Yoshimasa. He was not the most militaristic of Shoguns, but instead focused his attentions on the artistic and cultural flowering of Japan. It was under Yoshimasa that Japan had its equivalent to the Renaissance, when Noh theater, poetry, tea ceremony, and other arts flourished. So for that reason, I wanted to see this monument to the leader who allowed that to happen.

Other than the actual building, there was a nice garden to explore. However, one had to stay on a path, and that path was very crowded with other tourists, Japanese and foreign, who were all trying to get a nice view of the different things. What made this garden particularly stand out was its location. The grounds are right at the foot of the main mountain in Kyoto. This meant that on the other side of the fence, there were trees and bamboo growing all the way up the steep mountain. This made for a pleasurable sight.

Imperial Park

I thought that there might be something of interest to see here. This park was close to Nijo Castle, and it had the old imperial houses where the emperor lived. However, because everything was closed to the public, I did not find too much that interested me here. It was a large park with large paths where people could run, or walk, or ride their bike. We quickly walked to the other side of the park, and found a bus that might take us to Ginkaku-ji.

The bus system here in Kyoto is very nice, especially if you are able to read Japanese. However, I cannot read Japanese, and I was still able to make sense of it (for the most par). The city is laid out in a grid-like manner, so it is easy to understand where the busses should go if you have a map. Luckily, the map that we got from the hotel very clearly drew out the streets that had bus service, so it was easy to find busses to where we wanted to go.

Nijo Castle

Nijo Castle 1
Nijo Castle 2
Tea House

Chrysanthemum
After walking through the grounds of Nijo Castle, I have to say that it is the most impressive single site that I have seen while in Japan. It is basically an old castle that was built by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the early 1600s. Although they later decided to move the capital from Kyoto to Edo (modern Tokyo), they needed to establish themselves as the main force in Japan, so they built this castle near the Imperial Palace, the residence of the Emperor, and tried to outdo the Imperial Palace in size and grandness (in fact, it is my conclusion, with the limited knowledge of Japanese history that I have, that the Emperor of Japan has never really had that much power, until Meiji reassumed the power of the Emperor in the late 1800s to early 1900s). In any case, Nijo Castle is what is left.

There are as many similarities as there are differences between Japanese castles and European castles. Nijo Castle had a moat surrounding it, and only a single bridge between it and the outside area. When the castle was complete, it had a large five story tower in the center that allowed the inhabitants of the castle survey the surrounding area. There were also towers at each of the corners of the castle that functioned as fortifications. In fact, at its peak, this castle and its grounds were larger than any castle in Europe. However, as is the case with many buildings in Japan, fire consumed the tower, and other parts over the years. Also, since the Tokugawa Shogunate transferred the capital from Kyoto to Edo, this castle diminished in importance, and so its upkeep was not maintained, and it fell into disrepair. Basically, what was left, then, looked more like a large sprawling mansion rather than a well fortified castle.

They allowed us to walk through the mansion part of the main castle, and see the different rooms. There were a lot of wall paintings, and the famous nightingale floors that squeaked when you walked across them, thus alerting the inhabitants to intruders. The paintings on the walls of the rooms were in what I might call the old Japanese style, and usually had themes of nature, such as swans, tigers, and flowers. I was really stunned by the whole thing.

The grounds were large enough that they had gardens, and ponds. There were even chrysanthemums in bloom, which might be a symbol of the Shogunate.

Kyoto, day two – October 23, 2005

The hotel that we are staying at is pretty centrally located in Kyoto. All that means is that we are only a few blocks from Nijo Castle, and a little further from the Imperial Park. After both of those, we would decide where we were going to go next.

Gion

Once we were done in Eastern Gion, we decided to walk to our hotel. It didn’t seem like it would be too far, but it turns out that it was. On top of that, we had not eaten a proper meal since the morning, so we were also looking for a good place to stop and eat for the evening.

I am particularly fond of a dish called gyudon. It is basically a bowl of rice with beef on top, and I usually get it at Yoshinoya. Paola thinks that the meat tastes like it is either raw or fat, so she doesn’t like it at all. However, after dragging Paola to Yoshinoya, she finally found a dish that she likes. We figured that Yoshinoya was a decent choice, especially since it is cheap.

Instead, right across the street from the Yoshinoya, we went to a sushi place. There are a lot of sushi places in Japan that are really cheap. What they do is make sushi (a cube of rice topped with a piece of raw fish), set it on a plate, and put it on a converyor belt. The conveyor belt then goes around, which either a bar is set around, or all the booths for families are set around, and you pick up whatever you see and want to eat. When you are ready to leave, they then count all the empty plates, and add up the bill. You pay on your way out. This was good because the sushi is usually cheap, and you eat until you get full, so you know you are getting your money’s worth.

We then walked to our hotel, which was easy enough to find, and called it a night.

Eastern Gion

With all our stuff in our backpacks, we walked up to the Eastern Gion district. Being that it is on the other side of the river, Eastern Gion has not had its area really developed in the same way that the central part of Kyoto has. This is a good thing. This is the part of Kyoto that we had in mind when we thought of Kyoto. There were small streets lined with little shops and homes, going up and down, winding through the hills of the area. All of the buildings looked like they were in the old style. Eastern Gion had all the charm that the rest of Kyoto seemed to lack.

There are a lot of temples, pagodas, and gates. The first thing that I saw was a large, five story pagoda. It turns out that it was called the Yasaka Pagoda. The people here claim that there are relics of Buddha in this pagoda.

From there, we walked a little bit north to the Yasaka Shrine (no relation to the Yasaka Pagoda). The Yasuka Shrine is at the foot of the Maruyama Park. We walked deeper into the park, and came upon the Chion-in Temple, which has the largest gate in the world. A bit further up from there is Shoren-n Temple. It seems like no matter where one might walk, there is a temple or shrine within a kilometer or two.

As I said before, this part of Kyoto seemed to have all of the charm that we imagined Kyoto would have. This included people who were dressed in traditional costumes. We saw more than a few women dressed as geishas. These were different from the several women who were already dressed in kimonos, who also walk around in Tokyo. However, these ladies had their faces painted white as well (I couldn’t tell if there was a difference in the kimonos that they wear). I couldn’t be sure if the women who were dressed so were really geishas, or if they were just in costume. In fact, the group that we saw was with a professional photographer (I say professional because he had an assistant holding a light reflector) taking their picture. It was finally nice to be somewhere that seemed like what we thought Kyoto might be like.

Sanjusangen-do Temple area

I cannot say how long exactly, but I think that we probably walked for less than twenty minutes before we got to our next destination. We could see the Sanjusangen-do Temple over the short walls that surrounded it. On the eastern side of the grounds was a bright orange wall that stretched from the bottom end up to the end of the block, about two or three hundred meters. Outside, all across the streets, there were smaller temples and shrines. The grounds for these ones were about as big as a plot for a large sized house in America, on which there was at least one temple or shrine, and a small, well groomed garden surrounding the grounds.

The Sanjusangen-do Temple was rather large. Perhaps I should say that it was long. One of our guide books said that it is the longest wooden structure in the world. Neat. It wasn’t so tall, but, indeed, it was long, about the length of a football field. Along the side with the orange wall, there was a nice garden with a pond, which contrasted well with the bright orange structures (there was a gate, the wall, and a bell tower). On the other side of the long temple, there wasn’t much besides a small shrine for people to come and pray to.

Across the street, on the north side, was the Kyoto National Museum. I suppose that it is closed on Mondays because it was closed today. Either way, we would not have gone in, so it didn’t matter to us that it was closed.

Walking through Kyoto

Walking from the Toji Temple to the next place, we could see what Kyoto (at least the south part) looks like. I got the impression of an industrial city that doesn’t have much to show in terms of modernity. Certainly, we know that there were a lot of historical places and museums. However, the modernization of the city has not thought a lot about how to make the rest of the city look nice. Most of the buildings are simply large rectangles with bland colors. Basically, the city is not so attractive other than the historical and religious sites. This was especially true when we walked over the river to the eastern part of the city. The river did not look pretty, but rather looked like the industrial river of Los Angeles, being surrounded by concrete.

Toji Temple

Toji Temple Buddhas
Toji Temple
Toji Pagoda
The first site that we went to was Toji Temple. Once we got a little close to it, we couldn’t miss the 5 story pagoda. It is said that it is the tallest such pagoda in Japan. We followed it to get where we wanted to be. There was a large temple ground with a lot of different shrines and temples.

Besides the large pagoda, looking back at it, there is not too much to say. However, I felt very excited being there because it was the first site that we were at in Kyoto. It wasn’t a very far walk from the train station (about 15 or 20 minutes, which was nice. Because we knew before hand that we wouldn’t be able to check in before 3 o’clock, we packed light enough to put all of whatever we took into backpacks. This was easy since we were only going to be gone for three days. We knew that we would have to walk a lot on the first day to try to get in all of the different things that we wanted to see in Kyoto.

Seeing everything we wanted to would be a bit easier since we also learned that the train going back to Tokyo leaves so frequently, and we could basically leave on Wednesday whenever we want to. That said, looking at our maps, it looked like there were four main tourist sections of Kyoto that seemed like they were a bit apart from each other: southeast, northeast, center, and northwest. As always, I was concerned for the time we had, and worried that we might not be able to get everything in that we wanted to. We spent a while at Toji Temple, and ate some lunch on the grounds before setting off for our next destination.

Kyoto – October 22, 2005

We thought that today would be a good day to take a day off from work. I told my supervisor last Thursday (October 18) that I would not come to work on today. When he asked me why, I told him that I had some personal things to do. He also asked if I could possibly switch with someone, and then come to work on Wednesday, or something like that. I told him that I needed to take Monday off, and that I would still also need Tuesday and Wednesday off as well. This also meant that I had to have them reschedule a training that I was supposed to go to on Tuesday (which was supposed to be my day off, anyway). Given the work environment of the last couple of weeks, I knew that I would be able to take off whenever I wanted. Paola basically did more of the same, except she didn’t give as much notice to her office. This meant that we would have three days to go to Kyoto.

This morning we woke up at 5 am so that we could get to the train to Kyoto early. The travel books that we have said that the trains to Kyoto were frequent, but we didn’t really know what that meant. I assumed that there would be a train leaving for Kyoto maybe every two hours. When we got there, and saw the train schedule, we saw that the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) leaves for Kyoto at least three or four times an hour. That was a bonus. We didn’t know exactly how the long distance trains here worked, so that is why we left so early. The guide books said that the train should get to Kyoto in about two hours, and sure enough, we got there in about two hours and twenty minutes. Basically, the Shinkansen only stops at major cities along the way. Before getting to Kyoto, we stopped only at Yokohama and Nagoya. I can’t say how fast the train goes, but it’s fast. I think that we basically got there as fast as we would have if we had taken a plane (especially since airports make you wait around for so long, and you can’t get on so easy as you do on a train. Also, the same guidebook says that if we had taken the normal train, it would have taken around 8 hours, and probably cost a lot less. Since we were on a time budget of three days, though, we decided that the extra cost was worth the time.

We got to Kyoto station about 10 am. Since we couldn’t check into our hotel until 3, we decided to start our sightseeing right away. One book that we had picked out 25 sights in Kyoto that we should see. We started with number one, and then moved from there. Actually since, the train station was listed as number 2, we actually started there, and then went to number one. There really wasn’t much to see at the train station, though, so we left right away, and tried to get our bearings.

At first we went the wrong way, as is always the case. But we didn’t waste much time before realizing which way was north. After that, everything was pretty easy since the street plan of Kyoto is more or less grid-like, which makes things simpler to find (this isn’t always the case in Tokyo, where the diagonal streets make it easy to not know where you are if you are not acquainted with the area).

Kawagoe Festival – October 20, 2007

George and Paola

Singers on a rooftop

Singers in a float

Typical Float at the Kawagoe Festival

Battling Floats at Kawagoe Festival

Several people at work told me about the Kawagoe Festival. It is one of the biggest traditional Japanese festivals in Japan, and famous throughout Japan. My buddy from work told me to go with him, even though I didn’t want to at first. Paola works right there, though, so I thought that it would be easy to meet up with her after she was done with her shift, so what the hell?

Before leaving work, Matt opened the closet, and I saw a windbreaker with our company logo on it. I thought that with all of the trouble that our work was going through, my coworkers would be happy to see me in it. So I stole it from work, in lieu of getting paid, and wore it out to the festival.

The festival was crowded with people, and much bigger than I had expected. It was not simply one long street covered off, but rather, the whole center of town was consumed by the festival. Of course, there were food stands and beer stands all over (remember, you could drink on the streets in Japan!), but there were other things too.

For one thing, every hundred meters or so, there would be a small concert being played on the roof or balcony of a short building. The music that was being played was traditional Japanese music, and it all sounded the same to me. The players were wearing masks and dancing and having a lot of fun.

Another great treat was that there were large floats representing different neighborhoods in Kawagoe. These floats were taller than they were long or wide, and they looked to me like battle towers, or siege towers from the medieval ages. Inside, instead of men with spears, swords, or bows and arrows, the floats would meet and battle each other with music and dancing.

After drinking a lot and having fun with friends, we went back to someone’s house who lived close by, and kept the party going there since the street festival ended around 10 or 11. I thought that we were pretty rude to the neighbors since house parties like this aren’t usual in Japan because the walls are paper-thin. Anyways, we had a good time.