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.