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.