Kyoto, Japan

In March 2008, my family and I (I'm Glenn, in case you found this page from a search) drove from Tokyo down to Osaka for a short vacation. The first day we walked around Nara, where I lived for my first 3 1/2 years in Japan, and the second day we went to Universal Studios Japan. The third day I wanted to see Kyoto, but my wife wanted to stay and visit with her mom and my kids had seen Kyoto on a school trip and considered that to be enough. As a result, I got a chance to pick up my camera and head unencumbered for the city that was Japan's capital city from 794 to 1868. Since I'm far from a Kyoto expert, I suggest you try Wikipedia's Kyoto entry for more detailed historical information. What you'll find here is about 30 commented pictures all taken on Saturday, March 29, 2008 by yours truly.

The first thing I had to consider was which train line to take and where to get off. Both Japan Rail (JR) and the Hankyo lines go to Kyoto. I took the Hankyo line, but I couldn't remember where to get off, and the train goes underground on the outskits of Kyoto, so you can't see where you are.

A train map on board showed 3-jo () by the word KYOUEN, 4-jo (), and 5-jo () streets, so I decided to get off at the middle one, 4-jo (written Shijo in Roman letters and pronounced "she Joe"). As it turned out, it was the correct thing to do.

If you click the map at left, it will expand to fill a 1024X768 monitor in a new window. Click it away when you're done. This is from a tourist map I found at Shijo station and scanned here at home. By the way, the character (eki) means "station," and that's something you pick up real quickly here in Japan.

My walking tour was bascally to the darker green areas of the map to the east.

When you come out of Shijo station you realize that the train you were on was actually paralleling the Kamo River. As you can see, it has a nice bike/walking path next to it and all manner of traditional, brown wooden restaurants with large windows lining the river on the west side. If you stroll out on the Shijo Steet bridge a little bit you get this view. This is looking due north.

However, as I said, I was headed for the temples to the east of the river. This is the view down Shijo Street to the east, and at the end you can just make out the orange entrance to the Yasaka shrine at the end.

I didn't walk all the way down Shijo, though. Rather, I turned south after a few blocks south to Kennin Ji. There I picked up a little brochure on the temple, and I'll quote you a few lines:

Kennin-ji is a temple of the Zen sect, one of the main branches of Japanese Buddhism. The Zen sect, dating back to sixth-century China, stresses work and meditation. This temple was founded in 1202 by the priest Yousai (1141-1215).

Ryouanji has the most famous Buddhist white-stone garden, but there are others, as you can see here at Kennin-ji. The stones look so manicured and you might imagine that they were tended daily by some 21st century reincarnation of Yousai.

You would be dead wrong, however, as when I walked around to the back I found this guy in a ball cap and Nikes raking the stones. Maybe the monks had a day off, or they were all in meditation.

The big attraction, the one that you pay to see, is the painting of the Twin Dragons, which I imagined to be hundreds of years old. As it turns out, it was created in the gymnasium of an elementary school in Hokkaido and dedicated in April, 2002. It took the artist, Junsaku Koizumi, just under two years to complete. Does this mean that those kids didn't have gym class for two years while Mr. Koizumi painted? The brochure doesn't say. It doesn't say who came up with this deal, either. Did Mr. Koizumi approach the monks and say, "Hey, this temple has been here for a thousand years, and how much are you making off it? Nothing! For a nominal service charge, I will paint a couple dragons at my friend's school, and you can put them up and start raking it in from the tourists. Do we have a deal?"

Sorry for lapsing into sarcasm, but you do have to wonder how this came about.

After taking in Kennin-ji, I kept walking east and soon the street started climbing the mountain. The Chinese characters for this pagoda look like "eight slope tower," so we'll just call this the Eighth Street Tower.

A little way up the slope there was this temple to the right, and it said it was the toy temple. I'm not sure if this was a temple dedicated to toys or if it is itself a toy, but it looks like both.

After the temple was a corner, and a red-haired punk girl I had noticed at Kennin-ji had sat down by the drink machines to have somthing to drink and a smoke. Just then this rickshaw with two maiko in it came up and I had to grab the shot. I didn't have any time to frame it or anything so I had to crop the picture later. I call this one "when worlds collide." I feel really fortunate to have snapped it just when the "driver" and the punk made eye contact. With the sun on the screen of my camera, I really wasn't sure what I was taking a picture of.

The next crossroad was, I think, Nene Street. It seemed to be all about eating, and the shops that had people making things to eat right on the street were getting a lot of takers. I had to buy a little of what she was making, too, although I'm really that much for sweets. I think it was sweet potato based. Pretty interesting. Try some.

I had lunch at a tiny little eatery across the street from this. It had a cozy atmosphere and koto music in the background. I had some of the best chicken and egg over rice (oyakodon) that I've ever had.

Back out on the street and down the slope a bit, I ran into this restaurant. It had a sign outside that said "shortcut to Kiyomizu dera." Actually it wasn't, but that was a great way of getting people to walk in off the street into this little type of entrance.

Kyoto, I hear, is famous for its sake, and that appears to be what we have here. It was time for me, though, to turn around and walk back up the hill toward the real way to Kiyomizudera.

As I said, the street was all about food, and here I took a picture of a guy buying some rice crackers. There were shops on this tourist street that were selling Japanese fans or other souvenirs, but most business was certainly being done in edibles.

I had seen this girl down by the sake restaurant with some German ladies who had asked for a picture with her. By the time I had walked back up the slope, I found her here by this little garden with people photographing her from every angle. The original picture had a man's cellphone (his camera) sticking in over the bush and rock on the left, but I painted it out with Photoshop's cloning tool. She had actually stopped posing and started walking when I took this picture, so you can see she's looking down at where she's walking.

I had to wonder if she had gotten all dolled up like this just to enjoy the attention or if the local merchants association paid her to add to the atmosphere.

Here I'm walking back up the slope toward Kiyomizudera. Everybody was stopping and taking pictures of this scene with its cherry tree in full bloom. Trouble was, there were these terrible power wires going straight through the tree, so I took them out with Photoshop. If you want to see the tree miraculously sprout power lines, just hover your mouse over this picture.

OK, finally I got to a T-intersection, which meant I had gotten to a crest and needed to turn left to get to the top of the hill. I thought I had gotten to the big intersection at 1 o'clock from the number 18 in the map above, although I now know that's not true. Where was I? Anyway, the streets were flooded with people, and almost everybody but me seemed to be walking down the slope.

This was another big tourist street with more eats, especially the little triangular sweets that are so popular in Kyoto. They are made of rice dough rolled paper thin and then folded over with a daub of sweet bean paste, for example, inside. This guy was giving away free samples on the street, and it was a sales technique that really worked. I sampled almost every kind and finally bought my favorite. Go for it. You're walking off the calories going up that hill anyway!

At the end of the street was the entrance to Kiyomizudera, which translates to the "clear water temple." I later found a tour bus parking lot down below, and there certainly were a lot of tour groups there getting their souvenir pictures taken at the temple entrance, as you see in this picture.

Well, "clear water" is what it's all about, and there was a place at the entrance where you could get a drink. I can never really bring myself to share one of those cups with the other 1,000 people who have put their lips to it that day. Good for a picture, though.

The temple isn't on the very top of the mountain; there is this torii you can walk through to go up a little higher. This is the Jishu shrine, which seems to be where people go to pray for mates, fertility, and things like that. I snapped pretty much this same picture when I first visited Japan as a tourist in 1987, except back then it was on film.

Since you are up on the top of the eastern mountains of Kyoto, you get this great view of downtown and the Kyoto Tower. The Japanese have often told me that Kyoto is known for being a cold place in winter, owing to being located in a basin as it is. You can certainly verify that from this vantage point.

The entrance to Kiyomizudera, where the people are drinking the water, is beyond the pagoda on the left. That pagoda is the same one that you see in the shot above of the group tour getting their picture taken. When you buy your ticket and walk in, you really don't realize that there is a lattice of pilons below holding you up. It's when you walk out onto the platform with the nice overview of Kyoto that you realize that the temple actually looked like this.

The walking route through the temple takes you around and back down to the walking path that you can make out in the picture above. As you are coming down to that level you get another chance for a free drink of water, this time from three spouts pouring water from above. Rather than dip your water this time, you have to catch it from above.

Here's your third look at the same pagoda. As you are leaving the temple area, there is a reflecting pool with lanterns and such. Together with the cherry blossoms, although they weren't yet at their peak, it was quite a nice scene.

After I took the picture above I could here a faint Buddhist chant, and I saw this monk standing motionless. One of the passersby stopped to drop a coin into his hand. Nice hat.

I then proceded to walk down the hill past the bus parking lot, down Gojozaka. There was another temple between me and the river, the one marked 20 on the map at the top, but I have no idea how to read those Chinese characters. The temple itself was pretty run-of-the-mill, but I thought this mountain of baby Buddhas was worth a picture.

This wasn't a real statue there but rather a poster. This is downright bizarre, and if you know anything about it, please email me.

I walked along a steet that parallels the river that was all houses and businesses that look like this one. I felt like I had just walked onto the set of Sayuri.

What was I doing by the river and headed toward the station anyway? It was too early to get back on the train to go home. I showed you the entrance to Yasaka Jinja in the second picture on this page. I walked down Shijo and took this picture when I got up to where you have to cross the street to get over to it. Looks inviting, so lets go inside.

Inside we find lots and lots of food vendors in portable stalls selling all the things that Japanese people like to eat when they are outdoors - grilled fish, octopus balls, grilled chicken on a stick, fried noodles, corn on the cob, okonomiyaki, you name it.

Just then an entourage of people with cameras and an air of authority came in and warned all the people away. They were getting paid to take pictures of this newly wedded couple in front of the temple at cherry blossom time, and they were going to get the shot cleared of people.

I thought that was pretty good luck for me, having a newly married couple walk right up in front of me while I was looking for things to photograph, so I also grabbed a shot of them.

At Japanese weddings receptions, the bride will typically change her clothes several times, so you can expect her to be absent from her own party quite a bit while she goes through costume changes. One of the changes is to don a Western-style white wedding dress. However, for the pictures, tradition trumps all.

Cherry blossom viewing - the Japanese call it hanami. It certainly is a wonderful Japanese tradition. Sit on blue tarps under the trees, eat Japanese junk food, and get fuzzy on beer and/or sake. How can you beat it?

As we continue walking, in the center of Maruyama Park, we come upon this old-looking cherry tree. I don't find it particularly attractive, but it's in the brochure I picked up so it must be a famous tourist attraction.

It's not too often that you see a crane/stork/heron or whatever that is, especially this close up. But there was this gigundous bird sitting on a rock there in front of God and country and I couldn't resist taking his picture. On the tree, you can see a few pieces of paper tied to the branches. These are the little wishes for the future that the Japan write and leave on temple grounds to petition their God. In case we've forgotten amid all that beer and sake, we are on temple grounds.

Number 11 on the map at the top is Chionin Temple. Chionin was built in 1234, they say, but because of fires and earthquakes the oldest buildings today are from the 17th century. To enter the temple you leave your shoes down at the level this picture was taken from, and then you can walk up the steps and all around the outside of the temple on its "porch." The wood was so smooth and polished by the years that it felt really great in stocking feet.

Inside a monk was chanting and beating a drum with a mallet. I didn't want to use a flash, so I had to hold really still. You can see his right hand is blurred, but at least I got the rest of the picture pretty in-focus considering I didn't use a tripod.

Chionin is quite a way up from the street, so there were a lot of steps to go down when leaving the main temple area pictured above.

I found on a website later that Chionin also has Japan's largest bell, but I didn't see it. That will give me an excuse to go back (as if I needed one).

When I got down to the street I looked back at the official entrance to Chionin. Since I had entered from Maruyama Park, this was the first time I saw it. They say that this is the tallest temple gate in Japan.

After this, it was getting late and I had to get back to Osaka, so I just headed down to Shijo Station and caught a train out. So there you have it, pictures from my day in Kyoto. A "once over lightly" treatment to be sure. I had a student one time who was studying for the "national Kyoto test." Believe me, they have a test for everything in Japanese society. He was going down to Kyoto all the time on weekends to study and reading books, too. He told me he didn't think he had a chance of passing. Too bad he couldn't write the captions for this page to really tell you what you're looking at. Well, I don't know if I could get so serious about Kyoto that I study for the national test on it, but I do wish I lived closer so that I could explore Kyoto more often.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. If you come to Japan as a tourist, try to get to Kyoto by all means. What they say about it is not just hype. It's a gem.