Kyoto...Land of the Geisha and so many temples

We arrived very early, 6am, in Kyoto after taking the bus from Tokyo and made our way straight to the hostel to get settled and see if we could check in. As it turned out, the hostel reception did not open until 10am, but we found the common room and watched the Byron Nelson playoff between Ryan Moore and Adam Scott. We were obviously pulling for Ryan, but Adam birdied the 3rd playoff hole with a 50 footer, so our hopes of seeing Ryan's first win while in Japan were dashed.

With no one to check us in for a few hours we set out to do some early morning sightseeing. Thankfully we chose to pack light and hauled everything with us down the road about 2 miles to the Kiyomizu Temple. This is a very famous temple in Kyoto, and consequently was packed even at 8:30am. Before going into the temple itself we paid a visit to its hillside cemetery which was a sight in itself.



We walked all around the temple complex and admired the shrine, the 3 story pagoda and the surrounding nature. The main shrine is built on the hillside and offers some great views of the area. Here is me with the shrine behind me...



One of the rituals that everyone was taking part in was the washing of their hands with the water falling from above. There was a long line, so we decided to take a pass ourselves.



Our next stop on the morning journey was the Kodai Ji shrine. Even though much less famous than Kiyomoizu, we enjoyed it a lot more for its serenity and design. It included a Zen rock garden as well as many fine buildings.



It also had a great trail through a bamboo forest, so much different than the bamboo we came across in Thailand. In Japan they are much larger in diameter and grow more independently of each other than in Thailand.



After walking back to the hostel and checking in we ate some lunch and continued our sightseeing at the Fushimi Inari shrine. This was probably our favorite place in Kyoto, we loved hiking all over the mountain through the thousands of orange Torii over every pathway. Here are some shots of our hiking trails...












We hiked around this area for a good 2 to 3 hours and when we had worn ourselves out we made our way towards the last spot of the day, the Sanjusangendo temple. This was a very impressive place bearing 1000 identical "thousand armed kannon" statues flanking one main deity called Sahasrabhuja-arya-avalokiteśvara. Each statue doesn't really have 1000 arms, they actually have about 42, but each arm counts for 25 worlds, and therefore you get 1000, even though the math doesn't quite work out. No pictures are allowed in the temple, but if you really need to see it there are a few on Wikipedia.

Much to Michelle's delight, our hostel was located in the Gion neighborhood, ground zero for Geisha in Kyoto, and by extension all of Japan. The girl at the hostel said that if we head down between 5:30 and 6:30 we could catch them on their way to work. We decided this would be fun, little did we know though that they have a paparazzi following and we joined right in with the gawking onlookers and photogs to snap pictures and admire the Geisha in all their splendor.





That night we ate some conveyor belt sushi that doesn't come even close to what we've been eating in Shibuya, but at least it was cheap and compared to most places it was great.

Due to our limited time in Kyoto we kept up a pretty busy schedule of sightseeing and set out the next morning for Nanzenji Temple where we observed tons of painters hard at work painting this apparently famous aqueduct.



Our guidebook mentioned that the best part of the temple was way in the back up the hill, so we trekked back and found a nice, if not amazing, little spot. Devotees come to bathe under the waterfall here year round and it was a nice break from the crowds further towards the front.



On our way to the next temple we took a path called the Philosophers Walk, it runs along a canal and would surely be an amazing place to take in the cherry blossoms in bloom.



The next stop was one of my clearest memories from my previous journey to Japan, the famous Kinkaku-ji Temple. It was originally a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and constructed in 1397. The temple has been burned down numerous times since with the most recent incident occurring in 1950 courtesy of an overzealous monk.



Our final stop for the day was the Ryoan ji Zen temple. This temple contains one of the finest Zen rock gardens around. It consists of raked gravel and 15 stones, and will be more easily viewed when I get a panorama picture up for you. Until then this can give you a bit of an idea.





By the time we made it back to our hostel it was Geisha watching time again, and tonight we caught some more looks, this time in pairs!



We decided to squeeze in a daytrip to Nara the following day, so that was all we had time for in Kyoto. It was a beautiful place and somewhere you could definitely spend some serious time so long as you keep your activities varied and don't burn yourself out on temples. On to Nara for giant Buddhas and lots of deer.