Temples and Shrines

They have a spray in the hotel room.  Love the translation.

There are thousands of temples and shrines in Kyoto.  Apparently, it was spared during WWII because of this.  Well, today we visited 6 of them, including some of the most famous here.

Gotta love signs.

The first one was called the Daitoku-ji Temple.  It was very serene (hardly anyone around).  They meditate at the Zen rock garden.  Zen is a part of Buddhism that practices equanimity and awareness.

Christianity was introduced in Japan by the same Spanish jesuits as worked on converting our own native people.  But it was banned and people suffered a horrible fate if they worshipped Christ.  This rock garden at the same place shows the rocks in the formation of a cross.  It had to be very subtle things like this.  The rocks form a shape of the cross (the right side is hidden by the hedge).

The next one was called the Ryoan-ji Temple.  Same kind of thing, but a little more elaborate.  It had a Monet-like pond.



The painting on the wall is on the lower half so that people who are sitting on the floor can see it perfectly.  Most of the temples and other places have a tatami floor.  It’s a kind of reed.  Of course we have to remove our shoes to go into all of these temples.

Then the Kinkaku (Golden) Temple.  This is probably the most famous of all, built in the 14th/early 15th century.  An idyllic setting.

 And we saw a heron there.



Back on the bus, we saw a dog dressed in a kimono.  Poor thing didn’t look impressed.



Then the Ginkaku-ji (Silver) Temple.  This is also a world cultural heritage site and the setting is absolutely beautiful.

 

There’s lots you cannot do here though.

We walked up the hillside from inside the temple area to get a view over the grounds as well as part of the city of Kyoto.

At this point, we were all rather hungry, so our guide took us to a food market to pick something up to eat on the bus while heading to our next stop.  I didn’t have any of this.

A lot of the restaurants here put this plastic food replicas in the window to show what they have.  Some are quite good, but others don’t look so good.

This is our guide, Meai.  Alistair is still with us, but she knows a lot about the local history.  She is also quite entertaining — humourous.  They say the people from Tokyo are very bland and don’t get humour.  People from Osaka are all comedians.  She’s from near Osaka.  We’re lucky to have her.

After lunch, we visited the Sakyo-Ku Shrine.  One of the largest shrines.



I took a picture inside before the guard told me to not take any.  Oops.

One of the things you can do is obtain a fortune written on paper (for a small fee).  If the fortune is good, you keep it, but if it isn’t, you hang it on a ‘tree’ outside.  We didn’t bother.

And finally the Sanjusangen-do Temple.  This place was amazing.  1,000 Buddhas are housed here in this pavilion 120 metres long.  There is a giant Buddha too, and 28 statues in front of them representing different gods and goddesses.  All of this is from Indian tradition.  The statues were made between the 12th and 13th centuries and are made of wood.  The place is amazing.  But, I couldn’t take any pictures :(  Check it out online if you like.

Dinner was a different style again (Kushiyage and Yakotori).  A lot of the food was delivered on skewers, like these guys.

This was chicken skins.  Yeah, I didn’t eat mine.  The only time I eat chicken skin is if it’s crispy, on chicken wings.  That’s about it.  Darned if I was going to eat it by itself, all mushy.  Nope - no appeal to me.

So that was our wandering day in Kyoto.  Another train trip tomorrow.