This was to be our last day in Kyoto so of course we visited……..some more temples! First was the Silver Temple or Ginkaku-ji, the last attraction on our “must see” list. This was built by the grandson of the shogun who had built the Golden Temple, which we visited yesterday. Its design matches that of the earlier building, and it too served as its builder’s retirement villa before being converted to a temple. However, Ginkaku-ji has never been silver – the name probably arose as a nickname to distinguish it from the Golden Temple. It was fairly close to our house, so we managed to arrive for its opening at 8.30, to find that we had beaten the crowds……but also that the morning sun was still hidden behind a mountain, and the temple and its garden were in shade. Unusually for Japan, this wooden structure has never burnt down, and what you see is the much restored original, dating from 1482.
The Silver Temple, Kyoto and its garden in the early morning shadeThe Silver Temple from aboveThe gardeners here even sweep away dead leaves…a big job in autumn
We decided to wait until the sun could reveal their full beauty, which took nearly an hour.
The sun begins to reach the Silver TempleThe Silver Temple, Kyoto in all its gloryThese dry sand gardens are popular in Japanese temples
The Silver Temple lies at the start of a popular walk called the Philosopher’s Path, which runs along the side of a small canal lined with cherry trees. In spring it must be spectacular (and horribly crowded) but in autumn it was pleasant and quiet. There are a lot of temples close to the path, some well-known and quite popular and some totally off the main tourist circuit. We tried a couple of each type, enjoying the feeling of freedom of making up our plans as we went and not having to do any more crowded “must see” attractions. Even the slight disappointment of being served our weakest yet cup of latte – warm milk that may once have seen a coffee bean – did not spoil our mood.
The beautiful setting made up for the weakest ever coffee….
A highlight of our stroll was seeing our best yet Kyoto autumn colours at the Eikando Temple.
Eikando Temple – the best autumn colours yet of our Kyoto staySmall shrine at Eikando Temple
We finally ended up at the Chionin Temple, near our house, with its huge entrance gate.
Chionin Temple, Kyoto
It had two gardens. The one we liked better was the Yuzen garden, which is actually modern – dating from 1954. It had probably the most evocative statue we had seen in Japan, a Buddha standing in a small lake. It was a fitting end to our visit to a city that we had finally got to like. At first we had been repelled by Kyoto’s ugly centre and crowds of other tourists. But we had now discovered that the real joy of the place is wandering around the hundreds of less-visited temples – it is a feeling unlike anything else on the planet.
A fitting farewell to Kyoto
We said a goodbye to our statue and all that it represented of the best of Kyoto, picked up our bags at our house and headed to the station to catch our Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo.
Feeling refreshed after a day’s break from visiting stuff, we woke early, and took a taxi to the Golden Temple or Kinkaku-ji, in the northern suburbs. The long ride let us appreciate the city’s geography. Kyoto sits in a valley and nearly all of the tourist attractions lie in the outer suburbs, at the foot of pretty, forested mountains. The centre is a highly developed and rather ugly urban sprawl and crossing through it is quite time consuming. We arrived for the 09.00 opening of the temple to find that there was already a large queue waiting to get in – foreign and Japanese tourists, and groups of schoolchildren. Still, the crowds were worth it, since the Golden Temple really is an unmissable sight – a temple entirely covered in gold leaf (even the gutters are gilded) sitting by a lake in a beautiful garden. We joined the throng to take one of THE essential Kyoto photos, of the temple with its reflection in the water.
The classic view of the Golden TempleA close up view of the Golden Temple
The building was originally a villa for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and was first built in 1408. After his death, it was turned into a temple as per the terms of his will. Over the years it has burnt down and been rebuilt many times, most recently in 1950 when it was set alight by a deranged monk. The current building dates from 1955. A well-trodden path led – with a strict one-way system – past the temple, through its garden and to the exit. The visit had taken us about thirty minutes. Since we had come such a long way, we wanted to see as much as we could of this northern part of Kyoto as possible, so we took a taxi to the nearby Ryoan-ji temple. It could not compete with Kinkaku-ji’s beauty, but it was a haven of peace with a beautiful pond and some very strange pine trees, somehow made to grow like giant inverted chandeliers.
In the Ryoan-ji TemplePine Trees made to grow like chandeliers!Lake at Ryoan-ji (with the very last fruit of the season)
Next, we visited yet another temple, Ninna-ji, which was about twenty minutes away by foot. This was another beautiful, peaceful place with almost no visitors.
Building at Ninna-ji Temple
It was now midday, and we wondered what to do next. At the back exit of the complex was a sign advertising a mini-pilgrimage of 88 local temples over 10km – imitating Shikoku’s 88-temple 1200km epic trek. It was an intriguing prospect…..but we had already saturated on religious buildings for the day. We stopped in the Ninna-ji’s café to study the map and decide our next move. It was advertised as a “luxury relaxation space” but the coffee was as weak as dishwater. Still, the break was useful as Aki pointed out that Kyoto castle, a rare attraction in the city centre, could be worth visiting on the way back. I was doubtful – the castles we had visited so far were all very similar, pretty from the outside but empty and boring inside. Kyoto’s castle, being on the plain, was not even likely to have a good view. Still, the only other option seemed to be to visit yet more temples, so we gave it a go – and were very happy we did.
Kyoto Castle from the OutsideThe magnificent entrance gate
Building of the castle started in 1603 to provide the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a purpose it served until the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, when it was briefly used as a residence of the newly reinstated emperor of Japan. The highlight of the visit was the beautiful Ninomaru Palace, located inside the defensive walls. This was a place where the shogun would receive guests or consult with officials, and consisted of a series of sumptuously decorated rooms (sadly no photos were allowed). It was so interesting that we went around twice before strolling around the palace’s garden with its inevitable tearoom. The Ninomaru Palace was one of the highlights of our stay in Kyoto – perhaps because it was not yet another temple.
Garden of Kyoto CastleThe view from the ramparts – with central Kyoto’s urban sprawl in the background
That evening we had planned another non-temple activity – dinner in Velrosier, a restaurant which had just won its second Michelin star. The food throughout our trip in Japan had been consistently excellent and very good value. Having tried lots of different types of cheap or mid-range restaurants – all very good – we wanted to try a top-end place. Japan has a lot of Michelin-rated restaurants and we wanted to see if the hype was justified. Dinner at Velrosier was probably the best meal we had ever had, beating more expensive and higher rated places we had visited in London – a two-hour feast of Chinese-inspired cooking. After similar experiences in Europe, we would usually wonder if a meal – however good – could justify the cost of top-end dining. Here, we wondered how on earth they could make a profit on what they had served us – five cooks prepared fourteen exquisite courses for only ten guests. Japan really is a foodie’s paradise.
Today we made a short excursion our from Kyoto to the city of Nara, capital of Japan from 710 to 794. Today Nara is a medium sized provincial city, but back in the 8th century some of Japan’s most beautiful temples were built there, many of which remain today. Our trip started at Kyoto’s train station, which was almost as crowded as Shinjuku’s. However, in Tokyo everyone seems to know where they are going and how to behave, whilst in Kyoto, many foreigners looked lost. They formed large groups that blocked passageways or looked around dumbly, unaware that behind them a big rucksack was swinging that could knock over smaller Japanese passengers (or teddy bears). We were glad to get on our train and make the 40-minutes trip. The station at Nara was located right next to the city’s park, which is also one of its tourist attractions and which houses many of its old temples. The park is home to hundreds, maybe even thousands, of “sacred” deer. They have grown used to humans and hang around expectantly, waiting for a tourist to feed them some of the rice crackers sold by many small shops.
One of very many deer at Nara. Cute at first, but…..
We didn’t feed the deer – some of them looked so hungry that they could swallow us along with the rice crackers – and headed straight for Todai-ji temple, one of the most famous in Japan and first completed in 752. The temple’s centrepiece is the huge Daibutsuden or Big Buddha Hall, which houses an enormous gilded bronze Buddha statue. This hall has been destroyed by fire and rebuilt several times, most recently in 1709. Today, it is possibly still the world’s biggest wooden building (though the title is disputed) – but before 1709 it was even bigger, the last reconstruction being scaled down to save money.
Nara -the Daibutsuden or Big Buddha Hall and Big Buddha himself
The hall and the majestic Buddha inside are really mind-blowing sights, and we made the circuit of the interior twice, to make sure we fully soaked up the atmosphere.
Other statues in the hall
After that we visited a few other buildings in the huge Todai-ji complex, finishing at their interesting museum – which had some magnificent Buddhist sculptures (photos not allowed) and most importantly a café that served acceptable coffee. Finding a good caffeine fix is a problem in Japan, and most coffee and tea houses sell horribly weak filter coffee, which just isn’t strong enough even for a little teddy. After a reviving drink we walked up a steep hill with good views over the city. The autumn colours were just starting, but sadly it was clear that we would miss the peak by a couple of weeks. The “sacred” deer on top of the hill were particularly aggressive, and one young male even attacked a tourist that had tried to limit him to one rice cracker.
A nice view over Nara and a very naughty male deer
We walked back down the hill and strolled on to the Kasuga Taisha shrine. On the way, we felt a sudden drop in our energy levels and wandered around the place on autopilot. Looking at our photos later on that evening, they looked interesting, but at the time it was simply one temple too many – or one cup of coffee too few.
Inside Kasuga Taisha at Nara
We strolled back to the station, wondering how long to stay in Nara. Our train back was booked for 18.30, but we were running out of energy and things to see in the area of the park. We decided to make one last stop at the Nara National Museum – partly because we thought it would contain more of the wonderful Buddhist sculptures we had seen earlier, and partly because the cafés in museums tended to have better coffee than elsewhere. Sadly, neither hope was fully realised. The museum was housed in two buildings with an underground passage between them. It was very popular, and entry was by timed slots. We joined a large queue of mostly Japanese visitors, to be ushered into a series of rooms displaying scrolls, fragments of cloth and old pots. These seemed to greatly excite everyone else, and there was a two-person deep crowd around each exhibit, making it very hard for us to see anything. We probably set a speed record for visiting the first part of the museum, lured on by the knowledge that there was a café in the passage leading to the second building….but the coffee there was as weak as it had been everywhere else. At least the next part of the museum did contain some magnificent sculptures, though you could only take photos of a small selection of them.
In the Nara National Museum
We left the museum with even less energy than when we entered. On the way back to the station, we visited one more temple – Horyuji. Apparently it has the world’s oldest surviving wooden buildings, dating from 607, but it failed to excite us, and we chose to catch an early train back to Kyoto. We left feeling that we hadn’t done justice to Nara. The temples ranged from the interesting Horyuji to the spectacular Todai-ji, but we didn’t have the energy to appreciate them. There were other highly rated temples near to the city, but we didn’t have time to visit them. We decided it was time to take a break from temple-hopping and spent the next day in Kyoto shopping, watching a dance show by one of the Geisha associations, and cruising the nightlife area of Pontocho, a narrow street lined with restaurants and bars.
Pontocho, Kyoto’s nightlife area
We opted for a shabu-shabu dinner – thin slices of Japanese beef that you take with your chopsticks and swish around in a boiling hot pot of water and vegetables for a few second until they are cooked. The meat melted in the mouth!
In a shabu-shabu restaurant in Kyoto
Still, it is harder to avoid photogenic temples in Kyoto, so despite our resolution not to visit one today, we still found ourselves taking photos of the colourful Yasaka Shrine in the early evening, after the Geisha show. Temples often look at lot better at that time, when the crowds have left and their red and white colours contrast with the night sky. Our enjoyment of this shrine suggested to us that tomorrow we would be ready for some more temple visiting…
The Yasaka ShrineYasaka shrine – really impressive at night!
On our first day in Kyoto we followed a well-travelled tourist route. Our first stop was the Kiyomizudera temple, one of Kyoto’s biggest and most popular, founded 1250 years ago. It was located closed to our house, and we found a little side street to get there through a different temple and then a cemetery.
The back way to Kiyomizudera
The path was pretty and quiet, but when we reached the Kiyomizudera’s gates everything changed.
The Kiyomizudera temple’s entrance
The whole area was packed with people – tour groups, individual travellers, Westerners, Asians, Japanese. After the big empty spaces of Shikoku it was a big shock, and it was only 9.30 am. We fought our way through the crowds and made a rapid visit of the main temple and its famous wooden stage, which projects over a forest of maple trees that becomes a riot of red-coloured leaves in the fall. Normally at this time in November we would be seeing the beginning of this amazing spectacle, but sadly for us the weather had been unusually hot, and the peak season for autumn colours was still two to three weeks away.
The famous (and packed) Kiyomizudera viewing platform, taken from a safe distance
Just below the temple area there was the Otowa waterfall. It was split into three separate channels and visitors could queue up to drink water from one of them. The different streams supposedly grant the drinker longevity, love or success, with the last one being very popular with schoolchildren before their exams – as we saw.
Schoolchildren hoping for success in exams
We headed away from the main temple with its crowds, and up a small hill to another, much smaller temple whose name I forget. It was extremely pretty, with a mossy garden and great views. The very few visitors paid 100 Yen (about 50c) into an honesty box to enter.
A small, forgotten temple near Kiyomizudera
Our experience at Kiyomizudera was repeated many times during our stay in Kyoto – we would visit a famous site, and jostle with crowds of other tourists – and then walk a couple of hundred metres to a different place, which would be almost as beautiful, but empty. There are literally hundreds of such small, less-visited, temples dotted around Kyoto. We retraced our steps to Kiyomizudera, and this time took the usual route down through the popular Higashiyama area rather than the side street we had used earlier. Just as our arrival had been heaven – quiet and pretty – our return was hellishly busy. It was a narrow street lined with food stalls and souvenirs shops and crowded with tourists. Fortunately, we only had to endure this for a short stretch before we turned off, heading for the Kodaiji Temple. We met some smartly dressed Japanese people on the way – many visitors to Kyoto choose to wear traditional clothing, and there are lots of shops where you can hire kimonos.
Elegant Japanese visitors in Higashiyama
Kodaiji temple was pleasantly quiet and also very beautiful, with its own small bamboo forest.
Kodaiji Temple and its bamboo forest
Our next destination was in the south of Kyoto – the Fushimi Inari Shrine, where hundreds of vermillion torii gates line paths that climb up a steep, forested mountain. We arrived at around 3pm, to find that this site is also on Kyoto’s “must see” list, and our “heaven and hell” experience repeated itself. This time, hell was arriving and joining the jostling crowds trying to squeeze through the first set of gates.
Hell on earth – entrance to Fushimi Inari
After fifteen minutes of ducking and weaving, we wondering what the big deal was – surely a set of medium-sized red torii could not be that interesting, not matter how many of them there were? Particularly if you had to spend your time trying not to be trodden on by larger human visitors rather than looking at the things you came to see. However, after a bit more walking, the path branched and became less busy. Many of the visitors only come to mill around and take selfies at the lower part of the shrine, and don’t walk very far up. Soon we could even pose for our own selfies……..
The further up we went, the more we liked the place. In addition to two main paths going up, there were many branches leading to interesting small shrines or patches of forest.
A maze of torii gates at Fushimi InariA small shrine at Fushimi Inari
We spent about an hour making our way slowly to the top – which turned out to be not a particularly interesting part of the complex. But to make up for this slight anti-climax, nearly all the visitors suddenly disappeared and, on the way down, we had the shrine almost to ourselves as the sun sank and a few scattered lights came on, throwing shadows of the torii onto the path. It was wonderfully atmospheric….and a bit spooky.
Dusk falls at Fushimi InariShadows lengthen
We found a clearing where we could enjoy sunset over Kyoto, before continuing our descent in the dark. Surprisingly, the arrival of night saw more people coming the other way, climbing the mountain in the dark. The torii became even spookier.
Night falls at Fushimi Inari
We finally arrived back at the main buildings at the entrance to the shrine, now shining bright red and white against the night sky.
Back at the main entrance to Fushimi Inari
It had been a long day, and our phones told us that we had walked seventeen kilometres on our little woolly teddy and rabbit legs, including lots of climbing. We thought we were beginning to understand Kyoto – it has some amazing “must see” places, for which you need to plan your arrival time carefully if you don’t want to be crushed by fellow tourists. And it has hundreds of smaller places, many of which are nearly as pretty, but which are almost empty. Over the next few days we would try to combine visiting both.
Next Post: Nara – in search of enlightenment and coffee
Today we were due to leave Takamatsu and the island of Shikoku. Before we left, we took advantage of some sunny weather to visit Ritsurin, one of Japan’s most famous gardens. It lived up to its reputation, with a beautiful setting at the foot of a mountain…..
The most famous view of RitsurinRitsurin’s lake hosts popular boat trips in traditional costumeBoating on Ritsurin lake
…..and many ponds containing voracious carp. The latter were very well fed by the visitors, who could buy rice sticks to give them from one of the park’s cafés.
Ravenous Ritsurin carpDon’t fall in Aki!
The carp were not the only wildlife in the garden; as we strolled around, there was an announcement over loudspeakers warning people not to approach a wild boar that had been seen entering the park from the mountain if they met it. At first, I misheard them and thought they said “bear”, which was worried everyone would run away from us…..
Ritsurin also had some unusual trees, like an evergreen Japanese oak which had sprouted from an acorn lodged 1.8m up in the branches of a now-dead pine tree, managed to put roots down to the ground and outlive its host. Its roots still start from the same height. There was also a pine that grown from a bonsai presented by the shogun to the local lord in 1863….
A pine grown from a bonsai!
Finally the gardens had a pleasant tea room overlooking the pond, where ladies in kimonos performed the tea ceremony as they served us our matcha.
In Ritsurin’s tea room
After a couple of hours in Ritsurin we headed off, with an ultimate destination of Kyoto. At the very end of the island of Shikoku we visited one last attraction there – the whirlpools of Naruto. These are a tidal phenomenon that form twice a day when two sea currents, headed in opposite directions, crash into each other, and we were lucky enough to be passing at exactly the right time to see them. First, we set out in a tourist cruise, right into the middle of the foaming sea. I am not sure if we saw any actual whirlpools, but the sight of the sea foaming around was very impressive and a lot of fun.
Naruto Whirlpools – the sea boils….A whirlpool and spectacular bridge, Naruto
Next we climbed on to the magnificent bridge that links Shikoku to the neighbouring island of Awajishima.
One of the bridges connecting Shikoku to the rest of Japan
There a viewing platform had been set up to view the “whirlpools” from above – including glass panels that let you look straight down onto the sea. It might have been the scary height, or the violent churning of the sea, but after a few minutes of looking at this, my head was spinning. Aki coped a bit better and managed to take some striking photos through the glass.
Making our own modern art – worthy of display in Naoshima?Naruto Whirpools seen from the bridge’s observation deck
From the bridge we drove on, over the island of Awajishima and finally over another beautiful bridge onto Honshu, Japan’s biggest island. We were greeted by a first sight of Kobe, a city in Japan’s incredibly densely populated province of Kansai. From then on, the remaining two hours of our drive was through a dense urban sprawl along busy expressways. It was a stark contrast with Shikoku, with its open spaces, clear roads and few tourists. We had enjoyed getting off the beaten track. Whilst Shikoku’s tourist sights may not quite match some of the most popular ones in the rest of Japan, the laid-back atmosphere, excellent value food and accommodation and friendly people made for a great week. Indeed, on several occasions local people had started to talk to us, despite the language barrier – something that had rarely happened in the rest of Japan.
Our arrival in Kyoto was inauspicious. We dropped off our hire car but then made the mistake of walking to our rental home, thinking that it would be a good way to get to know the city. Our route took us through some remarkable drab parts of central Kyoto. Surely such a famous destination had to be better than this? Tomorrow we would find out.
Trouspinet travels 