Kyoto [Part V - Rain, Rain and more Rain...]

Our Ryokan [旅館] Landlady had warned us on Sunday that it would rain today, but since every thing had been shut yesterday, and Greg had taken this Monday off as holiday we thought we'd at least try and go see some stuff... So, as soon as the Imperial Palace office opened at 8:45, we gave them a call and asked if they still had spare places on their tour of the gardens in the Imperial Palace grounds...They advised us to come as soon as possible to make a reservation in person. For some unknown reason, it is much easier for foreigners to get reservations on the tours of Imperial Palace gardens and villas than Japanese citizens. We got there about an hour later to book for four people. We then went in search of luggage lockers in the nearest station, to get rid of our big bag, and then waited in the rain under a tree trying to get as unwet as possible. I wasn't very successful.

When we finally got into the grounds, the introductory video was in Japanese with English subtitles. Unfortunately, despite being earlier than the allotted time, we missed most of it. The tour itself was also in Japanese, which I generally ignored and made up any missing information for my own amusement. It was still a nice garden (apart from the weird flat round pebble beach which I just didn't see the attraction of...) but the rain made it a little less enjoyable...

We then battled to get on a bus and headed to Ginkakuji [銀閣寺] the Golden Palace, where intrepid tourists were forsaking their umbrellas just to have photos with the palace in the background... This involved careful timing to coordinate the photo taking and removal of Golden-Palace-obscuring-umbrellas from view.

We then decided it best to take refuge in the nearest cafe until we had dried a bit.

Not long after, Greg and I gave up on the idea of more sightseeing in the rain and went to a try a Pachinko Parlour for a while instead, where we managed to find a French couple doing the same thing. After a very confusing 10 minutes we had lost our (well... Gregs) 1000yen 'investment'. And I still don't really know what the turny knob controls...

Kyoto [Part IV - Sekizan Zenin 赤山禅院]

We had intended to go to the Shugakuin Imperial Villas, but it turned out to be CLOSED on weekends and secondly, in need to an appointment through the Imperial Palace Household Agency ppl that we got reservations to the Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens...Anyway, since we'd made our way all the way to Shugakuin, we thought we'd better not waste the trip, and went a little further down the road to find Sekizan Zenin [赤山禅院]. A lovely peaceful temple, a great contrast to the crowded places we visited the day before. It was very peaceful, and a pleasure to walk around.

Near the entrance there were little wooden bald men, which I think were for writing your prayers/requests on. As well as the traditional wooden sticks (which can be seen in the background)

We were the only visitors for a while, until we saw two men following the same path that we were going down (and up) stopping at each shrine to pay their respects.

They also stopped at a window and got their book written in by the calligrapher sitting at the desk, with the temple's name and the day and date. Apparently, you can get these 'signatures' at every temple, and people have complete books filled with all the temples they managed to visit. The calligraphy was beautiful. So I bought one. If you bring your own book, they write a fresh one in your nearest blank page. If not, they have several pre-written loose leaf versions, which they pop the date on...

Oh, and apparently, this temple is best viewed in Autumn, in red leaves season - momiji 紅葉

Kyoto [Part III - Sakura 桜]

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, when we ventured down to Kyoto, so there was lots to see.

Night-time sakura...

Sakura along the Kamogawa River

Sakura in the Imperial Palace, and new mini maple leaves opening
I climbed up in to the branches for the photo, I'm sure it made the photo 100% better

Kyoto [Part II - Kiyomizudera 清水寺]

Just a few photos of Kiyomizudera on the 5th April. There was a definite one way flow of people entering the temple from one side and leaving from the other (after doing the tour of the temple)

After a few minutes of trying to go against to flow, we gave up and followed everyone else. The good weather and full bloom of the sakura had brought people out in force.

　　

The pagoda, engulfed in sakura...

Typical of the Japanese lady, fashion over function, dictated that the best footwear for walking around a temple on a saturday afternoon was to have a slender heel of at least 3 inches... presumably to help them view the sights from a slightly less disadvantaged height.

Always wear sensible foot wear when visiting temples...

We very quickly got to the viewing platform, which was already packed with all the other tourists. The sheer volume of people did detract from the beauty of the temple somewhat...which was a little sad, but it was still an impressive structure none the less. It was a long way down to the ground when you stood on the platform. On the second platform, there was a definite slant of the floor towards the ground which wasn't very encouraging...

　　　
The wooden stilts of the temple...& the MASS of people it supported.

Temple of Luuuuurve...and relationships...
(Greg has a supreme photo from here...will try and steal it from him :D)

more later.... maybe, maybe not...

Kyoto [Part I - Lots of Tori]

Daruma - for writing your years wish on...

We woke up a bit late on Saturday morning and had to rush out of the house with no breakfast to get to the shinkansen [新幹線] on time. Unfortunately, we tried to late to get reserved seats for our journey down to Kyoto [京都] and had to fight for seats in the unreserved carriages. Which, on the brightside, meant that our tickets were a few hundred yen cheaper...Because we got on to the train at the start of the journey, it wasn't too bad. I amazed everyone with my knowledge of the fact that the chairs on the shinkansen swivel so that you can change the forward facing seats to face your friends. We had 6 seats to 4 of us for most of the journey, which took just over 2 hours, but the closer to Kyoto that we got, the more people that got on, with few people getting off. Soon our carriage was packed with people, standing everywhere they could, in the aisles and doorways. Nearly everyone got off at Kyoto, we finally managed to get out of the station to try and find a reasonably sized locker to put our larger luggage in so that we could get straight to the business of sightseeing. We managed to find two lockers which would fit our luggage in, but it seemed that no sooner had we put our luggage in, other people were walking past, hoping that we were vacating the locker...it wasn't even 10am and practically all the lockers in the station had gone.

We then grabbed a taxi to head to our first call of the day, Fushimi Inari Temple [伏見稲荷大社] , and a lovely sunny day it was... Inari is the God of rice and prosperity and the temple is famed for its tori....

The first shop that we saw after we got out of the taxi, had some ceramic frogs hiding under the table of daruma...

We walked around a little admiring the temples and sakura in full bloom...

Then we managed to find a back way to the main attraction of this temple....hundreds of tori (the red gates) lining a path up to a shrine on top of the hill.

There were lots and lots of tori...followed by yet more tori. There were even tiny tori, placed as offerings/wishes at smaller shrines along the path. And at the top shrine, we finally found out why there had been a group of men in business suits climbing up the hill on a saturday... they were making an offering to the shrine for their business...

The shrine had several offerings already laid out, people purposefully opened rice cracker snacks, sake and other foods on the alter, with some leaving behind their business cards tucked into the blind.

Salary men with the mini tori and offerings for sale

Little Greg goes to Kyoto

Imperial Palace, Kyoto

cable car up to Mt. Hiei

one of the temples up Mt. Hiei