Rosie and The Operator have a full day sightseeing in Kyoto, the day has dawned clear and bright and we are off to visit one of the most popular shrines in the city, Fushimi Inari-Taisha. Famous for for its beautiful temple and winding tunnel of vermillion torii gates, we want to get there early. To the train station we go. Its a lot quieter and smaller than Tokyo, that’s for sure.
The beauty of the shrines and temples is that they are still fully functioning places of worship and not just tourist hot spots. This means that they are open from dawn till dusk and you are able to visit them early before the crowds and tour buses descend. This allows Rosie to poke around, take her photos and be ready to get her goshuin temple booked stamped on the way out as soon as the monks start manning the calligraphy rooms at about 9.30am.
This is truely one of the most memorable shrines we visited. It is set in a woodland at the foot of the Inari Mountain. The temple itself is dedicated to the god of rice and sake, Inari, and was established in the 8th centuary. This is the head shrine for the 40,000 odd Inari shrines across the whole of Japan.
As we explore the shrine, we come across heaps of stone foxes, the fox is considered the messenger of Inari. You will often see a key in the foxes mouth, this is the key to the storehouses of rice of which it guards.
The temple itself is beautiful, the early morning sun not really showing it in the best light. Few people were around and the stall holders were just setting up for the day on the periphery of the site.
Moving back further into the temple grounds you start to ascend the Inari mountain, a 4km path meanders up the mountain, as you climb there are various sub shrines to visit on the way.
It would have been a fantastic time to climb the mountain in the early morning quiet and cool air but we had so much else to see….plus, we had our own little hike later in the day. The start of the climb is the beginning of the vermilion torii arcade, Senbon Torii (Thousands of Torii).
All of these gates, and there literally are thousands of them, are donations made by individuals and companies. By buying a gate with donations ranging from $1,000 – $20,000 you are insuring good luck in life or business. The gates have your name and the date of your sponsorship written on them.
The black Japanese charactors on the gates looked good to Rosie because she couldn’t read them, to me they look mysterious and pictorial. If I could read them….I think it may have looked abit tacky and advertorial.
It was still very early morning when we left Fushimi-Inari, no goshuin for Rosie here today, she was out and about to early for the monks.
Next stop was Kiyomizu-dera, another popular tourist pilgramage site. This Buddhist temple was first built in 798 and sits on a wooded hillside overlooking Kyoto. The building today is a reconstruction from 1633.
It is massive, the framework huge and it has been one of the first sights we have encountered with scaffolding around it! The huge veranda’s on the main hall are currently undergoing restoration and earthquake strengthening.
The temple inside holds a fabulous gold 11 headed figurine and is super impressive, no photos please….Rosie was itching to snap one off….but the 11 headed figure had to many eyes.
The views from the veranda over the city and woodland were awesome, imagine being here in autumn for the colourful foliage or cherry blossom season for the sea of pink….Rosie thinks it was pretty impressive even today.
This temple is built around a holy spring, Kiyomizu, which means pure water and the spring has attracted pilgrims since the 8th century to drink from it and be cured of ailments.
Rosie wasnt passing up on this opportunity either. The Operator went first and joined the wee que. Rosie had a few big gulps from the holy spring, I do concur, it was beautiful, cold and crystal clear….must be long acting. Rosie will be patient on that cure.
This complex just keeps on giving, tucked away is wee Jishu-jinga a shrine that deals with matters of the heart. Buy a prayer plaque here to assure your success in romance or take the love challenge for guaranteed success by ‘walking the Love Stones’.
Close your eyes and walk about 18 meters in the dark to get between a pair of love stones. Success! Make a donation and it is even better for you….maybe that’s why the healing water didn’t work….Rosie didn’t donate.
Rosie got her Goshuin from this Temple, yay, and it was still only mid morning and we still hadn’t had a coffee yet but had already nailed two sights on our list. The roads leading to the temple were still quite devoid of people when we arrived.
When we left…that was another story, thins were getting busy and it was just after 10am.
After a refreshment and fuel up Rosie and The Operator are heading for the Northern or the most farthest point of the Path of Philosophy. Most people normally finish their journey here but The Operator had a cunning plan that was most agreeable to Rosie. We would taxi to the most farthest point and then walk mainly downhill back into town and our hotel…makes sense, we were ready to go.
The Path of Philosophy (Tetsugaku-no-Michi) is one of the most pleasant and beautiful walks in all of Kyoto. It is a narrow traffic free, pedestrian only canalside walk that takes you through woodland and past beautiful gardens and houses bordering the canal.
It is an amazing, peasceful corridor of colour throughout any time of the year. The other added feature of this Path, is that it links many shrines and temples along its way so you can stretch the trip that would probably take about 40 mins if you power walked it into a lovely half day.
The taxi dropped us off right at the entry gate of Ginkaku-ji, it was starting to get busy, this little place was swarming already, maybe everyone else was starting their walk from this point too.
In 1482 the Shogun constructed this building on the mountainside as a villa to retreat to from ‘the turmoil of civil war’. This pavilion is enclosed in a paradise of ponds, thick moss, classical Japanese garden design and luxurious landscaping. On the Shoguns death, the villa was converted to a zen temple.
Rosie and The Operator had bought our entry tickets and were looking at the site map, its not that big a place and it looked like you just followed the crowds around a set path anyway, we were about to set off when we got approached, by a gang of kids. They introduced themselves and explained that they were University students studying English, and as part of their studies they were required to act as tour guides and wondered if they could show us around this site and explain it to us.
The Operator has a look of horror on his face as he can already see Rosie surrounded by these kids nodding away and saying what an honor it would be. Come on, we are doing a good deed and they must have pre judged us as being a ‘nice’ couple before they approached us, dont be a humbug Operator.
Truth is we had a really good time with them, a couple of them spoke English really well, the other two were very hesitant and not very confident at all. But they all took turns telling us about different parts of the garden and asking us questions in general as did we.
The zen gardens include meticulously raked areas of sand and giant cones of it were perfectly placed to reflect the moonlight and enhance the beauty of the gardens at night. It was a full moon over Kyoto last night and it was so bright, Rosie would have loved to see these gardens laid out in all their glory then.
These gardens were truely beautiful and so was the time with guides and new friends, they insisted that a photo be taken of us all together…me thinks for their course work rather that a souvener but a great souvener it made for us and even The Operator was warming to them at the end of the tour and was chatting away.
Onto the Path of Philosophy we stepped proper, the dappled light hitting the paving through the trees was amazing. The babbling canal with huge cruising carp in it, the smells of spring from the blooming daffodils and bulbs that lined the paved pathway and the warmth on our heads was invigorating and so beautiful.
The crowds in the temple grounds hadn’t overflowed onto the path, it was relatively quiet most of the way along it, which was good, with it being only a thin paved track you would have lost that special ambiance if it had been over crowded.
Plodding along the Path we meandered in and out of small Temple grounds, into ancient cemeteries and sat and rested in the quiet gardens of Honen-in, its a secluded temple backing up into the woods dating from 1680 and hardly anyone else was there, it was lovely spot to take a breather in the shade as the day had become open blue sky and incredibly hot.
At the end of the walk we stopped at Eikan-do, an 11th century garden that is particularly popular in autumn as it has the best colored foliage in the city. Oh Yes, its perfection did not disappoint.
Time to make the most of the late evening sun, Rosie and The Operator enjoyed a lovely evening on the banks of the canal with a bottle of wine and an Italian meal…a lovely departure from a Japanese meal and a lovely evening spent.
Tomorrow we are going abit further afield to the outskirts of Kyoto to visit The Arashiyuam Bamboo Grove and then a visit to the famous Golden Pavillion.
