Kyoto and Osaka

Well, this is a long overdue post but that’s ok!
I can now cross off Kyoto from the list of places I want to see because last weekend I took a 4 day trip to the old capitol with the other Waterloo guys in Ueda!
Let me tell you, it was amazing. There are older style homes and shrines everywhere. Beautiful gardens, nicely architected buildings... Wonderful!

Not only that, I’ve also vastly increased my photos collection! About 600 photos were taken in Kyoto (most of which I uploaded to my flickr account) for your viewing pleasure!

Let’s start!

Day 0(水):

Left work early (yay!) and took the local train to Shinonoi, took the JR Shinano train to Nagoya, and took the Nozomi Super express to Kyoto. From Kyoto Terminal, took another train to get to our hostel.

The hostel was definitely an interesting experience to say the least… Here are some lovely pictures.

So, took a sleep and now we move onto Day1!

Day 1(木):

Woke up bright and early and took the train to Kyoto Terminal. From Kyoto Terminal, we started walking south to start our day of exploring. First stop, Sanjuusangendo Temple. This temple was crazy, inside the main building (where we weren’t allowed to take photos, unfortunately) were statues of the “gods” in buddhism as well as a giant buddha and 1001 Kannon statues. I can’t believe anyone would spend all that time to hand sculpt all those statues. On the outside of the main building, was the garden area. Pictures were allowed here so feel free to check them out!

Continuing along, the next major area we visited was the Kiyomizu Dera Temple(Link to an information picture). This temple was built beside a waterfall which has “special powers” to grant you wealth, longetivity, and some other thing which I forget. The view from this temple was spectacular as it was built on a mountainside. And how is it still standing after all these years and earthquakes? It was designed to withstand earthquakes! Damn those Japanese are clever…

Anyway, here are pictures of the temple, it’s graveyard, and it’s view of Kyoto city!

Ohhhhh! And we also got a chance to see some geisha there too!

Moving along, we wandered the streets a bit and saw a few neat looking shops along the roadside, as well as some more statues, temples, and gardens. Here, here, here, here, and here.

Next up, we have the Yasaka Shrine. This shrine is pretty large, and is a pretty famous Shrine in Japan. While we were there, we saw some sort of traditional dance being performed accompanied by an orchestra of old instruments that sounds like people were dying! Hehehe. Adjacent to the Yasaka Shrine, we have the Maruyama-koen Park. This park was a nice stroll. It was peaceful and very scenic, but that didn’t stop us from continuing on to the Chion-in Temple. This temple was pretty cool, very incense smelly, and had some really really steep steps… it must have been built for giants!

Passing through the Temple, we walk down the street until we get to Heian Jinja which has the world’s largest torii infront of it. And now, this is the end of our shrine and temple visits for today. The rest of the night, we just went to Kyoto’s modern part of town for some shopping and food, then came back home and slept! Sleeping is good!

Day 2(金):

Waterloo storms Nijo Castle!

The Castle was absolutely stunning… They let us into one of the buildings (no pictures again :/) where the Shogun would live and hold meetings. Since it wasn’t used very often, the paintings were very well preserved… It was amazing!

But even better, were the gardens. I loved the gardens. They were so pretty and peaceful to walk through. Both the inner and outer castles were breathtaking… When I get rich, I’m going to live in a place just like that! (I wish)

Next up, we take the journey to the Philosopher’s walk to Ginkaku-ji (Silver Temple). The Silver Temple was built by the Golden Temple’s architect’s grandson after he wanted to build a temple just as beautiful as the Golden Temple. Unfortunately, he never completed it so it’s not silvery, but it was still wonderful!

After our pilgrimage to the Silver Temple, we took a taxi (for pretty cheap too! Only $3 a person for 5 people!) to the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Typically, the palace is only open in the southern area to guests, but due to a recent anniversary, the whole palace was open to explore! Yay! I got a lot of cool shots and information shots, so be sure to check them out!

We decided to hit up one more final temple, but it was closed by the time we got there, so instead we went to eat dinner then go to downtown Kyoto and check out the Kyoto Tower. Pretty mediocre, in fact it was crappy. Yokohama’s SkyGarden was infinitely times better. But that didn’t stop me from taking pictures of Kyoto at Night!

Anyway, after we went up there, we went to Kyoto Terminal and admired the Christmas Tree for about an hour or two before going home and crawling into bed for another day of fun!

Day 3(土):

Time for a peaceful walk through the Zen Gardens! Behold the Daitoku-ji, Daisen-in, Hoshun-in, and Koto-in Zen Gardens. Unfortunately, Daisen-in wouldn’t let us take pictures inside, so I only got the outside, and we just barely looked at Hushun-in. But Koto-in is in the limelight! I managed to get many many pictures of that place. A very relaxing place, I wish I could own a garden like that!

And now… presenting the amazing Kinkaku-ji Temple (Golden Temple). Absolutely… breathtaking. This was amazing! The gold actually looked like Gold, and it wasn’t run down or ugly. It was very well kept and a very, very nice attraction! Many pictures here too, even ones of me! So make sure to check them out!

Next up we went to a famous Zen Garden in Japan, the Ryoan-ji Zen Garden. Small, but very nice. I liked the living quarters, I wish my room was all tatami too!

Anyway, that was the extent of that day in Kyoto. After all our visits around the temples, we took the Kyoto line to Osaka for some shopping and food! Had some fun, caught a train home, and went to bed for our final adventure in Kyoto!

Day 4(月):

And on our final day, our last attraction was the Inari Torii Shrine. This shrine had thousands upon thousands of Torii spread over a vast space. We managed to get about half of the area covered then returned to Kyoto Station.

Got our tickets, caught the Nozomi super express back to Nagoya, took the Shinano (which was crowded, so we had to sit in the smoking section which makes me nauseous thinking about it) and then had to be delayed for an hour thanks to a heavy rain storm, then got home!

All in all a really cool trip, I love Japan!

Note: I took even more pictures than shown, all pictures of this trip can be found here.

さようなら～