Kyoto – Day 1

If you wake up in Kyoto knowing that there are more than 4,000 temples and shrines around the city, it may seem like a daunting task… But, all you can do is get moving! First up, and very close to our hotel and Kyoto Station was the Higashi Hongan-ji Temple. Our travelling companion had been here before and he really wanted to show us around. Although the heat was incredible (everyone was walking around with umbrellas to hide from the sun and towels to dry themselves off) we made it, and were we ever glad we did. This was a pretty big temple complex (we thought, we would later see bigger) and as our first exposure to Japan, it was just awesome! As you walk in your greeted by this massive temple.

And then we learned about temple etiquette. All temples have these areas to allow you to cleanse yourself before entering. (This is what we learned and researched, if you have a better explanation, we would love to hear it!). You take a scoop of water, wash your left hand, then your right hand, then you can touch your face/mouth with water (but do not drink it), and then turn the cup upside down so that the water falls over your hand and into the drain beside the bath. By the end of our stay in Japan, we had it down pat. The water was also very cold, which was perfect for the crazy humidity. (While in Japan we reached temperatures around 40 °C with above 95% humidity).

Another thing we quickly learned in these temples, was that most of them had burned down at one point or another. How do you guard against fire when you have huge wooden complexes? A great extinguisher system, of course. You can see the red bucket filled with water in the below picture. The temple was filled with them. Crazy to think that this is the fire prevention measure when the temple is considered to be the largest wooden structure in the world!

This temple is most famous on the internet as being the home of ropes made of human hair. Why would such a thing exist, you may ask? When the temple was being constructed (not sure if the original or one of its many iterations) they needed strong ropes to move everything around and hoist it into place. However, in those days strong enough rope was hard to come by. Easy solution? The female devotees cut their hair and braided it into the strong rope you see below. Pretty ingenious. 

Finally, and what I should have arguably led with… the temple has a passport for you! 

There are multiple stamp stations around the complex. Just walk around while enjoying the temple, stamp your passport (collected from the gift shop for free), and once you’re done return to the gift shop for a free gift! 100% would recommend it. 

Something that we really wish we would have known before going to Japan, and that we will definitely take into account for when we return, is that Japan LOVES passports and stamps. Absolutely LOVES it. You saw the Pokemon stamp rally from the last blog post and this passport here. But, even more amazingly, you should bring your own beautiful hardcover notebook as a passport. All the temples we eventually went to have either stamps or special calligraphy stations for you to get your book stamped to show you had been to the temple. It’s a great, unique way to keep track of everything. On top of that, many other places have stamps as well including train stations, metro stations, among many other places. We would definitely recommend bringing an ornamental notebook only for this purpose.

After this temple we had it in our mind to go to another even bigger complex, or rather set of temple complexes. We weren’t 100% sure the exact direction we needed to go, but we had a rough idea. Plus, it was in the same direction as something we had already read about…

Although you may not readily recognize the above location, it is very important for gamers everywhere. This is the building where Nintendo was created! Nintendo was founded at this location in 1889 as a playing card maker. This is too interesting of a story to not go on a tangent… It is said that the Yakuza are directly responsible for the rise of Nintendo. How? In the 1700s a new card game had swept over Japan, introduced by the crew of Portuguese ships that had come to convert the local Japanese population. Eventually the card game was made illegal in Japan and the government came out with new cards that could not be used to gamble. So, problem solved, right? The people just created a new way to gamble. And then the cycle repeated again and again. Finally, cards came out that looked more ornamental than anything and made it very hard to gamble. By this point, the 1880s, many people no longer played with these cards because the government had tried so hard to get rid of gambling, so the only people left playing were really the Yakuza. Not many companies wanted to sell them cards, but Nintendo stepped up. So, thank you Yakuza for Donkey Kong!

A little further, still towards our temple complex, we saw this monument, Mimizuka. This is a weird monument on many, many levels. It is a monument to a savage 16th century war against Korea. During the late 1500s Japan was trying to expand and control East Asia. During these wars it was common to bring back the severed heads of your enemies as trophies, but since Korea was so far away it was not feasible to do this. Instead they collected ears and noses, hence giving it the name of Mimizuka (Mound of Ears).

Right beside this mound is the Toyokuni Shrine Karamon. A Shinto shrine to commemorate Toyotomi Hideyoshi (the leader of Japan during their expansionist period explained above). It was the first Shinto shrine built for ancestral worship and was originally built in 1599. We had no idea at the time what it was or where we were, the knowledge of what this shrine was dedicated to was discovered much later when retracing our steps online.

Well… now we really should get going to our main temple complex!

So… we got a little lost. And by a little I mean we were aimlessly walking through some residential hills… but we still found tons of shrines everywhere, and these little guys:

Meet Tanuki! He’s a little badger that is absolutely everywhere. The ones pictured above are outside of someone’s home. From our research, it seems as though the various parts of Tanuki have important significance with the big belly signifying bold and calm decision making, the little note is for trust and confidence, the sake is for virtue, the large tail is for steadiness and strength, large testicles for financial luck, large eyes to judge the environment and make good decisions, the hat (turtle shell) shows his readiness against bad weather (and bad times), and finally a friendly smile for a friendly attitude. Hopefully seeing him everywhere ensures that we will have a good climb. Upwards we go (still aimlessly going up this hill)!

At one point we just couldn’t go up any further. The surroundings seemed to be a highway of some sort, a small cemetery, and a small pedestrian path. We were pretty far from downtown Kyoto at this point… and getting a little tired. So we ran ahead as our companion rested to see if we could make anything of whether or not we were headed in the right direction. Well… not much to see, other than a bamboo forest.

Here there was a tiny shop and vending machine where we could get a quick drink to try to lower the heat. But, thankfully there was a sign showing that there were some temples nearby. We climbed up the hill a little further until we found this gem. Welcome to Seikanji Temple! Founded in 802 the temple itself was not huge by any means, but around it were some nice gardens. 

With the centrepiece being the Kaname-ishi (keystone), so called because it is looks like the rivet of a fan as Kyoto stretches out below you. In the close up you can see the Kyoto tower next to Kyoto Station, that’s where we started out day.

And just behind the temple we saw this. Our understanding is that these statues represent Jizo who is a Buddhist deity. He is always (all that we saw) wearing a bib because he is the protector of unborn children and children who have died at a young age. What we have read is that these children cannot cross the Sanzu River into the afterlife because they did not live long enough to accumulate good deeds and they brought their parents grief. As such, they are condemned to pile stones by this river to help their parents eventually reach the afterlife. One problem. They are constantly restarting their endeavours because demons come around and break their bridges. Whenever these demons scare the children, they run to Jizo who hides and protects them, while encouraging them on with mantras. To thank Jizo, parents will dress his statues. Red is the most common colour as it represents safety. Although this is the first picture we post with Jizo in it, statues to him are absolutely everywhere.

Well… since we’re officially lost and getting a little tired… I guess we should just follow these signs to the nearest temple. It shouldn’t be too far… So we continued walking down from the Seikanji Temple in the bamboo forest on a small street. There were a few houses/shops on either side of us as we walked. Who would have thought that they would be in the middle of nowhere? Little did we know, we were not in the middle of nowhere. This was a very clear path leading to various different temples, including the complex that we had been looking for this whole time! Good thing that one of our companions is an obsessive geocacher. He just HAD to get this one that was “so” close. As we got closer and closer to the location, this padoga appeared almost out of nowhere.

Perfect! A little further was the entire complex which we had been aimlessly searching for. We made it! Welcome to Kiyomizu-dera!

This temple was founded approximately 1,200 years ago with the current building dating back to 1633. This is another UNESCO World Heritage Site. It seems like we are collecting them this trip! So.. we don’t think many people go through the complex as we are about to show you because we entered from the back and were constantly walking against the flow of people. First stop, love. We started our experience behind the main temple where the main focus is love. It was absolutely everywhere, including the statues. Here you can find Okuninushino-mikoto, a Japanese god in charge of both love and making good matches, with his messenger beside him.

Right in front of this god was one of the busiest spots of the whole complex, the Love Stone. Here you can see the one of the two love stones in the foreground and if you squint between all the people, you will see the second in the distance (about 20 metres). This was one of the interactive features of the temple. The goal is to start at one of the stones and walk to the other with your eyes closed. If you are able to achieve this feat you will find love soon. But, if you can’t, then it will be a very long time before you find love. If, however, you need some help… it means that someone will have to help you find your love. It was absolutely packed with people trying to see what their future had in store!

If you had other non-love wishes, you could head to the main stage at Kiyomizu. Jumping off of this stage (13 metres high) was said to determine whether or not a wish would be granted. It looked a little high to us, and you’re no longer allowed to jump from the stage.

At the right of the above picture you can see our next stop, the Pure Water Temple. Here the water divides into three streams and you hold out your cup (see below) to catch the water and drink from it. Each stream represents a different benefit be it academic, love, or longevity. Know before you go: there are rules! If you try to cheat and drink from all three streams, none of the benefits will be granted. Choose wisely. Rule number 2: You have to drink from your cup in only one gulp! If it takes you two, then only half of the benefit will be given. Three gulps? Only a third. Don’t worry, we were warned before approaching and we followed the rules! Well worth the wait.

Then as we left the main complex through the front entrance and went back to the streets, we turned around for what we thought would be our final photo at this site. I promise that I’m there, just check the bottom left corner if you don’t believe me.

But, little did we know that we would meet some friends! I obviously had to get my picture taken with them. Everyone was so nice and accommodating.

Then we just walked back towards our hotel as it was getting a little late. There are some very nice shops around the streets here, definitely worth a little browse. But keep your eyes open while you do so that you can see Tanuki. We weren’t lying when we said he was everywhere! That last one was bigger than my travel partner!

Although it was getting late… we wanted to see just a little more. As night fell we headed toward old Kyoto. We wanted to see what Kyoto looked like long ago, a more traditional Kyoto than the modern Kyoto Tower and Kyoto Station. We did just that. First, we stopped at a brightly lit temple (that we would have seen on our walk down from Kiyomizu-dera if we would have gone right instead of left. It looked great late at night.

And then it was on to old Kyoto. We didn’t think that we would get any other opportunity to visit the old quarters so we had to take our one chance. It seemed like its own little world. It did really seem like the neighbourhood was from another time, and there was a calm about the place. The picture doesn’t really do it justice, especially since it was quite dark at the time.

Well… that’s all for today. After this we walked to the Imperial Palace to see if we could get a glimpse… we could not. So we walked back to the hotel in the most indirect route we found. Might as well get a few more geocaches, right? We also walked by the Kyoto International Manga Museum. By the time we got back to the hotel we were absolutely dead. Time for some much-needed sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day. Our plan is to leave as early as possible to see as much of Kyoto as possible before heading back to Tokyo. We were going to just leave first thing in the morning, but there is just so much to see in Kyoto. This way we get a full extra day of exploring Kyoto, but get to wake up and explore Tokyo the day after. But, I mean, is this anything new? It seems like we’re always on the move trying to find our next adventure. We could get used to this! Goodnight from Kyoto! 

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