The mystery temple!

My memories are still a little confused, but on one of these days--possibly day 3, though I'm not sure--I moved out of the Tour Club hostel and into a small little ryokan (or actually a minshukan--those are the cheap versions.) It was called Rakucho Ryokan, and was located further north than the Tour Club, past Kyoto Station. This was actually a somewhat less convenient location. However, it was still near a major subway station, and there were plenty of bus stops there as well, it being a big transportation hub, so it wasn't too bad. In addition, it was generally a pretty nice neighborhood, near a river. It was considerably more expensive--around $50 a night, for a single! But I wanted to stay somewhere that resembled the traditional Japanese style inn, and this fit the bill. It was a nice, and quite large, room.

This is a picture I took when moving out of the Tour Club hostel. It was on this tiny little street with many sketchy white vans, for some reason. It was quite nice, though, despite that. Nice and quiet at night, too.

Anyways, at some point, possible day 3, I went to... a temple... Well, it's rather embarrassing, but I have no idea which temple it is. It was located in a large park-like area with a number of other temples, it took me forever to find, and I think it was somewhat near Sanjusangendo, although I'm not sure. However, I've tried to reconstruct where I could have gone that day, but no luck! I do remember visiting the place quite clearly--but the name has completely slipped my memory. It wasn't very famous, but it was a nice place. Very quiet, and lovely grounds as you can see below.

There were some really beautiful stands of bamboo there.

I randomly wandered up to this place in the middle of a bamboo stand, and saw this beautiful little shrine. I decided that this would make the greatest picture ever, and would definitely win me a prize or something, so I took like a bajillion shots. This was the best one, but it wasn't actually that great. Still, it was a remarkably lovely place.

It was really green and nice there, and they let you go in practically every building, and wander wherever you liked. Wish I could remember what it was! I think it was in Lonely Planet; I'll try to look it up sometime.

Had some really beautiful traditional architecture... I love this picture, it looks so warm and inviting. It was a really beautiful day, as you can tell. Like I've said before, I got so lucky with the weather for this trip.

I'm pretty sure this was some random place I saw as I was walking along, but I didn't have time to stop. Again, I have no idea where it is, although presumably it's some kind of entrance gate. There's a sign, but sadly, my Japanese knowledge is not exactly up to par when it comes to reading signs.

Gion Shrine

I'm still not quite sure about the chronology here, but I believe that I eventually made my way over to Gion Shrine later that day (i.e. day 3.) Shinto shrines are typically open much longer hours than Buddhist temples (if they ever close at all) and they pretty much never charge admission either (of course, they don't generally have any famous artwork.) Anyways, I guess it was getting late and I decided to go visit Gion. It took me so long to find this place (I do remember that part.) T'was truly a pain in the ass. But I eventually found it, and got one of my favorite pictures of the trip. It was just getting dark, and the moon was now--a perfectly clear night. I think I took about 20 pictures of this scene, and this was the only one that came out. But man, did it come out.

I am glad that I visited Gion Shrine at night--the lanterns, in particular, were so beautiful here. I can remember it so clearly; it was a nearly perfect spring evening, and I was absolutely exhausted, but I still walked around to all the little nooks and crannies that I could find, the paths lit up by lanterns and lights.

Another view of that ridiculously pretty building... It's actually part of the main shrine, with deities enthroned within (open to the world) but you can't really tell from these shots--it was getting too dark.

This is taken from the main gate leading up to Gion Shrine. It's taken with my back facing the shrine, so that we're here looking out on the neighborhood of Gion. It doesn't look that romantic, I know. This was a big road, with lots of up-market shops. Honestly, I was a little disappointed of what I did see of Gion--very touristy, as could be expected, and it just basically looked like any other neighborhood in Japan. But I may have seen the wrong bits. I also got lost in this dark and mildly sketchy neighborhood when I took a wrong turn. I found my way back in the end, obviously, but I just made a bigger circle around the area then I had planned. This probably contributed to my annoyance with the Gion area in general.

Later that night--or it might have been the night before, it's hard to remember--anyways, I went to a really cool ramen place. I can remember so clearly--I was absolutely exhausted from a full day of sight-seeing, and I really wanted some food. More specifically, I really wanted some ramen, but I just couldn't find a decent looking place. I walked around and around for what seemed like hours, and it was getting dark and cold and I only had my sweater. Usually, in Japan, you can't go for 5 minutes without bumping into a ramen restaurant, but for once, that was not the case. I finally gave up, and decided just to head back to my hostel, and stop at any old restaurant I saw, even if it was just a fast food place (which I didn't really want--I wanted ramen!)

It was then, of course, that I found a ramen restaurant. It was just this sketchy little place, the seats all located around a central food-preparing area, like a million ramen places in Japan. It was staffed by one elderly Japanese man, and the only other customers were a small gaggle of school boys. I really wanted ramen though, so I braved any possible stares and walked in. And oh, it was like unto heaven in there! So warm and nice, and they had something I'd never seen before--all these bowls of hardboiled eggs, and you were allowed to take 2 for your meal. So I had one right then, absolutely starving as I was, and ordered some ramen. It was soooo good--enormous bowl, of course, lots of green onion, and I put my second egg in it. It was one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted--no doubt due primarily to my exhaustion and frustration, but I really do think it was quite good ramen as well.

Even more luckily, I was by that point quite near my hostel, and was able to immediately head back home to crash. It was amazing.

Honen-in and Otoyo Shrine

From this point on, my memories get a little fuzzy. However, I believe that after visiting the Gosho, I went back to the Philosopher's path to see a few more sites. However it happened, I ended up visiting Honen-in. This was a temple recommended in Lonely Planet as a pleasant, quieter place. Indeed, it turned out to be very beautiful, and considerably less crowded than the more famous locales. Of course, "less crowded" is all relative. There were still quite a number of tourists there, but it was really lovely and definitely worth a trip. Also, unlike a lot of Buddhist temples in Japan, this one had free entry! Yay.

As you can see, the temple was located in a forest. It was all very green.

Like Ginkakuji, this temple had a number of sand garden features as well, as you can see below. I guess they get remodeled all the time. You can't see as well from this picture, but there are images drawn on top of these mounds of sand.

The temple was set back in the forest, and you had to go up this long path to get there. I wasn't sure at first if I'd found the right place, since all the signage was in Japan. But it seems I was correct, and this was indeed Honen-in. There were a number of "mini-stupas" like the one below, at various locations within the grounds.

There were a lot of really cool things at this temple--just small details. Here is a wooden knocker of some sort. I'm not sure exactly what it's for, but look how deeply worn in it is! Hard to imagine how many times it must have been hit.

There was this really beautiful little water fountain type situation set up, and I took a picture at just the right moment. It's one of my favorite pictures from my trip. I loved how they used a leaf in it.

Back behind the temple a bit, there was a statue of the Buddha and the imprint of his feet. Note all the pictures on his feet--these signs were actually supposed to be there; they were signs like the bump in his head, etc. In particular, you can see the wheel of the law in the center of the footprint, along with a lot of other auspicious signs.

After looking over the temple thoroughly, I went back out down the path. There was a side path going off in the opposite direction, and so I followed it for a bit. It led to a Japanese graveyard--the Japanese don't bury their dead, they cremate them, but these "graveyards" are places of memorial, grouped up by different families. People brings offerings here as well. As you can see, it was a beautiful day.

After leaving Honen-in, I wandered down the Philosopher's Path til I reached this shrine. I don't think I'd even read about it in a guidebook--it was just a complete coincidence I decided to go to this one, when I saw a signpost for it on the Path. It was a really great decision, because it was an amazing shrine. According to an English label I saw, it was called Otoyo Shrine.

As you can see, it was a kind of animal shrine. All the offering plaques had cute little animals on it, and the statues were all of various kinds of animals as well. I saw two foreign tourists as I was going up the path to the shrine, but once I got there it was virtually deserted. One of those really enchanting moments.

The statues were really neat, as I said. Here's a monkey, just doing his thing.

These mice are apparently quite famous, because they are in place of the typical dog guardian figures. This shrine has mice instead--some kind of legend connected with the area, apparently. The statues are really well done.

One thing that immediately became obvious was that the shrine must have been very popular with the local children. Virtually every single one of the offering plaques had some kind of anime decoration, as in the one above, or it was written in sloppy children's handwriting. It was really neat to see all of the drawings the kids had done.

A more traditional animal statue--the fox.

As you can see from the above picture, the shrine was not at all well kept up. But it was even more romantic because it wasn't... I try not to have this silly "romantic" view of Japan, but when places like this keep popping up, it's hard to resist!