Kyoto Gosho (a.k.a. Kyoto Imperial Palace)

On my third day in Kyoto, I set off bright and early to go see the Imperial Palace. I'd looked it up on the web before I even came to Japan, and turns out the Gosho is only open to visitors on a guided tour, which you must sign up for in advance (especially if you want to go on an English one.) So I'd done that, and being the go-getter that I am, I'd picked an early time--I think like 9 or 10 AM. I took the subway for the first time to get here, depending once again on my guidebook, and this worked fairly well, although I am far fonder of Tokyo's system. However, when I emerged from the subway station, I went the exact opposite direction that the Gosho was actually in. This happens fairly often to me. Luckily, I enjoy walking and I always come early. In the end, I did figure out that I was going the wrong direction, and got myself turned back around.

When I finally arrived at the Gosho, which was set in the middle of a vast park (open to the public) I had to show my passport to some official looking gentlemen at the gate, and was permitted inside, where I was directed to a small building with a gift shop, where the tour began. Luckily, we were allowed to take pictures and all that good stuff.

Now, the Gosho is basically a huge park with a lot of buildings in it. These buildings are all fairly well maintained--freshly painted, and fairly recently built, but I thought it would be interesting to see. It was all so well maintained--it was almost as if they were expecting the emperor to drop in some time soon. A little odd. The buildings themselves were all pretty standard, if impressively numerous.

It was definitely interesting to see traditional imperial residential architecture, after all the temples I'd been seeing lately. It was all very open. I imagine the emperor almost never got any privacy. That was a problem with Japan in general, though, at least in older times.

Art history geek! Actually, I love this picture because it demonstrates how the Japanese took a simple, utilitarian thing--the support for a roof--and made it into this beautiful, unnecessarily elaborated thing. Despite the heaviness of the roof for a large building, a lot of that is just for show, not practicality.

The gardens were one of my favorite things, at least in terms of getting good pictures! Although it seems like I was wandering through some kind of floral paradise, in reality we all stood in one corner and took pictures like crazy people. I'm sure there are at least 10 other people from my tour with the exact same shot. Since we weren't actually allowed in the garden, there were no annoying people getting in the shot! Yay! I guess...

A beautiful, picturesque bridge we weren't allowed to walk on. The emperor was one lucky bastard, right? As you can kind of see from the pictures here, I got incredibly lucky with the weather, particularly on this day--the skies were ridiculously blue, but it was probably just about 70 degrees--so not too hot at all. Everything was absolutely bathed in sunlight, and it was just gorgeous.

After we finished up with the tour, they took us back to the gift shop and I bought a cute keitai strap with a picture of a Heian-era lady in the classical style. Very cute. After I left, I was feeling pretty hungry, so I went to a nearby Freshness Burger. Freshness Burger is a slightly upper-level fast food restaurant (e.g. the Baja Fresh to Mos Burger's Mcdonald's or something), and really quite delicious. I also got out my map and started pouring over it--trying to decide which sight to go to see next. Luckily, you can get these absolutely brilliant bus maps in Kyoto, which tell you exactly what bus to take to get to which sight. So, for example, if you were at the Imperial Palace, as I was, it would tell you how to get to Ginkakuji, for example. It also told you how to get to places from various transportation hubs, like Kyoto Station or other big subway stations. So incredibly useful. It also had a big map on the back, which had the exact route of every single bus in the city. That way you could figure out how close you were to your stop, which eliminated a lot of the uncertainty, if you couldn't see or hear anything about the stops in English.

Nanzenji

After visiting Ginkakuji, I decided to walk down the Philosopher's Path towards Nanzenji. I'm not sure why I decided on this temple--perhaps it was simply the enormous entrance gate (not pictured here), or perhaps it was the Lonely Planet entry, which claimed it was a nice quiet place. Nonetheless, it was an interesting temple.

As you can see, the leaves were just starting to turn yellow and red at this point--apparently, the momiji (red leaves) were late that autumn. It was a pretty standard temple, but the grounds were absolutely huge--a large variety of different buildings and mysterious walls. Back behind the temple, paths stretched up into the mountains and off into the countryside for what seemed to be a very long ways indeed.

Here's what appears to be a gate of some sort--although not the colossal entrance gated that lured me in.

After wandering around the temple and checking out any interesting artifacts, I headed up into the forest. According to Lonely Planet, there was some kind of cool shrine/temple behind the main area, and it was usually pretty deserted. I still don't know if I found it or not, but what I did find was really lovely. I walked past a small cometary, another temple, and various different cars, and up into the hills. It was unbelievably lush up there--never let anyone tell you that Japan is some kind of bleak industrial wasteland--and so green. It really reminds me of Oregon in a lot of ways. This could easily be Silver Falls Park or something, if not the cute little red bridge. I climbed up into the hills, crossing bridges and checking out little statues and shrines along the way. I passed a few people, but LP was right--there was hardly anyone up there.

I'm not sure why I took this picture, but it turned out rather beautifully. The area further up was relatively undeveloped, but someone had installed handrails and a lovely stone path here.

Admittedly, you don't really get trees like this in Oregon. It was really fantastic scenery.

I chose one particular path up into the hills, and it eventually ran into a rather awesome little shrine. Unfortunately, all my pictures turned out blurry, but it was really beautiful. It was built into a cave, with water dripping down over it--not a waterfall by any means, just a small little cave and a tiny little stream. It was that peculiar mix of ancient and modern, with carved sculptures and a big blue bucket right next to each other. Like a lot of things in Japan, it was dirty and not particularly well cared for, but it was so real, so immediate, so obviously used--not just a showcase, not kept up for the tourists... For once, I felt a kind of genuine awe, the thought that at one point in time, someone had been walking through this forest and felt something. That person felt a kami in that little cave and so he or she built a shrine. And then the people who came after him left offerings, and they, in turn, built up that little shrine behind the huge sprawling temple of Nanzenji--and then one day, I arrived with my big gaijin feet and my guidebook and my camera, and felt a little of that awe all over again.

Back in the days of early Shintoism, people built shrines in places of extraordinary natural beauty. It was (and still is) a religion of nature--in ancient Greece, they had a term which reminds me very much of this philosophy, and it has been passed down into our modern, every day language: the genius of the place, the genius loci, a guardian spirit which dwelt in various different locales. This place had a genius.

After I climbed back down out of the hills, I walked in the opposite direction, following the old aqueduct that runs from Lake Biwa into Kyoto. This isn't the aqueduct itself, but rather what the aqueduct turns into--a kind of canal, which has an interesting beauty all of its own. There was a path running besides the canal, out into the countryside, which I was, of course, unable to resist. It led to a semi-open clearing and some strange machinery, along with a house--inexplicably thatched in the old style, and a lake, which contained a beautiful white heron. Strange, but interesting.

After that, I decided to move on. I walked along the Philosopher's Path a bit (half exploring, half just trying to find my way back to the bus stop), and I ran into a few random shrines--I was sick of the big places. Here was one of them, where a kindly old man gave me a pamphlet in English and smiled encouragingly.

Behind the shrine was a beautiful residential neighborhood, including a house no doubt belonging to the shrine's priest. There was also a stunning bamboo grove, and I got a picture just when the sun was shining the brightest. Quite amazing.

I lacked the guts to investigate further, fearing it might be private property, and ended up just wandering through a bunch of streets and houses (and the occasional temple) until I finally made it to a bus stop.

Ginkakuji

The next morning, when I woke up, it took me quite a while to decide where I wanted to go first. There are so many incredibly famous and interesting sites in Kyoto--for an art historian, it was ridiculously difficult! Eventually, though, I decided I wanted to try heading to Ginkakuji, a very famous temple along the Philosopher's Path. The temple is named "Ginkakuji" (Silver Pavilion) despite not being silver. There is, however, a Kinkakuji nearby (Gold Pavilion) which is, in fact, gold--it just seemed handy, I suppose. (To be fair, it almost seems that the original building, one of the Ashikaga shoguns, originally planned to cover it in silver--this plan was derailed by the endless Onin wars.)

It took me a while to find the place--I hadn't quite gotten the hang of the bus system yet, and I got off at the wrong stop. I made it there eventually though, and it was completely worth the long stroll through a residential neighborhood. (It was actually very beautiful.)

Ginkakuji is perhaps most notable for its sand gardens (see below), and also for the remarkably lovely normal gardens. I was lucky enough to be there on a beautiful day--bright sun, but not hot or humid at all. A little later on, it cleared up even more and there were perfect blue skies--this was true through most of my trip, actually.

One of my favorite pictures. You can't even tell there were actually a huge number of people there! It all looks so peaceful... Actually, despite the crowds, the grounds were fairly big, and so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

I believe this is supposed to represent Mount Fuji, or something of that nature. It's pretty damn cool looking, however.

Another sand sculpture in the sand garden. Quite lovely--I've no idea what it is supposed to represent.

After you walked around the sand garden/temple buildings in the lower half of the grounds, you could climb up a small path to a beautiful structure on the top. It was covered with this beautiful canopy. If you looked out, you can see over the entire city, as well as the temples down below. The part of Kyoto that Ginkakuji is located in is built along the western hills of the valley that surrounds the city.

Back down out of the hills, there is even more beautiful landscaping and ponds.

As you can see here, as well as below, Ginkakuji has a great deal of beautiful moss. During autumn especially, I imagine, it's very beautiful. Apparently this is some Very Important Moss. I'm not sure exactly why.

The gardens are lush, wet, and beautiful. As you can see, the sun was out by this time. It was really nice--wandering around in this back part of the temple, there was a fairly small number of people, despite the fame of the temple.

One of my favorite things about temple gardens--these beautiful, traditional props that hold up ailing trees. It allows the monks and landscapers to retain the old traditional shape of the garden without having to introduce any modern wire or anything.