A busy day of major sights. We woke early, still slightly jetlagged, caught the subway and a bus to arrive before eight at one of the major temples, Kiyomizudera, sited on an eastern hillside overlooking Kyoto. Kiyomizudera is Buddhist but has on its grounds a Shinto shrine, more evidence for the comfortable syncretism of Japanese religion. (Nepal similarly incorporated both Buddhism and Hinduism with comfort.) As we expected, the crowded were down, the major tour group being middle school children from Niigata who wanted our picture taken with them, and an opportunity for the sensei to encourage the children to practice their English.
After walking downhill from Kiyomizudera, we caught another bus up to Ginkakuji, the Temple of the Silver Pavillion. When we had been here almost two years ago, in the summer of 2006, the ground had been open but the pavillion itself covered with scaffolding undergoing restoration. It is now visible again--although it never was covered in silver (and hasn't been for a long time), but rather with a cypress-wood roof. The grounds are particularly lovely, combining both dry (sand) and wet (pond) elements, with much mossy terrain climbing up the hillside.
Then we took the Philosopher's Walk along a canal. Two years ago, in the middle of summer, the Walk had been dominated by cicadas, each loudly proclaiming its own tedious and repetitive brand of philosophy. Today the philosophers, er, bugs were quiet, but there were still some remaining cherry blossoms to decorate the path. We took a lovely lunch canalside.
Then we took the subway to the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Kyoto had been the capital for over a thousand years, but the palace kept burning down (cypress-bark roofs and paper walls will make for flammable , so the structures we saw today were 'only' 155 years old. The Imperial Household keeps a fairly tight hand on visitors, especially gaijin, so one has to present a passport to request permission to visit. The grounds, while not as overwhelming as say Nijo Castle, still are impressive, with particularly beautiful gardens with water features. On Thursday we have gotten permission to visit the grounds and gardens at the Katsura Imperial Villa southeast of Kyoto.
And then we were tired out. We braved the insanity that is Daimaru (thinks Harrods, only Japanese and maybe twice as intense) for a picnic dinner and a bottle of sake to take back to our hotel room. We barely made it out to come down to the business center to log into the internet and post this.
Yr faithful correspondents...
