Northwest of Kyoto's Centre

After four nights in Kyoto it was time to head a little further out.  I grabbed the local JR train that heads northwest, the Sagano Line.  My first of two stops was at the Hanazono Station.  From there I walked to the Kinkaku-ji temple one of three World Heritage Sites that you can visit in this area.

Kinkaku dates from the 14th Century and gets its name from the main building on the site - the Golden Pavilion.  The original is no longer standing and what you see is a 1955 version.  It was burned down numerous times (twice during the Onin War of the late 15th Century and more recently, in 1950, by a deranged monk!).  The building is almost completely covered in gold-leaf.  It makes for quite the site on the edge of a pond.


I then walked on to another World Heritage Site - the Ryoan-ji Temple.  It's claim to fame is its dry landscape rock garden.  It is believed to have been built in the late 15th Century and is one of the world's most famous.  Seeing it in a peaceful environment must be a very calming and satisfying experience.  Unfortunately I was surrounded by high school students and, since I am unable to shut them out, I did not find any enlightenment ;-)


I made my way back to Hanazono Station, got on the JR Line and got off at Saga Arashiyama. my second stop of the day.  Since I was "templed out" I did not visit the Tenryu-ji Temple, yet another World Heritage Site.  Rather I walked along the Katsura and Hozu Rivers and into the mountains around Kameyama Park.  You can sometimes see wild monkeys in this park but I, unfortunately, did not see any.  The trails lead out of the park and into the hills and, yet again, I must say that I wish I had a hiking book for these areas.  Oh well.  The valley in which the Hozu River flows is quite steep and narrow and is also densely forested.  The leaves were starting to turn.  The rivers runs a jade like green and navigating it were numerous tourist boats propelled by men pushing on bamboo rods.  It left me with a sense of southeast Asia.



After my walk into the hills and forests I went to the Bamboo Path.  This is a path cut out of a bamboo grove.  And what a bamboo grove it is.  These plants are a good six or seven storeys high I would say.  A great deal of this part of Kyoto (called Arashimaya) is forested with bamboo.  Again a feeling of southeast Asia arose in me, rather than Japan.


All in all a great day and easy train ride out of Kyoto.  I woke up at 7am, had breakfast, walked to the train station in Kyoto and, with my walk, was at the Kinkaku-ji at 8:45am, fifteen minutes prior to opening.  I'd guess there were a thousand people there waiting for the gates to open at 9:00am, mostly school field trips.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Temples, Forests and Streams - Nikko

Image
I spent a day and a half in Nikko October 28 and 29th.  It is a village of 95,000 people north of Tokyo.  To get here I took the bullet train from Ueon Station in Tokyo to Utsunomiya Station.  There I switched to a local train line called the Nikko Line.  In all it took about an hour and forty minutes of travel time. Nikko is situated in a valley with a river called the Daiya-gawa running through it.  It really is a rushing stream.  In fact, every where in Nikko you here rushing water.  Whether it is the Daiya itself or the numerous other streams that are all rushing rapidly down to meet the Daiya.  Most streets have narrow stone culverts on either side and you can see the rushing water (or hear it when they are covered).  It is a nice sound that drowns out other man-made ones. Forests.  The valley that Nikko is built in has some fantastic forests.  The trees are immense.  They look like cedars to me based on the stringy bark.  One thing for sure is that they are in fact big.  Many of
Read more

The Ueno Area - History in Art and Those Passed Away

Image
I spent the afternoon of my second day, the 24th of October in the Ueno area...about 1.5 to 2 km to the west of Asakusa and my ryokan - a nice walk.   I had lunch at an Udon place just south of the Ueno Station, under the tracks.  To order my meal I had to go to a vending machine that had the pictures of meals and their respective prices.  I inserted my 390 yen, pushed the button, brought my ticket to the kitchen and about five minutes later I was slurping (noisily as one is supposed to do) my noodles. I then headed through Ueno Park to Tokyo National Museum.  It was just pouring rain...in fact it poured all day.  Torrential rain...all day.  I had never experienced that before, not for that length of time.  I got soaked and parts of the park were saturated.  The museum would be a good place to spend a few hours.   I did three of the multiple buildings of the museum.  The one that impressed me most was the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, mostly because I really liked the modern architectu
Read more

Taking the Train - Stereotypes of Japan

To date I have taken nine intercity trains in Japan (excluding the many commuter trains in Tokyo). Here are a few things that have struck me, although they don’t surprise me given all I had heard and read over the years. I guess they just prove the facts and further show how engrained respect for people and property is in this beautiful country. 1) The Shinkansen that I rode on from Tokyo to Nagoya pulled in from some other part of Japan at my platform about 15 minutes before the scheduled 12:33 departure - although right on time for its arrival from wherever it was arriving from. It emptied itself of its passengers and the ladies clad in pink took over. They boarded, closed the doors of the cars and got to work. We were lined up outside and watched the show through the windows. Here is what they accomplished in 15 minutes in a train that was 12 cars long. -turned all the chairs around to face in the other direction (our train was going to head back the way it came) -removed th
Read more