As one of the former capitals of Japan, Kyoto has one of the highest densities of historical sites out of all the large cities. We stayed two days in Kyoto, but definitely could have spent more time here. Kyoto can be divided into several areas - northern, southern, eastern, western, and central Kyoto. Because of the limited time, we focused on visiting just the southern, northern, and central areas, and by no means exhausted all the options there.
One of our favorite places collectively as a group was the Inari Shrine in southern Kyoto. A short train ride from the main station, Inari is nestled on a lush mountainside just far enough removed to provide an aura of spirituality. The foot of the mountain was very crowded with tourists and tourist traps, but the farther you hike up the trail, the less people there are. Near the top of the mountain, there were so few people that we were able to get some great uninterrupted shots of the long lines of Torii Gates, what Inari is famous for. Our resident Buddhism expert explained that the gates represented a separation from the mundane to the spiritual, and that as you walk through the gates you are going from a state of bad to a state of good. Considering the sheer number of gates we passed through, we must have been close to saint status by the time we reached the top.
Torii gates at Inari
For the northern Kyoto segment of our stay, we visited the Kinkakuji Temple and the Ryoanji Temple. The Kinkakuji Temple is mostly famous for the main building, the Golden Pavilion, covered in many leaves of gold foil. The Ryoanji Temple is most known for a rock garden within the temple, which apparently has lasted hundreds of years. Everything was very aesthetically pleasing, and I could see the rock garden as a good place for meditation and contemplation in the old days when the whole temple wasn’t filled with tourists. We were elbow to elbow with other people in a lot of the places and it was raining that day, so we didn’t end up spending that much time at those attractions.
View of Kinkakuji Temple
There is a street in central Kyoto that houses Nishiki Market, where vendors set up shop along a long stretch of road and sell all sorts of edibles, from green tea ice cream to wasabi plants. We tried some grilled seafood on a stick, which was excellent, and bulgogi flavored takoyaki, which was acceptable, and then had an actual lunch at a cafe serving omelette rice and ice cream sundaes. Connecting to the main Nishiki Market street was a more modern looking outdoor mall where we spent a lot of time (mostly window) shopping and even more time playing games at an arcade we found. They had an entire section of the floor dedicated to just music games, and the best thing was that we were able to find songs from games and anime we’ve heard of. There were also a lot of pachinko machines which we mostly avoided, claw machines, real time strategy games, trading card game machines, and a small Puzzles and Dragons corner. If they had arcades like this at home, I could easily see myself spending way too much time and money there, which is why it’s probably a good thing they don’t have these there.
Seafood skewer from Nishiki Market
One of the more unique experiences we had in Kyoto was actually not related to sightseeing. We attended a sake tasting event hosted by our hotel, led by a licensed sake sommelier who gave a short presentation on the different categories of sake followed by a tasting of several different kinds. Having never found a sake I liked before this, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually enjoyed some of the ones we tasted. Sake can be broadly categorized using a matrix in which one axis represents light vs. strong and the other one dry vs. sweet. I tended to gravitate toward the light and sweet ones, of which there were actually a couple to choose from. Another interesting fact was that sake can come in an unpasteurized form in Japan, and only in Japan, because it would go bad if shipped elsewhere. As part of the event we visited a local store selling hundreds of different types of sake, and many people ended up buying some "only in Japan" unpasteurized sake.
Sake tasting
It’s completely unreasonable to expect to finish exploring a huge city like Kyoto in two days. We didn’t have time to see the temples on the east side, or the mountains on the west side, but we can always take a future trip back to Kyoto and see more. We said goodbye to Kyoto this morning and are currently on our way to Nara, where we will see more temples, hopefully some cherry blossoms, and lots of deer!
- MC 4/15
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