3 Temples in Kyoto

Day 5 Monday April 9th

As per usual we had a bit of a late start in the morning as we were trying to recover from the lack of sleep over the past 48 hours. Once we were up and about though it was a fun action packed day of visiting temples. Our first stop was the temple called Ryoan-Ji which is famous for its rock zen garden where it is said to be one of the best examples of "dry landscaping". There are no water features at all in the garden which has a bedding of white gravel. There are 15 rocks in the garden and from anywhere you stand you can only see a maximum of 14 of them at one time. The rest of the temple and gardens were every bit as impressive as the zen garden and we could have spent a lot more time wondering around but we had more temples to visit.


The 2nd temple we went to does not allow visitors to go inside but you can get a great walk around the lake overlooking the temple. This is one of the more famous temples in Kyoto. It is called Kinkaku but its also known by the name "The Golden Pavilion". It gets this name because the two top floors are covered with gold leaf on Japanese lacquer. The building has 3 different types of architecture which makes the building really unique. The 1st floor is Shinden-zukuri, The 2nd floor is Buke-zukuri, (the style of the samurai house) and the 3rd floor is Karayo style or Zen temple style. We walked around the lake and then the rest of the gardens taking many photos before moving on the 3rd temple of the day.



This temple is perhaps the most famous in the city and was pretty busy with tourists. Kiyomizu-dera is the name but it actually refers to several Buddhist temples on the grounds. The temple was built in 798 and was named after the waterfall that is in the grounds. The name Kiyoi Mizu means pure water. At one part of the temple complex visitors can use metal cups to collect water from 3 streams of water run off and drink it. It is said that drinking the water of the three streams confers health, longevity, and success in studies.




After leaving this temple we walked down to the district of Gion which is famous for being the best place in Kyoto to see a Geisha. True to its reputation we did see 2 or 3 walking around. Gion is filled with restaurants and Traditional Japanese tea houses. By this time though it was getting late and starting to get dark. We stopped off a great restaurant for a meal of Tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlets) followed by a Starbucks and a late night stroll through downtown Kyoto before heading back for a drink and some sleep so we would be refreshed for the trip to Himeji and Kobe in the morning..... I mean afternoon.