Wednesday, July 27. It is quite hot when we leave the hotel, and hard to find shade. We are going to Kyoto station to take a local JR train. But once in the station, we decide to shop for either hats or umbrellas for the kids. In the end, we buy UV-protective umbrellas for Eyquem and Gadea, and one more. Noe states she can use her rain umbrella, but Samuel insists and buys an extra one with UV protection. After a short ride, we take a JR bus, also part of the JR pass (but much rarer than trains). The sky has turned cloudy. As we enter our first temple, we can hear thunder booming. We enter a nice green park-like area, with a beautiful pond. On a little island, two geese and a heron are seemingly relaxing. As we move up a towards Ryoan-ji temple, rain starts pouring quite heavily: in the end, the first use of our UV-resistant umbrellas will be rain!
To enter the temple, we need to park the umbrellas and take off our shoes. We enter a delightful, wooden temple with some nice artistic touches, like paintings on sliding doors. This place was an aristocrat’s villa during the Heian Period, but was converted in a Zen temple in 1450. Quite rapidly, the building is not that big, we arrive at the famous Zen garden. It is a rock garden, full of pebbles, and with 15 rocks. Supposedly you can never see all 15 rocks at the same time, this despite the fact that the garden is not very big. It is raining, but we are protected. We find a place to sit, and some of us try counting the rocks from different angles. We count 13, 14, 13, 14, but never 15: there is always a rock hidden by another one! Exceptionally, we can pay a little extra and visit a secondary temple, and one of the side garden. There is also, in a garden at the back, a round stone that incorporates its square water basin into a Zen inscription. After taking our time, and with the rain stopped, we exit and explore the front garden. Some bunches of trees intrigue us. In fact, they are not multiple trees but from a base, branches have been astutely cut, and new branches are growing vertically. Impressive.
As we exit, we notice the JR bus passing in the other direction and take it for a stop. We are feeling hungry, so we decide to have some food at a Family Mart, then climb up a hill to reach the famous Kinkaku-ji temple. We pay our fare and enter. Take a walk through a garden once more until arriving at a corner. We turn, and there, magnificent and impressive in front of us, stands the golden pavilion. We are lucky, there aren’t too many people, so we can take some nice pictures from all sides. The temple was the retirement villa of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and became a Zen temple after his day, as per his will. It is an impressive structure that overlooks a large pond, and seems from some perspective to sit in the pond. It has burned multiple time throughout history, most recently in the 1950s when it was set on fire by a fanatic monk. It is gold-plated, and provides a superb view in its surroundings in all season, as we discover on photos available in the shop.
It is time to take the bus back to central Kyoto, in order to stroll in the famous Nishiki covered market. We do so for an hour. The market is colorful and vibrant. We can eat some famous mini-octopus, and taste some peppery delicacies and some sake. At the end of this covered alley, we reach the Nishiki-Tenmangu Shrine, a shrine well-known for being a place to come and pray for success in one’s studies. As last night’s shrine, there are nice lanterns. And there is a famous bronze cow. Gadea and Eyquem buy Omamoris, which a monk blesses. If they both continue being successful in their studies, it will because of this, no doubt… We also stroke the bronze cow, and move on. We turn on a small street famous for its restaurants and bars and nightlife, stop to get some forces, buy some Takoyakis (octopus balls), eat them next to the Kamo river. We then walk along the river for a while, admiring cormorants, herons, and cranes, before walking back to the hotel. This has been another 20 000 steps day, we need to stretch!
Leave a Reply