Search for a Method

Sorry for not finishing this more quickly, but we had a busy weekend and I’ve been busily trying to plan our trip to China in August this week.

So, on our last day in Kyoto, we headed to Nijo castle for a little break from temple viewing. Nijo castle was built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, as the Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa clan. Although they had moved the shogunal capital to Edo (Tokyo), the Imperial family remained in Kyoto, necessitating frequent visits by the shogun to the old capital.

The castle has an outer moat and wall and an inner moat and wall, making it one of the more impressively defended castles I’ve ever seen:

Inside of the fortifications are two separate palaces: the Ninomaru palace and the Honmaru palace. While I’m not exactly sure what the Honmaru palace was used for, the Ninomaru palace was used as the private quarters of the shogun while he was in Kyoto and so it has a number of anti-assassin architectural features, including hidden doors and its nightingale floors which squeak as you walk on them. Also, like most castles, Nijo has several beautiful gardens on its premises:

After finishing at the castle, Anna and I decided to split up, as she had had enough of temples during our trip and wanted to go shopping instead. I headed for Kinkaku-ji, one of the most famous temples in Japan, and Ryoan-ji, famous for its Zen rock garden. I’ll spare everyone the history of these temples, as they are primarily for their visual appeal. First, Kinkaku-ji, the golden temple:

And Ryoan-ji, home to one of the most famous rock gardens in the world:

As you might be able to tell from the picture, the rock garden is a good example of one of those famous attractions that really fails to impress in person. There were swarms of people sitting around it, talking and making noise and I was reminded of seeing the Mona Lisa, behind glass and smaller than I expected.

Because of the crazy crowds during Golden Week, it took me nearly three hours to get through these two temples, after which I met back up with Anna and we decided to head home. Of course, we couldn’t escape the crowds even on the shinkansen, as we hadn’t been able to get reserved seats. We ended up standing in a smoking car for almost two hours in order to get home. As bad as it sounds, we were lucky, since we left tens of people at every stop after Kyoto unable to squeeze onto the train at all.