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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.

There’s not much more to be said about Nara - the primary attraction is obviously Todaiji and its daibutsu. There is also a very large five-storied pagoda in the temple complex of Kofuku-ji with a peaceful little pond behind it:

And, of course, no trip to Nara would be complete without feeding the free-roaming deer in Nara’s public park:

Unfortunately, exactly as the guidebook predicted, we saw several western tourists munching on the deer biscuits as they walked around Nara.

The trip from Nara to Kyoto was the shortest of our trip - less than an hour on the local train. As we stepped off the train, we were greeted by our first real taste of how crowded Japan can be. The station was one of the bigger and busier train stations I’ve ever been to, and I’m sure that Golden Week didn’t help. Moreover, the modern design of the train station and the ugly Kyoto hotel tower across the street immediately took away any lingering thoughts that Kyoto would be that picture-perfect, traditional Japan that is shown nostalgically in television or movies :

As we walked through the station, I was reminded of the first time I walked into the gigantic and similarly modern train station in Rome with its large shopping mall, finding it hard to believe that it was the central hub of the city that was home to much of western culture. Kyoto, the largest remaining bastion of Japanese culture, seemed decidedly uncultured.

Of course, Kyoto maintains its importance in Japan for a reason, and after checking into our hotel, we quickly found out why. Although they are scattered around the city, some of the most impressive, famous, and historically significant temples in Japan are located in Kyoto. After checking into our hotel, we decided to head to two of the most famous first, hoping to escape the crowds after visiting them.

Our first stop was Sanjusangendo, home to 1001 images of the 1000 armed Kannon (Sk. Avalokite?vara). These 1001 statues and the 28 guardian myoo, ten, ashura and other deities are located within 33 separate sections of the temple, hence the name Sanjusangendo, or “33 Bay Hall.” This number 33 is a sacred number in Buddhism, and represents the number of forms Kannon can appear in to teach the path to enlightenment. We weren’t allowed to take pictures and they would’ve have included lots of people’s heads anyways, so here are some pictures that I retrieved from this website:

The rows and rows of statues were really impressive and illustrate well the developing importance of Kannon and his pure land during the medieval period in which these images were made.

Next on the list was Kiyomizu-dera, definitely on the list of the top-three most famous temples in Japan. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the temple was literally overflowing with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder to get a chance to pray at the altar or drink the sacred water from the waterfall. I still got some nice pictures, however, as it’s a pretty large complex:

We waited in line nearly 20 minutes to get a drink from one of the three sacred water spouts you can see above and for which the temple gets its name. It was cold and tasted good, but I’m not sure it granted the health, longevity or success that is promised.

Because of the large crowds both in the temples and on the buses to and from the temples, we spent nearly 4 hours just seeing these two temples. We decided to have a look at the traditionally maintained streets of Gion, hoping to see a geisha or maiko (geisha’s apprentice), and then head back towards the station for some food. Unfortunately we saw no geisha but the streets were very beautiful:

By the time we finally made it home, we were exhausted and decided to call it a night so that we could wake up early and start again the next day. I’ll finish with Kyoto and this trip in the next post.