Kyoto Day 3

Our third day in Kyoto was probably our busiest day of them all. We bought a day subway and bus pass, so we didn’t end up paying an absurd amount in fees to get from one spot to the next. We started by going further out of the city to an area called Arashiyama to see Kinkaku-ji. Kinkaku-ji is a golden temple built on the edge of a pond. We got there right as it opened because we knew it would be busy. It was truly a spectacular sight with the temple reflecting onto the water. The entrance led you to the opposite side of the pond to view the temple before looping back around to the backside of the temple for a closer look. The original temple was built in 1397. A monk who was obsessed with it burned it down in 1950. It was rebuilt in 1955. The rest of our time at Kinkaku-ji was spent wandering through a short path on the grounds. We passed a couple of other waterfalls and another pond. All of this had a beautiful mountain backdrop.

Front gate at Ninna-ji.

Next, we took the bus a couple of streets down to Ninna-ji temple. We decided that it was not worth it to pay to go in, but were able to walk around the grounds for free. I do wish that Kyoto offered some type of pass that you could pay a base rate for and see as many temples and shrines as you would like. It gets rather pricy when each temple/ shrine costs anywhere from 4-10 dollars and you’re going in multiple temples each day.

Photo of the Cloud Dragon as we could not take any. 

From here we headed out to Tenryu-ji temple where the Cloud Dragon is located. Again, we decided to skip the main temple and temple gardens. We were not given the option to walk around for free here. We did however go into the temple that contained the Cloud-Dragon on the ceiling. Dragons are seen as the Asian symbol of Wisdom, and it is traditional to have them painted on the tops of certain types of temples. The temple was originally built in 1339 and has been burnt down a total of eight times. I’ve decided that the buildings here don’t have enough historical context if they haven’t been burnt down or destroyed at some point. The dragon that we saw was repainted in 1997 after it was decided that the previous dragon could not be restored. The Cloud Dragon is similar to the Mona Lisa in that it seems to be looking at you no matter where you stand in the building. This is because the dragon’s left eye is directly in the center of the painting. It was quite the sight to behold.

Our last stop in this area was at the Bamboo Grove. There was a walking path with towering bamboo trees to block out the sun and provide some shade. Just like the Torii gates from the previous day, the pathway was crawling with people. Unfortunately for us, it was not built into the side of a mountain, so it was crowded from beginning to end.

After lunch, we made our way to Yasaka Pagoda before heading to Nanzen-ji temple. We just passed by the Pagoda snapping photos. The streets here were lined with shops and filled with tourists. It is very popular to rent Kimonos in Kyoto. There were tons of women dressed in Kimonos taking photographs of themselves with temples in the background to commemorate the occasion. I’m not sure how many photos we ended up photo-bombing, but I’m guessing it was pretty high.

Looking at Dharma Hall from the trail. 

Nanzen-ji is home to Dharma Hall, a beautiful building built into the mountainside. We went inside and waited in line to view some fabulous statues. Unfortunately, you couldn’t take any photos of the statues, but everything else was fair game. There was a viewing platform overlooking the trail below the hall and the rest of the mountainside. We meandered down the rest of the trail. Scott did run up to the Easy Childbirth Pagoda and said it was pretty cool.

From here, we decided to try to make it to two last temples before they closed for the day. We hopped on the bus only to discover that Saturday afternoons can be quite busy in Kyoto. The first of the last two temples we tried to get to was closed and had the gates closed so that nobody could wander through the grounds. The last temple, Kodaji was closed too, but the grounds were open. We wandered around them and found an old aqueduct. This was really awesome to see. We were even able to see the water rushing through it from above when we climbed a staircase to check out a two-story pagoda partially hidden by the trees. We meandered our way back out to the front gate, stopped for some photos, and started heading back to the bus stop.

I really wanted to see a Geisha while we were in Kyoto, but everything I read said you would have to pay top dollar and have some sort of sponsor to get into a restaurant where they performed. Instead, we stopped close to the area that they were located to look for dinner. We ended up accidentally finding the bar Sama Sama which was mentioned in our guidebook. Its owned by an Indonesian man and served some delicious food. Lynsey and I busted out our very rusty basic Bahasa despite the owner speaking English. We shared beef rendang, nasi goreng (fried rice), and ayam baroda (spicy chicken). It was a fantastic way to end our day.