Kyoto: The Japanese City of Shrines and Monkeys

So to backtrack just a bit, let’s talk about Kyoto. Kyoto was actually our “home base” of sorts after we left Mt. Fuji (and before Hiroshima). We spent a few days exploring Kyoto, Japan’s former capital, and all of our day trips to Nara, Osaka, and Kobe were actually done from here.

One of the first impressions you get from Kyoto is that it’s certainly calmer and more laid-back than Tokyo. The buildings don’t rise as high; there are fewer hordes of men in business suits; and the city’s many shrines, Buddhist temples, and kimono-clad women make it easy to see why Kyoto’s developed the reputation as the center of traditional Japanese culture.

We first arrived in Kyoto after out day-long trek through the Japanese Alps. Crossing through the mountains left us in Toyama (a major city on Japan’s western coast), where we hopped onto a JR train that took us through the countryside, past Lake Biwa (Japan’s largest lake!), and into Kyoto Station

Our hostel was just around the corner from the station, which made it our de facto hang-out spot for a while (mostly thanks to the tasty — and cheap — ramen in the station’s tenth floor, which is filled with just ramen restaurants). The station, in addition to serving Kyoto’s JR lines, highway buses, and municipal subway and bus lines, is also one of the city’s major shopping, dining, and entertainment complex (there’s a department store, shopping mall, hotel, movie theater, and several restaurants).

But the most striking thing about Kyoto Station (which is the second-largest train station in Japan, apparently) is its design, which reminded me more of a small airport than a train station.

Via Wikipedia:

The current Kyōto Station opened in 1997, commemorating Kyoto’s 1,200th anniversary. It is 70 meters high and 470 meters from east to west, with a total floor area of 238,000 square meters. Architecturally, it exhibits many characteristics of futurism, with a slightly irregular cubic facade of plate glass over a steel frame. The architect was Hiroshi Hara.

Kyoto, one of the least modern cities in Japan by virtue of its many cultural heritage sites, was largely reluctant to accept such an ambitious structure in the mid-1990s: The station’s completion began a wave of new high-rise developments in the city that culminated with the 20-story Kyocera Building. For this, there are opinions criticizing the station design for taking part in breaking down the traditional cityscape.

On our first day in Kyoto, we set out to explore some of the city’s many famous temples and shrines. Our first stop was the Ginkaku-ji (銀閣寺), or the “Silver Pavillion.”

Originally built in 1482, the Ginkaku-ji was commissioned by a Japanese shogun named Ashikaga Yoshimasa to serve as his retirement villa. The design was meant to emulate his grandfather’s Kinkaku-ji (the “Golden Pavillion” located in western Kyoto), and he had originally planned to cover the temple’s exterior in silver foil (the Kinkaku-ji temple is similarly covered in gold foil).

Delayed construction and Yoshimasa’s death meant the silver foil plans never came to fruition and the temple eventually became a Zen Buddhist temple (Yoshimasa himself had eventually become a Zen Buddhist monk).

The walkway to the temple’s main entrance.

The temple building, originally meant to be covered in silver foil, but, sadly, not.

After checking out the Ginkaku-ji, our next stop was the Kyoto International Manga Museum (京都国際マンガミュージアム). The museum is a public-private partnership between Kyoto Seika University and the city government. It opened in 2006 and has a collection of over 200,000 items, including art galleries, a massive collection/library of manga, and a reserach department. Photography isn’t allowed (due to copyright restrictions on the manga in the museum), but I assure you it’s well worth the visit if you’re interested in manga. The museum hosts manga art demonstrations and classes, a massive collection of manga that lines the walls on three floors, and an informative exhibit on the history of manga.

The next day, we visited the Ginkaku-ji’s twin temple, the Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺) or “Golden Pavillion.”

This temple was built in 1397, also to serve as a retirement villa. It’s been burned down several times (twice during the Onin War in the 1400s and once more in 1950), and the current structure was built in 1955. The building has seen a great deal of restoration work on its lacquer coating, the gold-leaf coating, interior, artwork, and roof.

One of the temple’s most distinctive features is the different style of architecture on each of the temple’s three stories. The top two are covered in gold leaf; the top floor is built in a traditional Chinese style, the iddle floor in a “warrior aristocrats” style, and the ground floor in an imperial residential style.

Surrounding the temple is the “Mirror Pond,” and a walkway through the temple’s gardens. At the end of the walkway, near the temple’s exit, are some stands where visitors can buy fortunes and ema (絵馬), or “prayer plaques.” Here’s a photo of some ema hung at the Kinkaku-ji; worshippers write their prayers on these plaques and hang them near the temple for the gods to receive.

After the Kinkaku-ji, we headed south to Arashiyama (嵐山), a neighborhood in Kyoto’s western outskirts near the Oi River and home to the city’s Iwatayama Monkey Park, Sagano bamboo forest, and other attractions.

The Iwateyama Monkey Park, found on the slopes of Mt. Arashiyama, is home to more than 170 wild Japanese macaque. Although the monkeys are wild (and there are signs along the trail that warn visitors from antagonizing or making eye contact with the monkeys), they are rather accustomed to humans, and there is a spot in the park where visitors can buy peanuts and apple slices to feed the monkeys through a gate.

After the monkey park, we went through a walk in the Sagano bamboo forest:

The next few days were spent exploring Nara, Osaka, and Kobe. At some point we also visited the Kyoto Imperial Palace, Nishiki food market, and “Geisha district” of Gion, but I forgot my camera, so I don’t have pictures of that at the moment (we got caught in the rain that day, anyway, so I’m kind of glad I forgot my camera, but I digress).

On our final day in Kyoto we paid a visit to Fushimi Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社), an important shinto shrine in Kyoto that’s famous for, among other things, its “Thousand Torii Gates.”