Kyoto Trip: Part 3

For two straight days we were walking all day long and it was really hard waking up early the last day in Kyoto, but we knew that we had to make the most of it.

The first order of business was a visit to the Kinkakuji Temple or as its better known in English, the Golden Pavilion. Again, this would be the 2nd time for me since I had also seen the Golden Pavilion over New Years. The Golden Pavilion was by far the most crowded of all the temples we visited during our time there, for good reason - it's very picturesque. Let's do a little retrospective...

Tree designed to look like a ship

Next stop: Ryoanji Temple - one of Kyoto's notable Zen temples, notable for its rock garden. The garden consists of raked gravel and fifteen moss-covered boulders, which are placed so that, when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder. (Wikipedia) Which is true, I remember counting only 14 rocks when I was looking at it.


At this point my camera's battery died, so I used a mixture of Chris, Harry, and Nick's photos to fill the gap. While we were still at Ryoanji we all took some time to ourselves and separated off. It was a great time to sit quietly and think while enjoying the peaceful landscape around me.

Not pausing to rest or eat, we jumped on the bus to Nijo Castle which had been built by the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan's 1st shogun. They used a special design in the floorboards which create a chirping noise similar to a nightingale, used as a security measure to alert against intruders.

Nijo from the Outside (no pictures allowed inside)

After looking around the living quarters and interior of the castle, we explored the outer gardens and climbed up one of the guard towers.

Approaching the exit we encountered a small string quartet playing some beautiful classical music. Harry, Craig, and I sat down and enjoyed 3 songs or so before leaving; they had a beautiful vibrato throughout!

Running out of time, we made a quick stop off at the Nishiki food market in downtown Kyoto as we made our way south to Sanjusangendo, the temple we missed out on the first evening. Nishiki was packed with people and there were countless stands selling various prepared and unprepared food. We grabbed a quick bite and caught the bus over to Sanjusangendo.

Nishiki Food Market

At this point we were really cutting things close with time, but we made it to the temple with just enough time to look through it before getting over to Kyoto station in time for our train home. The inside was amazing considering that there were over 1000 nearly identical wooden carvings made by different artisans in a short period of time. No pictures were allowed to be taken inside but here's one I grabbed off the web.

They're all wood-based covered in gold leaf.

Well that was it, quite a surreal ending to a wonderful trip. Thanks for all the memories and planning guys!