A weekend in Kyoto

I had been putting off this post because I had taken a ridiculous amount of photos, which meant a lot of sorting and deleting was needed. That aside, let me first say that I officially love Kyoto, and it is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the world. If you ever visit Japan, Kyoto is the place to go for stunning sights, more so than Tokyo! 

The trip itself had been organised by a couple of people from the language cafe where I sometimes work, and they did a pretty amazing job considering the size of our group.

First stop Kiyomizu Temple

It was a lovely sunny day, which was surprising considering it was the middle of autumn. However, this did make taking pictures a little difficult at times.

It was near impossible to capture the colour of the trees properly, so you shall have to take my word for it when I say they were stunning! 

Oh look, it is me on a bridge looking photoshopped in.

If you look carefully you can see the castle in the distance. It is such a shame that these views were disrupted by the building works, but on places as old as these, constant restoration is fairly inevitable.

In this picture you can see where the waterfall ended, trickling into the pool below. 

There was a ridiculously long line of tourists (mostly Japanese, as always), queueing up to wash their hands and faces in the clean mountain water.

Better show the scale of the building works, and how high up this wooden structure stood! 

With the amazing views behind you, people took it in turns to light an incense stick and place it within this huge bowl. As I understand it, it is believed that the smoke created is cleansing both for the body and spirit, so each person who went up would waft the smoke over them. I saw some people some would bring their hands together and others muttered words I did not know, but each person was different with their own individual rituals.

Next I tried my hand at the Japanese equivalent of fortunetelling. You hand over 200 en to the woman behind the counter, and she gives you this wooden box (left). I gave it a confused shake, hearing things rattling around inside, until a single stick fell out of a small hole at the bottom. On the stick was a number (in my case 55), which related to the pieces of paper you should see in the background. On the paper she handed over was a lot of writing and so my Japanese friend had to translate for me, but overall mine was pretty good :D

The sign reads:

Love stone. 
This stone is called "Love-fortune-telling" stone. If you walk safely from this stone to the other with your eyes closed, for once, your wish'll be granted soon. If you can't, it will be long before your love is realised. And it is said talking advice requires you to have someone who'll help you achieve your love.

I didn't give it a go as it was quite busy and I had no desire to go blindly crashing into Japanese strangers on my pursuit for love.

None of my pictures can come even close to capturing the breathtaking landscapes. But I loved this view, with the trees in full autumn colours, and with Kyoto city (which had previously been the capital of Japan) below, and the mountains forever in the background, it was just beautiful! 

There is not a single nail used in the entire structure of the Kiyomizu temple, and hopefully with the picture below you can get an idea of the scale of it. 

As you can see there is quite a long drop from where the tourists are (on the stage) to the ground below.

Apparently there is a popular expression "to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu" which is the Japanese equivalent of the English expression "to take the plunge". This refers to an Edo period tradition that held that, if one were to survive a 13m jump from the stage, one's wish would be granted. Two hundred thirty-four jumps were recorded in the Edo period and, of those, 85.4% survived. However, the practise is now prohibited.

More pretty pictures of trees...

Ginkaku Temple

It was originally intended that Ginkaku-ji would later be covered in silver foil, (Gin being silver in Japanese), however the plans took so long that the plan was never realised before the creators (Yoshimasa) death. Instead it was decided to maintain the "unfinished" appearance, how Yoshimasa last saw it.

These perfectly maintained sand gardens are very well known, and I found it incredibly hard to resist running though them! 

Views down onto the gardens

It felt like being in a film walking through these trees ...

Off to the nights entertainments

Afterwards we headed to a place where tourists went literally just to look at trees, at this stage I had probably had enough of leafs for one day...

This menu confused me for far too long, until someone helpfully pointed out that the bar was called 'WAS'.

Day Number Two

I remain forever fascinated by Japanese buses. The driver handles no money at all, everyone simply queues up with the correct change and tips it into the device here when leaving the bus. 

If you do not have the correct exact amount, you place you coins in another machine which gives you smaller coin denominations, so that you can pay the exact amount.

Simple right?

Kinkaku Temple

Temple of the Golden Pavilion

I tried my hand at a panoramic shot, you can see in the pond a number of islands (ten in total), the largest of which representing the Japanese islands.

"The zen typology is seen through the rock composition, the bridges, and plants are all arranged in a specific way so as to represent famous places in Chinese and Japanese literature."

The Japanese love their waterfalls, no matter how small

Almost everyone who walked by tried their hand at throwing coins into the pot you can see. Very few succeeded! I wasn't entirely sure the of the reasoning behind it, but I had a go anyway, inevitably failing.

Extremely useful instructions! I think I scared the poor girl in the next cubicle when she heard my cameras shutter sound go off

More cleansing incense sticks and smoke wafting. The woman on the right apologised for being in my photo though 

Arashiyama

(shopping)

I think by this stage I was tired of taking photos, so all you get is a vending machine essentially just selling sushi shaped rubbers.

And my two cute little Octopus, Pako and Kopako the takos :) 

Thanks for reading this super long blog!!