Japan Day Four & Five: Kyoto

The next two days we spent in Kyoto visiting even more shrines and temples.  Some we spent our time getting to, but most we just stumbled upon as we walked around the city.  Kyoto is a city full of special hidden places, many of which are barely mentioned on the maps. 

Our first site was the Heian Jingu Shrine, another UNESCO World Heritage site, known for its gardens and ornate architecture. 

 Inside the courtyard of the temple, we were approached by a couple of Japanese high school students who asked us to answer a couple of questions.  It turns out that most Japanese students learn some English in school and are given assignments to find English speaking people outside of class and talk with them.  We were happy to stop and answer their questions about our favorite desserts and places to go in Japan.

When we left the temple, we were approached by another small group of Japanese high school students who wanted to ask us questions.  We stopped again and talked with them for a while.  At the end of our “interview” they took a picture with us and gave us origami swans as a gift.  Chris handed them a business card from Columbia in return… it’s all we had to return the gift, and the students seemed to really enjoy it.

We left there to go find the Ginkakuji Temple, better known as the Silver Pavilion, but on our way, we came across the Okazaki Jinja Shrine which is believed to be one of four shrines built along the four compass points in Heiankyo (the ancient name for the capital Kyoto) to protect the Imperial Court in 794 when national capital was transferred here. This shrine received a ritual offering for the childbirth of The Empress in 1178 and is believed to hold the god and goddess of easy childbirth. In addition, because this shrine was founded in answer to an invocation by the emperor to protect the Imperial Court and expel evil related to the compass points, it is also believed to house the god and goddess of dispelling evil related to the compass points and other sources.

Finally, we made it to the Silver Pavilion, a Zen temple at the foot of Kyoto's eastern mountains. In 1482, shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa built his retirement villa on the grounds of today's temple, modeling it after the Golden Pavilion (see prior post), his grandfather's retirement villa at the base of Kyoto's northern mountains. The villa was converted into a Zen temple after Yoshimasa's death in 1490.

Today, the area consists of the Silver Pavilion, half a dozen other temple buildings, a beautiful moss garden and a unique dry sand garden.

 On the way home from here, we came across the Honen-in Temple, a small and peaceful temple on the side of the mountain. 

 The next day we took a trip to the Nishi Hongwanji temple, another UNESCO World Heritage site and an active Buddhist temple. 

 The Nishi Honganji and Higashi Honganji are two large temples in the center of Kyoto. The temple, built in 1591, is the head temple of the Honganji faction of the Jodo-Shin sect with over 10,000 subtemples across the country and 200 temples overseas.

Higashi Honganji was built only eleven years after and a few street blocks east of Nishi Honganji as the head temple of the Otani faction of Jodo-shin Buddhism. Its main hall, the Goeido is Kyoto's largest wooden structure and dedicated to Shinran, the sect's founder.

After seeing these two sites, we headed out for some sushi and then on the train back to Tokyo!