Cherry blossoms - Kyoto

The blooming cherry trees coincided very nicely with my visit to Saiho-ji temple in Kyoto last week, so I ended up visiting not only Saiho-ji, but also the Imperial Palace Park and Shimbashi street in Gion.

Imperial Palace Park

My first stop was the park surrounding the Imperial Palace. What can I say - beautiful! They have magnificent cherry trees with white and pink blossoms that are even more gorgeous under a perfectly blue sky. But see for yourself:

 

Saiho-ji

To visit Saiho-ji, you have to apply by sending a postcard to the temple. They return a postcard stating the date and time when you may show up at the temple gates for your visit. They charge an outrageous entrance fee of 3000 Yen - I was definitely curious how magnificent the temple and its gardens would be to justify the entry fee.

Saiho-ji temple

Before being allowed to see the gardens, however, visitors must take part in a temple ceremony and copy a sutra using Japanese calligraphy equipment. As it turns out, this was the most interesting part of my visit. The sutra comes in Japanese characters, of course - but luckily the temple is prepared for foreign visitors. They provide paper where the sutra is pre-printed in very faint lines that you can simply trace. However, it takes a while to get used to writing with a brush rather than a pencil, and it's also difficult to always get just the right amount of ink onto the paper.

After copying the sutra, you are finally allowed visit the garden which is famous for being almost entirely covered in moss. I have to admit, I wasn't particularly blown away by its beauty. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad or ugly at all, but the 3000 Yen entry fee somehow raised my expectations to a level that the garden couldn't quite meet.

The most beautiful part was probably a stretch of ordinary street on the way back to the train station:

Gion

Shimbashi street is highly praised in the Lonely Planet as "the most beautiful street in all of Asia". I have to admit, it is a beautiful street. But most beautiful? I don't know. Maybe I haven't seen enough of Asia to be a judge in this matter ;-)

Anyway, there were nice cherry blossoms all over the street (and many other tourists... I wonder how crowded this street gets when there is no nuclear situation scaring tourists away from Japan).

Cherry blossoms and tourists in Shimbashi street

Cherry blossoms along Kama-gawa river