After the crowds on the previous day, I was expecting pretty much the same when I set out for Kyoto in the morning. The first place I visited -
Daitoku-ji - was therefore a very pleasant surprise: there was virtually noone there! I only went inside one of the 23 temples in the compound, and otherwise enjoyed strolling through the grounds and admiring the entrance gates.
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| Gorgeous entrance to one of the temples in Daitoku-ji |
After that, I wanted to take a little break from visiting temples and headed for two shrines instead: first
Kamigamo-jinja, and then
Shimogamo-jinja, both designated as World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO.
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| The white strips you can see on this fence are fortunes that you can buy at shrines. If I understood correctly, it works like this: if the fortune is good, you take it home with you; if it is bad, you leave it at the shrine, in the hope that the bad fortune does not catch up with you. So the white strips are all the bad fortunes left behind by visitors to this shrine. |
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| Entrance to Shimogamo-jinja |
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| Some kind of ceremony that involved lots of men in traditional clothing was taking place at Shimogamo-jinja - maybe because of the public holiday that day? |
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| Spring at its very best :-) |
After lunch, I headed for the last temple visit of my stay in Japan: the World Heritage site of
To-ji. To-ji is a gorgeous temple (just have a look at the pictures below), and it displays a great collection of golden Buddha statues.
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| To-ji temple, seen from the flower garden - beautiful, isn't it? |
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| Turtles piling up on a stone to enjoy the spring warmth in To-ji temple garden |
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| Famous wooden five-story pagoda on the To-ji grounds |
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| Entrance to a small temple just off the To-ji grounds. Isn't this the perfect picturesque Japanese temple? |
My last stop for the day - and my last stop in Kyoto - was
Nijo-jo (Nijo castle). I arrived just in time to be admitted to Ninomaru palace before it closed for the day. The palace really is a grand place. Very "golden", but beautiful. Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed inside the palace.
One very impressive detail in the palace were the Nightingale floors. These are basically wooden floors with a security feature: they chirp whenever someone walks over them. And unlike regular wooden floors that may creak or not depending how lightly you tread, there is no way you can avoid the chirping of a Nightingale floor. Check out
wikipedia on Nightingale floors, because they have a sound recording available!
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| Ninomaru palace |
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| Entrance gate to Ninomaru palace |
This was my last day of sight-seeing in Japan, and it really was a perfect day. Crowds, weather, timing, all went flawlessly. Plus, I had saved some of the really impressive sights for the end :-)
