Our Kyoto experience was 4 days sightseeing and 4 days trying to master the railway system!!
We missed stations and we missed trains … tripping like real amateurs. But all problems were quickly resolved by the Hyperdia app.
We stayed in an AirBnB in south Kyoto in an area which is crisscrossed with 3 railway lines. These took us some time to figure out. In the Kyoto region the JR lines are not dominant so we had to resort to using Kintetsu lines.
To add to our confusion there were two lines that cross and these led to further confusion. On a few occasions we had to retrace our steps and reset our Pasmo cards at a JR office as we had used a ticket to enter a station and the JR pass to exit.
With the JR Rail pass, our Pasmo cards, a one day Kyoto bus ticket plus a lot of walking we saw all the temples and shrines that we had in our plan.
In most of these temples and shrines there is no photography so you have to soak the sights into your memory.
The entry fee in most of these varied from Y400 to Y600 excluding any audio guided tours where they were available. Some sites have QR codes which supply interesting facts about the site.
Sanjusangen-do Temple
This temple houses 1 000 statues of women lined up behind various gods and some ugly looking protectors. It has a strong Hindu feel about it with the women
Unfortunately, the National Museum was closed. Although it was a Tuesday, it was the day after a public holiday.
Chisshaku-in Temple
This was the place of the quiet garden.
A sightseeing “oasis” with few people and area where you could sit on bamboo mats and look at the garden on the hillside to the sound of a splattering waterfall.
Kiyomizu-dera Temple
From temple calm to temple hectic.
After a walk of about 30 minutes, we started up the narrow road to this temple. Tour buses were maneuvering their way up and down and the crowds got thicker and thicker.
There were many young women dressed in kimonos. Dressed up, made up and coiffured they were a colourful traditional sight. There were also a few young men in traditional robes. Together they made elegant couples and groups.
The temple is very large and is situated high up on a hill overlooking the city. It has an enjoyable and easy to follow circuit route.
On the following day we used the Kyoto one-day bus pass to visit the following sites. It was good value even though we didn’t travel as much as we could.
Nijo-jo Castle
This was the palace of the shogunate. Beautifully preserved and now undergoing a major restoration. The displays are well documented in English … but result in a quickly forgotten information overload.
Kinkaku-ji Temple (Golden Shrine)
This was a perfect experience of “production line” sightseeing.
Ushered on by security guards dressed in blue uniforms. You line up to take pictures of the shrine or “selfies” or group photographs and then get squeezed out onto the path around the shrine.
It was a grey gusty day but the temple is an impressive sight.
Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine
The pictures of the thousands of vermillion torii do not do justice to this shrine.
It is massive and stretches for kilometer after kilometer, higher and higher into the mountain. There are many smaller temples and paths leading off the main 4-kilometer-long path.
Around Kyoto
During our stay in Kyoto we decided to take a day trip to Nara
Sightseeing
- To avoid the crowds, get to the main temples and shrines early. I’m not sure if they happen throughout the year but after midday it was into school outing season. Thousands of excited, chattering children, identified by yellow caps or flag waving guides are shepherded through these venues. They are well behaved and considerate but there are lots of them!!
- At times you may get “templed out” – a phenomenon which happens to a lot of tourists who subject themselves to visiting a lot of temples.
- In the Kyoto area (which includes Osaka) the escalator rule like nowhere else in Japan or the world is “stand right walk left”.