Are Kyoto's Most Famous Sights Worth It?
- Lucy and the lens
- May 8, 2019
- 4 min read
Kyoto is known for its history (shrines, temples and geishas), its nature (bamboo groves, cherry blossom parks and zen gardens) and its food (just...all of the food). I've already written a post about its most famous historical districts, Gion and Higashiyama, which you can read here. So in this post I'll share what else we did in Kyoto and the surrounding area!
We spend three nights there in total, and it rained heavily and solidly for one and a half of them, which was a shame, but we still managed to cram a lot in!
Fushimi Inari Taisha
This Shinto shrine is world-famous for its tunnels of thousands of red torii gates. Torii gates can be found all over Japan, marking the entrance to Shinto shrines - they symbolise the transition into a sacred space - but nowhere can you find as many as at Fushimi Inari Shrine.
Walking through these winding and branching tunnels of torii gates is one of the most visually satisfying experiences we had in Japan - they're just a delight for the eyes. Walk one way, and the gates are simple red, but walk the other way and you see Japanese Kanji script. This might look profound but it's actually just the names of businesses who have paid for the erection of each gate, plus the date they were erected!
Unfortunately, it was raining buckets when we visited in the morning, and we were lucky to get a clear view of the tunnel in the photo above by battling through the sea of umbrellas that were advancing on us just out of shot! To see the gates like this, you really need to go as early in the morning as you can. We accidentally overslept, and by 9am it was already bustling, mostly with locals paying their respects at the shrine before work and school.
One way to evade the crowds is simply by walking further than them: the gates go on seemingly forever, winding uphill through woodland. Just walk briskly uphill and the crowds will gradually thin out. There are also intersections at some points: just choose the way that looks the least busy!
The shrine itself is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto God of rice. As well as the gates, you can't miss the hundreds of stone foxes that sit guarding the smaller shrines dotted around the huge site. Foxes are the messengers of Inari, and you will see them respectfully dressed up in red bibs and surrounded by offerings and wishes written on little hanging torii gates just 15cm tall.
You can buy these tiny torii gates at the main shrine near the entrance, the place where most local visitors tend to linger to make offerings to Inari.
I wish the weather had been better, as you can spend 2 to 3 hours making the round-trip hike up the torii-lined mountain. We didn't get to do this, because we were soaking wet enough already!
Arashiyama
Arashiyama is a suburb of Kyoto that can be reached in about half an hour by train from Kyoto Station. Most, of not all, of visitors here are heading for one place: Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. This path through a bamboo forest is a famous image, and brings to mind the tranquility of nature.
Like most popular things, however, that tranquility is shatters by the sheer numbers of tourists who visit it every day. I've seen photos that show the stroll, which is less than 1km long in total, rammed with shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, not to mention taxis and rickshaws.
Going early doesn't help much these days, either: we arrived at around 7:30am to find a good number of visitors already there. The consensus now is that, to see Arashiyama without people, you need to be there before dawn.
More than a little disappointed, especially considering our early start, we left the bamboo grove. Luckily, we didn't want our visit to Arashiyama to be in vain so we decided to take a 30 minute walk to an absolute hidden treasure that cheered us up, and with good reason.
Otagi Nenbutsuji Temple allows you to come face-to-face with 1200 stone heads with comical faces. These are the Rakan, the disciples of Buddha, and they are the reason for the temple's reputation as a place of healing, because their humorous expressions can't fail to lift the spirits of anyone who sees them.
The renovator of the Buddhist temple, Kocho Nishimura, was a trained sculptor specialising in Buddhist statues. He thought it would be a nice idea to allow visitors to the temple to sculpt their own Rakan figures, with his guidance. You can see the individual personalities of the people who made them in the small details: the facial expressions, the clothes the statues are wearing, and the things they're holding, such as tennis rackets, sunglasses, and cassette tapes...
We loved the way nature had reclaimed some of the statues. The amount of different types of moss found on some statues was impressive!
We also noticed a lot of coins placed on heads, inside ears, on tongues or in stone hands, all of them offerings to the temple. We joined in and placed coins on our favourite statues...usually the ones who seemed more neglected by the other temple visitors.
By the time we'd finished meeting the Rakan, we were in such a good mood that the previously rainy walk home took on a whole new beauty! Cherry blossoms are pretty come rain or shine, after all!
Special mention: Tonkatsu at KYK
I was dying to try a really good tonkatsu - panko-breaded pork - and didn't want to settle for anything mediocre. On our return to Kyoto Station from Arashiyama, we happened to walk through the shopping mall attached to the station. There, we spotted a restaurant called KYK and, after some thorough research, discovered it's a highly-rated place to try tonkatsu.
We took a chance, and we were not disappointed! The pork was probably the most tender we've ever had, not a hint of gristle and very little fat. And the panko breadcrumbs were exactly how I'd imagined: impossibly crispy with the most satisfying crunch. Our tonkatsu came as a set menu with tofu, miso soup and assorted salads. Totally recommended!
Comentarios