Waking up early I left the hotel and deposited my baggage to the station. This way no time wasted going to the Ryokan for the baggage. Original plan had been to visit Onjoji(also known as Miidera) on tuesday morning. Very big and fairly famous temple(or rather temple complex) near Lake Biwa and close to Kyoto. However doing bit of estimations had convinced me trying to visit that on Tuesday morning would be too busy for my taste. Particularly with the big baggage(or if I leave that to luggage holdage heaven forbid if it's crowded). So I switched it to Monday morning instead.
Was actually happy enough about the decision as I got confused couple times. Particularly because I had forgotten that it's more commonly known as Miidera so I was like "okay Miidera temple is there. Where's the Onjoji?".
But first breakfast and kimuchi donburi. Kimuchi being korean origin being spicy pickled cabbage over rice(being donburi version).
I also bought some sort of Japanese ice cream. Milky outer layer and some sort of bean+chestnut interior. Surprisingly good though not for large quantities.
While waiting for luggage place to open walked around a bit and found something my little brother would likely have enjoyed. Huge lego version of Kyoto station. That took some doing probably...
720 hours or so...Wow.
Well after getting help from station staff on Kyoto station(three lines go from same platform. Need to check destination....I got confused!) trip was easy enough.
Autumn is finally drawing near even here.
Woot? First time I saw rabbit themed statue in temples.
Angry rabbits!
And hadn't even reached the Miidera yet...
After paying the entrance ticket I went for these stairs:
Japan. Land of endless climbing :D
Well as it turns I seem to have chose to go through route opposite direction to the one in pamphlet. Ah well. Worked out this way as well.
Wonder what those symbols represent? I doubt they are country flags despite similarities.
This place was big complex. Good thing I switched day or I would have been in double rush!
Funny little hats on statues.
Some more of Japanese woodwork. Nice.
You could get to some buildings. Often for additional fee. This was one of the more pricey sightseeing tours as not only you pay for general entrance but then on individual temple entrance Skipped couple after decided 400-500 yen mounts up too fast.
Those pagodas are always interesting looking.
Interesting trio of statues. Wish I knew more of what they represent but didn't see any descriptions anywhere.
Wonder why that's still standing there?
With this Onjoji tour was over and I headed back to Kyoto. Over chats in yesterday I had been recommended trip to Gosho(old imperial palace) with lunchbox in the surrounding gardens. Well that sounded decent enough idea so off I was. Hadn't seen the Imperial balance before either.
Bad luck with this place. Interior open for visitors...Except on mondays. Trend continues...
After that I walked around the gardens(and ate my lunchbox). Quite nice garden(gee no surprise being next to the Imperial palace...). Seems to be popular spot for some running and biking exercises as well.
That's a bloody long road to walk. Well I spent part of walk going through paths in the greenery.
Outer walls of the Palace!
One of the six gates of the Imperial Palace.
Another.
Third.
Now Imperial Palace interior is not off-limits. But you don't just walk in there on your own either. You need to go there in guided tour for which you need to register for(simple process. Simple form and you need your passport with you but then again tourists are required to carry the passport at all times anyway) and then you get paper like this which gives you entrance to the inside in guided tour. And even then the northern part is off-limits.
I had unfortunately arrived annoyingly 5 minutes after lunch break started. But I opted to wait as I figured this would be worth the time spent even if it means this would be last thing I see in Kyoto this time. Then when lunch break was over next tour would start one hour later...Uhhuh. Took more time this place than expected.
Incredibly stupidly it didn't occur to me to ask to get into Japanese tour. Would have been good chance to practice Japanese as well. Well OTOH at least I understood guide completely.
Takes about hour or so. And surprisingly free!
First time I have taken part in guided tour in Japan actually.
Lowest rank actually had red colours on edges of tatamis while higher ranks had white. Small little detail pointed by the guide.
Pretty painting. Another was available but too bright painting for my camera to pick it up well.
BTW the Palace has stood here for like thousand years or so but most of buildings themselves are fairly new. Condition was getting pretty bad so they basically rebuilt buildings from scratch about 160 years or so ago.
Not showing well but the round thing in the middle is Imperial sign only allowed on Imperial family members.
Above wide area pictures are from the Shishinden.
That's model roof.
And there you can see real life example of it. One advantage that roof type is that it's very well shapeable allowing such a nice curves. But it was not for everybody. Imperial family and important temples could get it. Even Shogun wasn't allowed that roof type.
It's made of lots of layers. Takes a lot of effort to do it. And they need to replace it every 30 years or so. Doing full replacement set takes about 25 so by the time they finish replacing they pretty much need to restart almost right away. That's a lot of work.
Shishinden again.
So this was basically where Emperor did his daily meetings etc. In past by the way all the buildings were linked so Emperor could get pretty much everywhere on the palace without touching ground. And when he left the palace he was carried on palanquin.
Image of the kind of clothing court members did. 12 layered kimono! Whee. Must have been bummer to put on.
Very beautiful garden inside the palace. Well one would expect Imperial Garden to be beautifull!
Would have liked to go cross that bridge but off-limits!
Kemari is old traditional Japanese ball game. Queen of England reportedly enjoyed watching it on this spot and Bush the elder tried it as well(I read that one before actually!).
There's lots of paintings like above inside...But they are open for public only in spring(3 days) and autumn(2 days). Autumn one was like week before...URGH! So close yet so far! Had to settle for the few paintings that were visible now.
Map of the area.
With this effectively 3 hour spent for the inside view of the palace I had ran into quandrum. Only little daytime left, I was hungry, was far from any interesting places and money was running short. I oomphed a while but in the end figured nothing for me to see here that I knew right off the bat. Without internet access would be hard pressed to think of good plans for the short time it was still light(well short and short. little less than 2 hours). Anyway I opted to call it quits. My original plans wouldn't be that feasible anymore with this little time.
So after getting to station I jumped to shinkansen(missed first one by 2 minutes. I could hear the "soon leaving" sign but as escalator was crowded with standing people couldn't make it in time. In Tokyo people walk the escalators. In Kyoto they stand. Urgh). This cost me another 30 minutes waiting for the next shinkansen I could ride(Nozomi ones being not covered by JR pass).
Tomorrow meeting with Japanese(this was the final nail that shortened my trip but this was pretty much only day we both could fit meeting to schedule) and concert. Plus some more planning.
No comments:
Post a Comment