You will also find many red gates there. The inari shrine in Kyoto has thousands of gates all in a row that slowly work there way up a mountain and then back down again. Here is a shot of the gates that we passed through:
On the other side, there are inscriptions of who donated the gate to the shrine. You can see the man here painting in an engraved part on a new gate:
There were also fascinating mini-shrines everywhere as well. Each one is for some demi-god:
Also, we saw quite a few cats there as well:
I was amazed at how many mini-altars I could see there. I had previously been to one Inari shrine before in Toyokawa and they have become my favourite kind of shrine. Here was a cute collection of clay foxes in front of an altar:
After, we had some dinner near the shrine. I had tempura on rice called "tendon" and Ayako had "inarizushi" which is rice inside deep-fried tofu:
The next day, we started a walking tour of the north-east side of Kyoto. We went passed the Kyoto kabuki theater. This is actually a shot from later that night:
Here is a close-up shot of some of the outside decorations of the building during the day:
We then passed through Gion, which is the area famous for geisha. It still has a traditional feeling to it. This is what the area looks like during the day:
Here is a picture of a cook outside a restaurant taking a break:
And here was a picture of Gion at night time (it was pretty quiet then):
Close to Gion is Yasaka-jinja (temple). It has a brightly coloured entrance. I actually did come here 2 years ago just after New Years:
On New Year's Eve and for the next few days, thousands of people will come to pray for a good upcoming year and to receive their fortunes. You can see some people praying here. They throw some money over the fence, ring the bell, clap 2 times, and say a little prayer:
We then passed by Chion-in. There is a large bell here that will be rung 108 times at New Year's. Lots of people will come here to pray as well:
On the day we went, there was another ceremony going on, with the inside filled of people waiting for a ceremony to start:
We then proceeded to Nanzenji temple which has a beautiful rock garden (Hojo garden). I started to enjoy visiting rock gardens during the trips, so expect more to come:
We then found "Philosopher's Path", which eventually leads up to the Silver Temple. It was a nice long path alongside a stream which I'm sure is very beautiful during the spring or fall:
Alng the path, we came to Honen-in, a quiet little temple, with lots of moss everywhere:
The next major stop was Ginkakuji temple, which is suppose to be a silver temple, but you can see there is nothing silver about it:
It did have wonderful sand sculptures representing a mountain and lake in front of it though:
This next picture looks a bit more like a lake from this view:
And I think all the moss from Honen-in crept over to to Ginkakuji since the place had wonderful, various forms of moss everywhere. Ayako and I thought a better name for the place would be Mossland:
While we were walking back towards the centre of town after seeing many temples, I took this photo of a large gate to yet another temple, but with the view of everyday life included in the forefront:
We headed for Ponto-cho (a small street filled with nice, small restaurants) to have dinner. You can see the kabuki theatre in the background of this next photo. After walking the long length looking at the various restaurants, we decided to go to a restaurant at the beginning of the street:
It was on the 5th floor of a building and we had a great night view. We ate shabu-shabu. You can see me here dipping the thinly-sliced meat into the hot water to quickly cook it and then I dip it in one of the sauces in front of me:
The next day, we headed to the north-west side of Kyoto. We first went to Kinkakuji temple, which has a (very) gold temple. This was by far the most crowded place we went to on our trip with bus loads of people going there:
Here's a closer up view of the temple. It was great seeing it on a sunny day:
Close by was Ryoanji temple, which has the most famous rock garden in Kyoto. While I liked the garden a bit more than the one I saw the day before, this one I had to share with many people, while I could view the other one by myself for quite awhile:
There was also a nicely-designed wash-basin there with an inscription that means "I learn only to be contented":
From there, we took a short train trip out of Kyoto to Arashiyama area. We saw the outside of Tenryuji temple, but since we'd seen lots of temples up to that point, we were happy to skip it. We did have a lovely walk through a bamboo grove though:
Here's me walking through the grove:
On our last day in Kyoto, we headed for the south-east corner of Kyoto. We first saw Sanjusangen-do, which has 1001 statues of a Buddhist deity. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take any photos there, so I can't show you any here. We continued on towards Kiyomizu temple, which is very famous. The path we choose led us through a public graveyard:
I was able to get an interesting shot of Kyoto tower in the background behind many graves in the forefront:
As you can see below, there were many, many graves packed together here:
Here is the entrance gate for Kiyomizu temple, which looked great with the blue sky that day:
And here is Ayako with Kyoto in the background:
We wandered around that area looking at the many wonderful small shops in the area. I saw this nice path and decided to see where it led:
It led me to Kodai-ji temple. Since I hadn't see a rock garden yet that day, I decided to get one last view of one for this trip:
Here's another shot of it:
And so that wraps up the second part of our winter trip. I was glad to get to see two important cities of Japan during this trip. Hope you enjoyed the photos.
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