Winter trip 2007 - Kyoto

This is the second part of our winter trip. You can see our first part in Hiroshima in the post below this one. On day 3, we took a 5-hour train ride to Kyoto. We were able to look around just outside of Kyoto in the late afternoon upon arriving. We first went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. Inari shrines are one type of shrine and foxes are one symbol you often see there: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.

Winter trip 2007 - Hiroshima

Ayako and I went on a 6-day trip during our winter vacation. We first went to Hiroshima and then on to Kyoto. During the holiday seasons, cheap train tickets can be bought, although they are only valid for local trains. Thus, our train trip to Hiroshima was 10.5 hours long and included 6 transfers. That basically covered day 1.
We made up for it on day 2 by seeing lots of sights. We started by taking a train and then a ferry to Miyajima island:
Upon arriving on the island, you can see many tame but wild deer wandering around:
They are even tame enough to pet, although I did see a few of them harassing people by following them if they had food in their hands:
We had gone to the island to see a famous shrine which looks like it is floating on water. We first passed through the land entrance gate to the shrine:
There is another entrance gate (large and red), which is in the bay, which you can just see by looking through this sculpture:
As you can see in the next photo, it looks like the entrance gate is in the middle of the bay. This was just after high tide. If you wait for low tide, you can actually walk out to the gate:
Here is a picture of me quite a ways from the gate, although looking almost as tall as it:
The large red gate is the entrance way to Itsukushima Shrine. Since high tide had past, you can start to see some land appearing as the tide went down. At high tide, the entire shrine looks like it is floating:

The bottom of the posts holding up the shrine can be changed before the wood gets rotten. In this next photo, you can see where the water has already receded:
From the shrine, we went for a nice walk up the island and had a nice view of the bay as well as a temple in the forest:
After that, we head into the tourist town near the shrine for lunch. In the town, we could see things like the local version of Hello Kitty:
A very large wooden shamoji (the scoop used to serve rice): People baking oysters for passersby:
What Ayako especially liked though was the momiji manju (Japanese maple-shaped soft cake with different flavour paste inside it). We shared ten different flavours, which made me quite full since we had just finished lunch:
Here is a view into a store with the machine that made the manju:
We then headed back to Hiroshima. We stopped at the A-Bomb Dome, which is the only building still standing after the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
We also went to the museum, which explained a lot about the bombing of Hiroshima and was definitely worth visiting. Since the bomb exploded almost directly overhead of the dome, it was able to remain standing, while most of the buildings near it were flattened:
We walked to the other side of the river, past The Flame of Peace, which will be put out when all atomic weapons are destroyed:After that, there was a memorial cenotaph, which when you look through, you can see the Flame of Peace and behind it, the A-Bomb Dome:


We also passed by the Sadako statue, for the girl, Sadako Sasaki, who started making paper cranes when her leukaemia got bad and completed 1000 before dying. It is said that you will be granted one wish if you make 1000 cranes:
Since then, many people have made paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima. Below are some of the cranes made. Each glass box contains cranes donated during a week and afterwards they are taken to a special building where they are all kept:
At night, we ate Hiroshimayaki, which is the special version of okonomiyaki in Hiroshima. It's made with batter, noodles, cabbage, bacon, eggs and other ingredients. It's fun to watch it being made:
And it was yummy to eat as well. We actually had it the night before as well:
And that was our Hiroshima part of the trip.