Kyoto, Japan – Sunday, June 19th, 2011
After a largely unplanned day discovering the unique charm of Nara, I had my planned day to see Japan’s most famed historic cultural city and former capital of Kyoto. Especially with Japan’s efficient rail system, Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto are all very close to each other, almost to the point that visiting these cities feels a bit like park-hopping between Disney parks at the same resort (to give a theme park analogy). While each city
has their own characteristics (and there’s more in the area worth seeking out than just those three), Kyoto was undoubtedly the headliner as far as “must visit” cities for anyone traveling to Japan. After being surprised by how well my time at Nara turned out, I had high expectations for its larger sibling, Kyoto.
My budget plan for the day was to simply walk as much as I could after arriving at JR Kyoto Station, charting a route on foot that hit many of the temples and landmarks that caught my interest from my guide map, especially if they didn’t require admission fees. I would let closing times (and/or fatigue) determine when I had gone as far as I could along this route, and catch my single bus ride back to the station back to my last night in Osaka.
I wouldn’t recommend this approach to anyone else planning a visit to Kyoto, as I probably missed some important places, and while I did get to fit a lot of sights into a single day, it may have been a case of quantity over quality. Lots of temples, shrines, and gardens, often with little context for why what I was looking at was meaningful, either for myself or for history and culture at large. Just a series of aesthetic evaluations. Ideally I would have done a lot more research before my visit, but trying to plan a month-long agenda departing just days after final exams meant that lots of places would go unresearched, especially as I approached the end of the itinerary. But for having little money and little time to plan, it probably worked as well as I could have hoped.
One of the first historic sites near the train station is Higashi Hongan-ji Temple, a complex including several structures and a few displays, including a rope made of human hair that was used to help construct the temple.
Continuing on my way, I stopped for a quick lunch. One of the things I really appreciated about Japan was how easy it was to eat as a solo traveler who often didn’t plan my meals ahead until after I was already hungry. Lots of quick service restaurants or even vending machines provided relatively cheap yet good hot meals. Especially compared to my previous destinations in Korea, where it was nearly impossible to find indoor dining that didn’t require full wait service and menus catering to group portions. Which also perhaps says something about the different social habits and priorities held by people from either country…
Crossing the Kamo River, I made my way towards the Higashiyama district on the city’s hillside outskirts.
Higashiyama is a historic neighborhood where many of Kyoto’s temples and landmarks from feudal era Japan can be found, such as the Kiyomizu-dera Temple.
Exploring the district’s narrow old streets.
Venturing deeper into Higashiyama revealed some areas of great beauty.
As well as some impressive structures, like the Sanmon Gate at Chion-in Temple.
Turning back towards the city, I crossed under this very large Torii Gate on the way to Heian Shrine.
Heian Shrine was entered through this main gate. This was one of the few places I opted to pay a small admission fee, as it came highly recommended by my guide book as one of the most important shrines in Kyoto, built in the late 1800’s to honor the 1100th anniversary of the city of Kyoto’s founding.
The shrine and castle are reproductions of much older traditional styles, but created at a 5/8th reduced scale. (And yet many people still insist that Disneyland created the concept of a nostalgic themed space.)
Perhaps the best feature at Heian Shrine was the Japanese garden that surrounds the site.
The garden is structured in a way that the paths create an experiential progression, a tactic that landscape architects had been experimenting with well before the first theme parks ever entered the scene. First the garden trail begins with a compression point beneath a pergola, followed by a sense of discovery along a series of small winding paths along some smaller ponds.
These pathways lead past some beautiful flowers and trees.
The trail gradually opens up along a larger body of water, obscured by these trees with zigzagging branches like streaks of lightning.
Finally, the path leads to the reveal of this large pond, around which are situated a few traditional structures. This was my favorite part of Kyoto.
Finishing at Heian Shrine late in the afternoon, I opted to finish the day by taking a walk along the Philosopher’s Path, a trail that runs alongside a canal through Kyoto that was once used by philosophers at the University of Kyoto for daily meditation.
I tried to formulate a few philosophical ideas while I walked as per the pathway’s instructions, but it didn’t work like that. Real philosophy is like any other academic discipline, it’s rigorous intellectual work that doesn’t just happen in a spark of inspiration by strolling along a tranquil trail while feeling contented. That said, the physical activity of walking and finding moments of mindfulness are useful tools for refreshing one’s mental health in general, which is why walking trails like this are important component to socially responsible urban design. Of course, by naming those trails something like the “Philosopher’s Path,” it’s given an identity and intentionality that’s a recipe for a future tourist attraction.
If the path did lead me to any philosophical questions, it was perhaps to wonder what I was doing here in the first place. I’m glad I saw Kyoto but I also worried that I wasn’t able to authentically engage with this city. I was a tourist, doing many standard things that many other tourists before me did (such as walking the Philosopher’s Path), and I had set few real objectives for myself other than to check the idea of ‘seeing Kyoto’ off my imaginary list of life accomplishments. I wasn’t any poorer for the experience (or at least not much poorer, given the already tight budget I set for myself), but I couldn’t help but feel that by setting my objectives for this day as nothing greater than a “culture day at Kyoto” within my itinerary, I had neglected an opportunity to do something more personally meaningful with my time.
It also may have been the case that I didn’t approach Kyoto the right way. There was little that I saw that substantially exceeded my expectations or surprised me. My ideas about “Japanese culture” may have gotten more detailed, but they didn’t really change or expand in any significant way. In that regard my visit to Nara the previous day felt more rewarding, perhaps because it was a small city where it was easy for me to experience the highlights and try something unexpected in a single day without feeling too rushed. (Deer everywhere! A truly colossal bronze Buddha! Getting caught in the rain before eating Okonomiyaki on the floor in my holy socks!) Kyoto, because it was so large with too much to see in a single day, became more of a marathon where I was just trying to get to the end as efficiently as possible, which was the wrong mindset to have. There’s still a valuable lesson in that self-discovery, one that I could use in the future to make sure I got more of what I was seeking from travel. (Having more money for trips also greatly helped in the future.)
My pondering along the Philosopher’s Path eventually took me to the Ginkakuji Temple, which I might have opted to visit except it was already past the closing hour by the time I arrived. Time to head back for my last night in Osaka.
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