The other day, a friend of mine and I went trekking around Kyoto. We started out at Shijo and walked over towards Kiyomizudera, but didn’t go there. Instead, we walked to Yasaka Shrine and started our trek north from there.

 

After visiting Yasaka, just down the street was Chioin Temple. Unfortunately, it was closed so we couldn’t go inside and take photos. But the front of the temple is very beautiful and the trees on the outside of the wall down the street from the front gate are even more amazing! They are huge! They must be several hundred years old if not a thousand or more.

 

Further down the street we came to Heian Shrine with the huge orange torii (gate) at the entrance. The last time I was there it was being painted, so it was nice to see it done.

We walked through Heian and shot a few pictures, but it was also closed. I think we arrived there just at 4:30 pm when they close the entrance. It wasn’t a big deal though so we moved on down the road to Komyoji Temple.

Komyoji Temple is very large and has many buildings including a large cemetary with a pagoda in the center.

Just down the road from there is another shrine called Shinnyodo. It also has a pagoda with a well with spring water you can pump out of the ground just out in front. It a nice refreshing break from the heat. The water was cool and refreshing. Most people use the water to wash their hands and splash on their faces, but I was told by a local priest that it’s good enough to drink. I didn’t drink any since I had a huge bottle of water I had bought at Lawsons, but if I hadn’t had any, I would have drunk some. The priest invited us into his shrine, but we didn’t go because we had an agenda to get to Ginkakuji.

Ginkakuji was about a 30-minute walk from there and it was a little cooler in that section of Kyoto because the sun was going down and doesn’t reach there because of surrounding mountains and hills.

As we were making our way to Ginkakuji, we noticed tons of people were also heading that way. I thought that it was just because of obon season. I didn’t realize, nor did Jeff, that it was Daimonji day…the day all the mountainsides have the kanji lit on fire in celebration of obon.

So we hiked around a bit and then got something for dinner at a nice little cafe down the road. After eating dinner, we found us a spot we could see the kanji on the mountain and waited until 8 pm for the lighting and celebration.

So many people were searching for spots to take pictures of the kanji. Luckily, since we were there a little earlier than most, we found a good spot not blocked by trees.

When the kanji was lit, we got some good shots even though we had people stand in front of us trying to get the same shots.

Jeff and I had a great time shooting pictures testing our cameras out. Overall, I shot around 180 pictures.

If you are interested in joining me on my next photo-trek, let me know by posting a comment and I’ll call you and let you know when and where I’m headed next.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 12:10 am and is filed under Kansai Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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