Bicycling Around Kyoto

On Saturday, I went on a bike tour of Kyoto with Taube and Julian. It was a really nice tour – with two guides who both spoke excellent English (I would definitely recommend this company to those you planning to visit.) We went on the “mystery” tour – which consisted of little known temples and shrines in Kyoto. We had some extra time at the end, so we also stopped at a few more well-known places. It was a perfect fall day, and the leaves were gorgeous, so Kyoto was very crowded, particularly with dogs and their owners who apparently also appreciate the fall colors. I thought dogs were color-blind... We started at Mimizuka, a large mound that was enclosed with a fence. The guide explained that historically, a samurai would bring back the heads of people he killed in battle, as proof of his victory. However, from the seven year war against Korea (1592-1598), the samurai only brought back the ears and noses of the 38,000 people he killed. These ears and noses were buried in a mound and Korean people still come to pay respects to their dead.

The next stop was Rokudo-chinno-ju, a little temple which is considered to be a passageway to the underword. A well in the back of the temple was used to commute between the two worlds. It was a quiet place this Saturday, but during Bon-Odori, a festival in August when families welcome spirits of the dead, the place is very popular.
We went next to Yasuikonpiragu, the shrine of break-ups! This was a most amusing place. If you have a relationship you want to end, you write that person’s name on a slip of paper and tack it onto this mound of paper. Then you go through the hole to clear yourself of that relationship. You can then turn around and come back through to bring good relationships into your life. There were plenty of “love hotels” around the shrine, so clearly there is some karmic energy here. Julian threw in a 5 yen coin (considered the best coin to throw in before praying because the word for 5 yen, “go-en” is also a word meaning “close relationship”) and made a wish. We don’t know what he wished for though… There were lots of these placards at the shrine, as there are at any shrine, but these placards mostly contained wishes for ending or beginning relationships. Our guide translated a couple of them for us and told us it was OK to read the ones on top, but it’s rude to dig through the pile of placards.

On to Kennin-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple. Our tour didn't include the admission fee to enter the temple, so we just wandered around the grounds. I’ll have to go back another time to check out the inside. However, we did see a monument to the man who brought tea to Japan. We joked that instead of seeking enlightenment, he could have made a mint of selling tea here. He would be richer than Bill Gates by far!


Next, we went on to Gion which is a famous geisha district. We walked through narrow little streets and saw some people who had been dressed and made up as geishas for fun (the real geishas don’t come out until evening!).

We wandered right into Maruyama Park which was the first real “park” in Kyoto (historically, Japan has had “gardens” and parks were a concept introduced by Westerners). It looked quite a bit like a garden to me though, except for the foreigner playing guitar and singing on the park bench.

Right next to the park was Yasaka-jinja, a shrine that’s popular to visit on the first of the year. We walked through that quickly, and then biked past Chion-in Temple, which was filmed in the movie The Last Samurai (much of the rest of the movie was filmed on Mount Shosha which is in Himeji. Everyone in town has stories to tell of Tom Cruise and how the hotels in Himeji weren’t good enough for him, so he stayed in Kobe and took a helicopter to Himeji every day!)

Then on to Nanzen-ji which has an aqueduct running through the temple grounds. This place had tour buses of people there to see the fall colors. Our tour guide said he had never seen it so crowded!
Our last stop was at Heian-jingu. It’s a large shrine complex with a beautiful garden. We didn’t have time to see the garden so I’ll have to go back. There were lots of families there with their young children all dressed up in kimonos. Our guide explained that the holiday 7-5-3 (for girls age 7, boys age 5, and both boys and girls age 3) was on November 15, but restaurants were booked months in advance. So many families pick another date in November to celebrate, and take their children of the appropriate ages for professional photos at shrines (and to pray for their continued good health).

The other interesting site at Heian-jingu is the HUGE torii (red gate). Most torii are around 8 feet tall, whereas this one towers over everything!

So that was our very full afternoon in Kyoto! It made such a difference to have guides, especially guides who spoke great English. We certainly saw a lot more than we would have on our own!