Kyoto the City of Shrines and Temples

Saturday, October 11, 2014
Kyoto is one of those places that sticks out in Japan, even though that doesn't say much a everything in Japan is truly sticking out. Kyoto however offers a more ancient and historical perspective of Japan and that's definitely worth a visit.

Kyoto has City Busses going to uncountable temples, shrines, castles and nature sights, and even more importantly you can get a one-day pass for the City Buses at the neat price of just 500 yen.
Kyoto Station is the place where all the buses head out from and it's quite easy to find the bus you need to find the exact shrine or temple you're looking for. It's quite a fair idea to figure out which places you want to visit before you head out for a day of historical culture in Kyoto. I would recommend to pick 4 or 5 places, unless you're a hardcore sightseer, then I guess you could do a few more in just one day.
I had chosen 4 places I  found interesting;

Silver Temple
Entry fee: 500 yen

First stop on my list was Ginkakuji or simply Silver Temple. I was told to go here in the morning to avoid enormous crowds of tourists. The temple itself was simply just a temple - let's face it, once you've seen one temple you've pretty much seen them all - but the area around the temple was a great trail path of nature and definitely a cute little walk.

Golden Temple
Entry fee: 400 yen

Second stop on the journey was yet another temple; Kinkakuji, but this one a bit different because it's covered in gold. Honestly I found the Silver Temple and the area around it a lot more heart rate raising than the Golden Temple.

Arashiyama (Bamboo Forest)
Entry fee: Free

The bus trip here was almost an hour and yes it was a forest, made of bamboo for sure. But that's about it. Nice place for a walk in the forest, but really it's nothing more than a path through the forest.

Fushimi Inari Shrine
Entry fee: Free

I went here just after sunset as last stop of the day. The first shrine was looking gorgeous as it was glowing red in the dark. When you continue upwards the hill, you'll pass through the Red Gates, quite an amazing walk, which felt more tunnelish because of the darkness.

With a long day in Kyoto's cultural atmosphere my travel buddy Lasse and I got ready to leave for Tokyo by night bus. That was until we realized that the bus was not Friday night but Sunday night!
We had been staying with a local guy named Tsukasa, so we decided to go to his place as we couldn't reach him at work. We stayed in the hall way trying to catch a power nap on the cold concrete, but as the clock hit 2:00 am I decided to go to the studio. The studio is a local music studio close by Tsukasa's home, where he usually goes to jam with his friends. Tsukasa had taken me for a jam session the night before and it was an absolute blast! I went there with the hopes of finding one of the guys I met during the jam session. Unfortunately none of them where there, but fortunately we had taken a group photo. When I showed the guy in the studio the photo he gave me a big smile and began to call some of the guys. Quickly I realized he were offering us to sleep in the studio and apologized that they didn't have a shower there (Japanese politeness is silly!). I quickly walked back to find Lasse and grab out backpacks. As I put my backpack on Tsukasa turned the corner with a surprised look on his face! What timing! I explained everything as we went to the studio to tell them that Tsukasa had finally returned home.

Luckily Tsukasa is one hell of a fellow, so he offered us to stay at his place. Once again.
Originally we were only meant to stay one night, but as Lasse was feeling sick we made it three and now it's been made into five. Good thing Tsukasa is such a nice guy! He seem genuinely interested in getting to know us and as we're his first ever couchsurfers I have to say that he is one of the coolest hosts we've been staying with thus far.

No comments:

Powered by Blogger.