well now, we're going to go shopping on a very quaint and historic series of lanes just in
front of Kyoto's most populartTemple. Kiyomizu-dera is one of the main temples of Kyoto and we've
shown it to you in a related movie. For this episode we have a different focus, we're going
shopping. There are some small shops inside the temple but the main action for shopping
is outside on the pedestrian lane leading up to the temple as you find typically throughout
Japan. A main temple has a shopping street leading to it, something like the inevitable
gift shop at the exit of the museum. A similar shopping arrangement has like this
been around for hundreds of years, originally set up to supply the pilgrims who are coming
to temples and now it's to sell trinkets to tourists and offer some high-quality goods
as will be showing you. When you arrive here you could start out with
some shopping or of course you could go into the temple first and then save your shopping
for later it just depends on your schedule and the timing and your preference -- the
shops are generally open between 10 AM and 4 PM or 5 PM.
You can walk straight up this lane to the temple and along the way you'll see ceramic
shops and there's food stores, you can get some free samples of noodles and other good
treats. But here's a tip: you also want to get onto
the side street which is even more interesting -- Sannenzaka which becomes Ninenzaka, the
most famous historic shopping street in Kyoto. But you could easily miss it if you don't
take that turn off the main lane and go down that fleet of steps which will lead you into
this wonderful historic zone. You can see you want to have good walking
shoes for this slightly irregular flagstone pavement.
So this neighborhood around the temples is not modern at all. You see here one of the
older streets of town now with the old classic wooden façades all along it, with traditional
shops and restaurants, teahouses, snack bars. It really makes for a lovely walk.
Our timing for this visit was perfect because it was not crowded. We’re here in early
December which is definitely the off-season and it's a weekday, so really there were not
too many people around. On the other hand if you come in the summer it can get very
crowded. That is one of the main comments you'll run into on Trip Advisor, people saying
“oh, it was gridlock with bodies, I couldn't move.”
Of course the majority of comments the travelers have about the street are really favorable
-- people are just blown away by how beautiful it is, how nice the shops are, and just generally
how pleasant this atmosphere is. It looks like it's some kind of a movie set but you're
actually here walking through it in real time. Another of the tea gardens, this is a commercial
garden attached to a restaurant. There are a few restaurants along Sannenzaka
but of course this is a touristic place so you’d be better off eating a meal in the
downtown area instead, but you cannot beat this atmosphere.
You'll find the vendors are quite friendly and many of them speak a little English. You
can pick from a variety of Japan-made goods, there's fans and bags and wallets, ceramics,
lacquer dishes. And some side staircases. There is a residential
neighborhood right behind the shop fronts. Ceramics are one of the very popular items
for sale here and they are made not only in Japan but a lot of it is made right in the
Kyoto area, it's a local specialty. Of course you'll find all of the typical items
for sale: fans, trinkets, miniature samurai figures and figurines. You can buy handbags
and purses made from kimono material. Perhaps a Japanese print or a painting to hang on
your wall. But some careful shoppers have noticed the prices on these touristic lanes
are little higher than you'll find in downtown and the selection is pretty much the same
everywhere, so keep that in mind. But when you're shopping, if you see something you
love, just get it. You might never find it again.
And here you might see what looks like some geisha in traditional costume or perhaps maiko,
the geisha in training, [geisha? laughter] but no actually these are Japanese tourists.
lt's a tradition here among some younger ladies to get dressed up like maiko and you pay about
$70 or $80 to one of the several costume shops in the area here.
And so if you see geisha-looking ladies carrying around their digital cameras and taking pictures
of each other, well they're not really geisha. They are tourists out having fun for the day.
They can also hire a rickshaw driver who will take them around in the district and take
their photograph for them, telling them some about the history of the area. We’ll show
you a little more of that at the end of this segment.
We've left the little lane of Sannenzaka and returned to that main shopping lane that leads
up to the temple, called Kiyomizuzaka. It’s a little busier up here.
The shops love to hand out free food samples, perhaps a cup of tea to entice you to stop
and look at the merchandise. So the street is just a perfect spot for strolling
and hanging out. You can sit down on a bench and just watch the parade of people go by
if you like. Let's have a look at another shopping lane
-- this one is out in front of Ginkaku-ji Temple. We've shown you this wonderful Ginkaku-ji
earlier in a different episode, which included a nice long walk in the Zen temple garden,
now we’re going to show you the shops out front.
It's no surprise that the shop along this temple shopping street are really quite similar
to what you find in the other temple areas, and in fact what you find scattered around
downtown, so we’re just having a quick look, and especially enjoying some of the food possibilities
here, the free samples, the chocolates, the rice cakes, the tea -- all sorts of goodies.
It seems like some of the merchants speak a little bit of English but it's really kind
of hard to tell. You'll say something and they’ll smile and nod back, but it's the
language of food and gesture. Rice cake, rice cake. With sesame, some have
sesame, sesame? Smells good. Rice cracker. Please. Uh-hu, what have you got? We have
sesame, musubi, hot tea. Is that green tea? Green tea, please. OK.
You cannot resist such a friendly and polite offer so go ahead and help yourself.
You can see it's a fun diversion on your way up to the temple to shop along the way to
Ginkaku-ji, but really the shopping lane over by Kiyomizu-dera is hard to beat, so we’re
going to take you back over there now and just cut you loose for the next few minutes,
for the rest of the program to let you enjoy the visuals while we play a little bit of
music and show you more of these wonderful shops.
This is part of our series on the temples and gardens of Eastern Kyoto, the Higashiyama
district, and also we’ll take you downtown in some of our other videos. Be sure to look
for them on our YouTube channel. [music]
This is part of our series on the temples and gardens of Eastern Kyoto, the Higashiyama
district, and also we’ll take you downtown in some of our other videos. Be sure to look
for them on our YouTube channel.