Kyoto, Japan’s majestic city of ancient temples and serene gardens, offers superb
cultural treasures and a variety of sensual delights.
Your most enjoyable activity will probably be strolling through artistically designed
garden landscapes with their winding paths, tranquil ponds, stately trees, lush vegetation
and traditional wooden temples, so wear comfortable shoes and be prepared to do a lot of walking.
We’re going to take you on some wonderful strolls through the gardens, around the temples
and into downtown, and show you the highlights of this magnificent city.
Kyoto’s modern downtown is also fascinating, filled with shops, restaurants, historic structures,
the occasional geisha, and plentiful people-watching.
The sublime gardens unfold as you walk along paths that lead through changing vistas around
each bend, where you can stop frequently to absorb each new perspective looking left,
right, up and down.
The different views are enhanced by small statues, foot-bridges, bamboo railings, temple
back-drops and glimpses of distant mountains, all exquisitely arranged to be appreciated
in moments of reflection.
Kyoto was ranked as the number one visitor destination in the world by the readers of
Travel and Leisure magazine for two years in a row in 2014 and 2015, quite an honor.
Maybe you haven’t previously thought much about Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines,
and perhaps never had them on a priority list of must-see places, but visiting this city
is different, and we'll show you the harmony and beauty of those temple sites.
It’s all about the harmony of the gardens and their relationship to the venerable wooden
structures which meld into a delightful experience.
Nature-lovers will gain high value from the effort and those with a spiritual bent can
get that much more out of the visit.
Kyoto has 17 places listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which is an extremely high
number for that ranking.
There are another 7 major historical sites designated by the local government, and much
more to see for those with abundant time, including museums, palaces, stone monuments,
traditional neighborhoods, a modern downtown, theaters and day-trips to nearby cities such
as Nara.
Time can also be spent admiring the pottery, fabrics, tea ceremony, flower arrangements,
dance, cuisine and calligraphy, all of which are highly developed here.
You should try and spend at least two days in Kyoto so that you can visit the major attractions
and experience the essence of this special city, or you could easily stay a week and
never run out of worthwhile attractions in this former imperial capital, which has a
staggering 2,000 temples and shrines.
You’ll never run out of places to see.
Kyoto is surrounded on all sides by numerous temples, shrines and gardens located within
a few miles of the town center.
A reasonable two-day strategy for dealing with this array is to focus attention in one
direction, in our case we looked at Kyoto’s east side (Higashiyama) which has a very high
concentration of sites nestled on the edge of the lovely, hilly topography.
In the other direction Kyoto is relatively flat but the gardens always have some interesting
landscape design to create a pleasant contoured ground surface and delightful curved paths
to lead you through it.
Many of these temple sites on the east side are in walking distance of each other, reaching
about 4 miles from south to the north end of the cluster in Higashiyama, so you can
walk between some of these sites as we'll be pointing out in the series.
However when you add up the amount of walking within each site and time spent shopping along
the approach lanes, the combined distance is going to reach well over 10 miles, so you
will sometimes want to use buses, subway and taxis.
A two-day pass for bus and subway can be purchased but if time is an issue you will find that
taxis are a big help now and then.
And the taxi drivers are very courteous with their white gloves and honesty, even if they
don't speak any English, and this gives you a chance to sit down and rest while you're
being transported between sites.
More than 50 million visitors come to Kyoto each year, most of them are just staying for
the day then moving on, but about 1 million of them do spend the night in a local hotel
-- there are lots of accommodations of all price ranges -- and most of the visitors are
Asian.
No doubt with the growth of Chinese travel these numbers are going to continue increasing.
These crowds of visitors could very much interfere with your appreciation of Kyoto’s heavenly
gardens.
So, try to visit during the less-busy late fall or early spring in order to properly
experience the tranquil garden atmosphere.
Temperatures will be nippy then, many trees will lack leaves and garden colors are more
subdued, but the absence of crowds makes those trade-offs very much worthwhile.
Especially early December when we were photographing these visuals the fall colors still linger
yet crowds are not around, making a perfect combination, and late March offers fresh air
scented by spring flowers before the stampede of cherry-blossom viewers arrive.
Crowds don’t matter as much for normal city attractions like a park, street scenes, amusement
arcade, or shops and museums, but the temple gardens here are precious jewels that you
should try to view in quiet times during the off-season.
The fragile beauty of the gardens can send you to another dimension if the ambience is
right, but communication with nature is difficult when there are four busloads of tourists right
in front of you in the picture.
Gazing upon a Zen pebble garden alone or with a few others is a completely different experience
than jostling in a crowd for a wedge of the best view with everybody trying to take a
picture in front of you.
However, even if you cannot visit during those ideal, small windows in time, Kyoto is a four-season
destination that can be appreciated throughout the year.
If you don’t mind crowds, consider the peak seasons of cherry blossom-viewing in April
and colorful foliage reaching its peak in November, or arrange your itinerary to connect
with one of the major festivals, but try to avoid the national holiday periods when it
is jam-packed.
Minimize interference by visiting major sites early or late in the day.
And now are going to take you on a visit to two of the major temples in the south part
of Kyoto, Fushimi-Inari-Taisha and Tofuku-ji.
The Fushimi-Inari-Taisha shrine in Kyoto is most famous for its long rows of vermilion
Torii gates, nearly 5000 gates in all.
Various temple structures are in front including the famous Romon Gate, but the main attraction
is that vast network of Torii gates which have made Inari one of the most popular destinations
in town.
Whenever you see the torii gate you know that this is not a Buddhist temple but instead
it's a Shinto shrine.
And this is the main shrine of this particular Shinto sect that's dedicated to the gods of
rice and sake.
Throughout Japan there are 40,000 other Inari shrines but this is the principle one.
The Inari Shrine is a wonderful Shinto experience.
You walk through all of these different gateways along a path that winds through the forest.
This is the largest collection of Torii gates anywhere in the world.
You could spend one or two hours walking this pathway that extends for almost 3 miles.
The visit you’re watching was in early December and so it was not crowded and yes the temperatures
were kind of nippy but comfortable.
And we saw some cats - notice the steam coming out of their breath.
Temperatures in the morning like this were in the 30s.
The gates are surrounded by natural forest and by various small cultivated gardens with
some ponds here and there.
You can walk all the way up the hillside to the top of Mount Inari, which is about 240
meters high and you won't get lost, just follow the path, follow the tunnels of torii gates.
The biggest problem with the Inari shrine is that it's just too popular -- it's being
loved to death.
Remember we’re traveling in early December when it's very peaceful, quiet and nearly
empty.
The crowds during the season, during the day are phenomenal.
There will be probably 1000 people all walking through these gate, so it can get pretty congested.
For example if you look at the comments on Trip Advisor about this temple shrine area,
every other comment mentions the crowding -- people in the way, people taking pictures,
people stopping and talking and kind of interfering with the experience.
Now, these people are visiting during the high season and during the middle of the day,
so the way to avoid it is come in the off-season, as we are -- it’s December as we’re walking
around, early December.
It's a perfect time to be in Kyoto.
Or if you’re here in the busy season, come very early.
You can come just after sunrise or come very late in the day, just the hour before sunset,
and will have the added benefit of some extra rich colors and fewer people.
The site is especially popular during the New Year's holiday, Japan's most important
festivity, when it attracts nearly 3 million people during the three-day period.
Of course if you enjoy people-watching then this is no problem, you can see it as a bonus.
There will be lots of folks out here appreciating the site and most of them are Japanese tourists,
so it's like an extra bonus for you in that regard.
People from throughout Japan love to come to Kyoto and visit these wonderful gardens
and shrines.
Arrive early and walk through this phenomenal lineup of several thousand torii gates standing
next to each other and forming a magical two-mile tunnel through the forest.
It's easily reached from the town center by train on either the JR line stopping at Inari
station or the Keihan line to the Fushimi-Inari station.
The first shrine was built in the year 711 in a different part of town to the southwest
and then it was relocated here a century later in 816 the main shrine structure was built
in the year 1499 and all of the torii gates were added subsequently over many centuries.
Each of these 5000 torii gates was donated by a Japanese business and maintained by them
and they put their name on them because the shrine is a patron of business and merchants
and manufacturers but especially of the god of rice and sake.
It seems like we’re walking around a little bit in circles and we are because once you
are inside the shrine area you're walking through the tunnel of these Torii gates and
you can get to the end and then just turn around and walk back through that same tunnel
or you could continue -- it does make a complete loop circuit if you walk all the way up to
the top of the hill.
But you might want to go that far so feel free any time to just walk in part of the
way and then turn around and walk back out the same way that you came in.
It's a different experience either way going uphill or going downhill.
The vermillion color of the gates is quite dazzling and contrasts delightfully with the
green the garden setting.
There are even a few restaurants in the shrine area, which figures if it’s going to take
you three hours to walk along every pathway.
So you can get some refreshments and especially locally-themed dishes such as the inari sushi
and kitsune udon, both of which feature pieces of fried tofu, which was said to be a favorite
of the foxes who were some of the gods of the shrine area.
From the Inari shrine we continue north about half a mile to the temple and gardens of Tofuku-ji.
The Tofuku-ji Buddhist temple is considered one of the five great Zen temples of Kyoto.
Originally built in the year 1236 it burned down after a couple of centuries and then
was rebuilt in the 15th century to the original plans and stands today as a fine example of
a medieval Zen temple.
Typical of most Kyoto temples, it is a group of more than a dozen wooden structures in
a lush garden setting, especially famous for the very large Sanmon temple gate, 65 feet
high, and the bright fall colors of maple leaves when you're here in the autumn season.
Here too we have a small Shinto shrine area with another torii tunnel leading up to a
staircase that brings you up the hill.
At this temple complex of Tofuku-ji there are about a dozen sub-temples.
One of the things it’s most noted for is the fall color.
We arrived in early December but still there was the lingering color of the maple leaves
which were really bright and spectacular.
Another week or two they will all be blown down, and by mid-December, late December,
the colors will be largely gone.
Of course the peak colors would happen in the month of November and it would be especially
beautiful here at Tofuku-ji.
They have this small gully which is the most famous area for the viewing of the fall colors.
And we were looking in particular for the Abbotts Hall, because at the Abbotts Hall
there is a very classical pebble garden that we want to see, and finally we got there.
Be sure to explore well-enough that you can find the little-known Zen meditation pebble-garden
at the Abbot’s Hall and linger here a while to absorb the harmonious serenity.
Smaller pebble-gardens can be found scattered around various other temples.
True aficionados of this style of pebble-garden accented by symbolic clusters of large rocks
might want to visit the most famous version at Ryoan-Ji temple in Kyoto’s northwest
outskirts.
And Tofuku-ji is a Zen Buddhist temple, and these are aids to meditation.
You sit and quiet your mind.
This kind of pebble garden is designed to be looked at rather than walked through, so
there's a veranda and over on the side we have moss-covered hills that symbolize mountains.
The rocks symbolize islands, it's said, and the pebbles symbolize the sea.
But at the same time ascribing all of these meanings to such a garden is somewhat limiting
because in Zen itself the process is emptying your mind.
And just gazing out upon this beautiful calm and relaxing vista.
And you pay an admission to go into each of the separate sections of the temple, and it's
well worth it.
It's a little confusing because usually the guides at the gateways who sell you the tickets
don't speak any English, and they'll give you little pamphlet that'll have a map and
that will help guide you around through the grounds.
And always the colors around us here at this temple garden were really, really enhancing
our total experience.
And then we ran into a very friendly local fellow who knows a lot about the Temple complex
and told us about Tofuku-ji.
He was proud to show us the grave of one of Kyoto's more famous geisha because she was
married to the nephew of J.P. Morgan the famous financier.
That was a rare treat, most enjoyable to speak English with an elderly local resident, a
friendly guy who was proud to point out a few sites for us.
Tofuku-ji was listed as a UNESCO world Heritage site in 1994, one of many in Kyoto.
There is no admission charge to the complex of Tofuku-ji and you can walk freely around
some of the grounds but there is an admission fee for the Zen gardens and that bridge to
heaven with a great view of the fall colors.
Tofuku-ji Temple is located on the eastern side of Kyoto about a mile southeast of the
Kyoto train station so you can walk here from the center or take a bus or train.
The Tofuku-ji station of Japan rail stops nearby as well as the Keihan electric railway.
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.