Kyoto’s golden temples and crimson leaves

Before I moved to Asia, I would stalk people’s pictures and blogs and jealously look at them in, on and around various exotic, fascinating, strange temples of curious, foreign religions. I’d be in awe – the incredible colours, the picturesque tilt of the roofs, the marvellous costumes, and wonder about the fascinating stories behind these alien structures and lands. Well, today was the day I encountered the Kyoto golden temple and all its friends…

Kyoto is the epitome of these crazy surreal dreams I had in my pre-Asia days. It felt incomprehensible that I, myself, silly old me, could be at these temples one day as one of those cheesy, unsophisticated backpackers who are blissfully unaware of important cultural norms they are constantly breaking.

There are apparently over 1,000 Buddhist temples in Kyoto as well as an abundance of imperial palaces and gardens, and you will never run out of new temples to discover and sightsee. So, this was the day I dedicated purely to temple-exploration. I’d tried not to get an overdose of them beforehand.

Kyoto was the Japanese capital until 1869. Despite suffering extensive damage in Medieval-time wars (as well as earthquakes and other destruction-causing phenomena), it was one of the few Japanese cities which was spared during the Second World War, despite originally being on the American list for atomic bombs. It was later replaced on the list by Nagasaki.

I met my Tokyo-friends K and A (the ones travelling around the world without flying) at Kyoto station at a decently early hour in the morning (to make up for all those lie-ins (or well sitting-in-common-room-ins) in Tokyo), bought convenient bus passes and templey tourist maps, and set off to explore them famous Temples of Kyoto.

The first temple we checked out was the impressive-sounding five-storey pagoda. Beautiful and very five-storey-ey, but you had to pay to get in so we decided to just admire it from the outside.

We jumped on a bus and headed to the outskirts of Kyoto, where we headed towards the direction of some of the most famous temples.

Since we were walking past it anyways, we decided to check out Ryoan-ji, mentioned as one of the most distinguished sites to visit in Kyoto, notably for its rock garden. Originally the idea of the garden was to use the site to boost the popularity of Kyotoean pop music as ‘the pop garden’, but then the Rolling Stones came to Kyoto, which was followed by this huge debate on whether it should be pop or rock, and then, ironically, the Rolling Stones and PSY did a game of rock paper scissors shoot, PSY played scissors, and the Rolling Stones played rock, and since then it’s been the most favoured concert site for rock bands like Metallica, Guns’n’Roses and McBusted, and that is the story of the rock garden.

No wait, wrong reality. I take that back. So, IN (this) REALITY, the Ryoan-ji rock garden was created in the 1500s and is an ‘internationally famous rock garden’, classified as both an official ‘Historic Monument of Ancient Kyoto’ and a UNESCO Heritage Site. ‘The rectangular Zen garden is completely different from the gorgeous gardens of court nobles constructed in the Middle Ages. No trees are to be seen; only fifteen rocks and white gravel are used in the garden’, described the poetic leaflet.

Truth be told, even before reading the minimalistic description, I was slightly apprehensive about the coolness of a rock garden. Especially when I heard that some famous rockologist reckoned seriously that the best bit of the rock garden was ‘the spaces between the rocks’. I was a bit sceptical.

But, I told myself, it must have something interesting to it… You know, often you don’t appreciate the beauty of some place you don’t consider ‘of interest to you’ until you make the effort, go there, and realise it’s not that bad after all. Try everything once, and after that I’ll accept your vocalised opinion that it’s not your thing.

Good example: The rock garden. It indeed was fifteen rocks and white gravel. I gave it a chance, it was not my cup of tea.

Fair enough, we had a nice five-minute relaxing sit in the sunshine, admiring the zenness of the garden, trying to desperately appreciate the esthetic beauty of looking at spaces between rocks on gravel. No, failed at that one. Fun experience though.

Luckily the rest of the gardens were strikingly beautiful. The autumn colours were stunning, the lake and trees were gorgeous, and there were various slightly more impressive architecturally esthetic (for me) monuments.

A highlight was this bamboo wood area, where A displayed his beyond top notch talent of taking jumping photos.

Cool, eh!? And let me tell you, he took this same pic simultaneously with his own camera… and both pics succeeded. I was impressed.

Another highlight was, after enjoying the zenny zen garden, I was just about to put my boots back on (zen gardens require shoelessness) when I was suddenly surrounded by a group of Japanese school kids. In quaint, broken English they read word for word questions from their piece of paper, like “What’s your name?”, “Where do you come from?” and “Can we take a picture with you?” They were from a province in the south of Japan, and were also advertising their home area for tourists.

After the rock garden gardens, we found ourselves at a bus stop eating K and A’s mandarins and green tea KitKats (they’re very efficient travellers), ready to jump on the bus to Kinkakuji.

Now, Kinkakuji, Kyoto’s golden temple, is more my thing. Literal perfection in reality, and even non-edited pictures look photoshopped. I’ve probably seen nothing as perfect in my life. A golden temple on the lakeside, enveloped in all the possible shades a tree can colour its leaves. The view was arrestingly beautiful. (Self high five, finally managed to use that phrase stolen from some dude I follow on Instagram who specializes in dazzling nature shots.)

I would stop at that if I were a budding poet. But alas, no.

Whilst admiring the serene beauty of the exquisite temple and its ethereal surroundings I also experienced the following, less positive feelings:

• Fear. That I was literally going to become the filling of a smartphone-wielding tourist sandwich (nearly as terrifying as the prospect of being part of a bus sandwich whilst motorbiking the streets of Saigon).
• Claustrophobia. It would be a lie to say I’ve never seen that many people in one small space before, but I’ve definitely never seen that many people in a small space accompanied with smart phones, intensely focused on one thing which is capturing That Perfect Shot. And no one is allowed to ruin that. Mark my words.
• Hate of humanity. Goes along with the claustrophobia. I could imagine every single person there happily pushing me into the lake, trampling me, being completely oblivious to the accidental death of me if I happened to be standing in the way and imperfecting the corner of That Perfect Shot, or happened to nudge them slightly to ruin That Perfect Shot, or especially if my existence interfered with the perfect angle of their arm to get That Perfect Selfie, etc, you get the point.

I succumbed to my secular touristic needs to get one pic with the golden temple, but then we all happily went on.

It was beautiful, arrestingly beautiful this too. Pictures speak better than words…

BUT. I must say. The best was yet to come. In the form of EDIBLES. Ahhhh.

At the end of the Kinkakuji trail a load of souvenir stalls slightly lessened the magic surreality of the whole area, selling overpriced Hello Kitty socks and Japanese goodies.

But I forgave them all, many-a-time over, when I tried one particular goodie. Seriously, thinking about it still gives me the tingles all over. THE YATSUHASHIS (Edit: I just went on a long-winded rant about the perfection of them, but maybe I’ll copypaste it into a later entry addressing the topic of KYOTO FOOD EXPERIENCES.)

The day had flown by, and Kyotoese temples have early closing times, so we decided to get a bus back to the centre and try out this sushi place K and A’s guide book warmly recommended. The bus ride took over half an hour, and it was packed the whole way through, but I amused myself by smiling at babies and getting caught taking pictures of the bus driver through the mirror. (Seriously, talk about timing!) (I also wouldn’t say no if he proposed to me.)

The rest of the day I spent eating, conveyor belt sushi and thrice cooked chicken, but I will tell more about those in the same entry where you will have the honour of reading about my most recent passionate marriage with yatsuhashis.

Tis the end of Kyoto Day 1. Did you prefer the rock garden, the golden temple or perhaps the green tea KitKat?

L8r babes,

Emzy

xxxxx