京都 Kyoto

The shrines here really understand moss. It's everywhere and one that I stopped at even had samples and species names of all the moss they have on the premises. They also really get landscape architecture. I can't recall the guy's name but hundreds(?) of years ago he designed the gardens of at least several of the major shrines in the area and they are pretty impressive. The paths are all meticulously lined with bamboo and trees are propped and trimmed perfectly to barely not be in your way.

伏見稲荷大社 Fushimi Inari Taisha

If you've seen the cover of Memoirs of a Geisha then you've seen one tiny piece of this sprawling shrine. More than a third of the Shinto shrines in Japan are dedicated to the god Inari, and this one is the oldest, and largest, dating back over a thousand years. There are thousands upon thousands of torii lining almost every pathway here, each donated by a Japanese business due to the nature of the shrine. The Inari stop on the JR Nara line dumps you out right in front of this shrine. The fox statues all over the place were pretty cool. With the rain there were very few people around. Some of the open shops up in the temple were pretty much unstaffed...

天龍寺 Tenryu-ji and Arashiyama

After Kinkaku-ji I aimed for Tenryu-ji in the Arashiyama area on the outskirts of Kyoto. The temple itself was completed in 1345 and it is the head site for one of the major Buddhism sects in Japan. Mainly it was the bamboo groves that drew me here. I'm not sure where I first saw them but this too should be on a mandatory list of things to see in Kyoto. After exiting the North gate of Tenryu-ji you go straight into the bamboo grove which eventually leads you to some huge number of temples and shrines in the area. I only had time for one other one but it was a really nice area to walk around and it would be easy to spend quite a while walking around (the rain was also a small factor).

金閣寺 Kinkaku-ji

Though the rain came all day long, most of it was fairly light. I managed to get a bunch of pictures one handed while holding the umbrella with the other. Overall it worked out pretty well and the place I'm staying at even has a shoe dryer which worked wonders this evening.

Kyoto seems like a place where you could spend as much or as little time as you want wandering around the endless shrines, temples, and historic areas of town. It's definitely a huge tourist draw as most of the businesses seem to have English menus and will immediately begin speaking to you in English when you walk in. Definitely have an itinerary in mind when you get here or else you'll be overwhelmed with your options.

First up was Kinkaku-ji, and yes it's actually coated in gold. This temple pretty much demands that you visit it if you get near Kyoto. But don't get there before they open like I did or else you'll have to find a coffee shop and wait out the 40 something degree temps and rain. Beat the crowds here though as the parking lot looked like it could hold a *lot* of tour buses.