Kyoto, Japan

2022

Getting around Kyoto

Kyoto was our hub - where we stayed while we traveled to all the other cities. We spent a lot of time at the station, eventually memorizing the routes and it started to feel like home after a week.

Bamboo Forest and Old Kyoto

On the outskirts of the city lies the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. We reached late in the day, catching the tail end of daylight. At the end of the forest is a small rural town with a Buddhist monk quarters.

Kinkaku-ji and Imperial Palace

Kinkaku-ji (The Golden Pavillion) is a buddhist temple lined with gold foil. The pavillion sits in a pond surrounded by a strolling garden. The building houses Buddha's ashes.

After making our way around the garden, we visited the Kyoto Imperial Park where there are 2 palaces. The first is the Sento Imperial Palace which served retired emperors. The second was the main Kyoto Imperial Palace, where the imperial family lived until 1868.

Thousand Gates

Fushimi Inari-taisha is a Shinto shrine best known for its 1000 torii gates. It sits on Mount Inari and the torii gates lead you up the mountain the shrine. One of the more interesting things we discovered on this trail was that when we transcribed the writing on the gates, we found that it was names of individual and company donors. The hike around Mt. Inari took us a little over 2 hours.