Day 6 – Shrines and Temples

Today we were on the move again. We packed our bags and checked them with our hotel before heading to Mcdonalds' for breakfast. We decided we better get an early start today because we wanted to visit one of the most popular shrines in Kyoto – Fushimi Inari Taisha. We read the crowds at this particular shrine are crazy so the earlier you visit the better. This turned out to be sound advice. We ate at McDonald’s because it was the only place nearby that was open early enough. Plus my grandpa is a fan of McDonald’s food, especially in Japan. I tried a new menu item – the double sausage egg McMuffin. It was basically what it sounds like – an egg McMuffin with two sausage patties, plus a slice of bacon, and I was surprised to find it had a big mac type of sauce on it. It was a fine breakfast.

We took a taxi to our first stop. One of the challenges with Kyoto is getting around. For the most part, the sites are spread throughout the city and there is no great way to reach them. The train does not have enough routes and we could figure out the bus system, but that seems like a lot with my grandparents and the wheelchair. Taxis are pretty expensive in Japan, but they are fast and they get you right to where you want to go.

Sometimes the wheelchair will not fit into the taxi. Not to worry all the drivers have ties and tie them into the trunk. 

We arrived at Fushimi Inari Taisha. There was a good crowd, and at first, Alison was not sure getting there early was really worth it. My grandpa got up to the first main shrine and decided that was far enough. So we found him a shady spot for his wheelchair and he waited while we explored. When we came back for him we could not believe the crowds – people were streaming into the shrine. Getting there early was most definitely worth it.

The big draw of this particular shrine is the thousands of torii gates lining the paths throughout this shrine. They are a breathtaking sight. A torii gate is literally translated as “bird abode”. They are commonly found at the entrance or within Shinto shrines. We have seen them all over Japan, but never in this abundance. We spent a couple of hours walking around this shrine enjoying the beauty of these pathways and the surrounding forest. There is also a lot of fox imagery around the shrine. We hiked up to a nice viewpoint over the city. Then we decided it was time to go find grandpa.

On our way back we came across a little souvenir shop selling small replicas of the torii gates. Alison and I stopped to buy one for our curio cabinet. Ardis and Greg and my grandma also bought some. This sweet old couple ran the shop. They took down our names and wrote our names on one side of each gate. Then they wrote the date on the other side. On top, they put the name of the shrine we were visiting. Once they finished they struck together some flint to purify the gate. It was a fun experience.

We found grandpa doing some people-watching. He had a great time watching the groups of schoolchildren and others visiting the Shrine. He seems to very much enjoy watching and noticing the little details of how people in Japan live.

Getting to our next stop proved to be a challenge. It was too far to walk and getting a cab in this area was frustrating. There were a lot of cabs nearby, but they seemed to be private and they would not pick us up. We started walking toward a train station that would get us part of the way there. On the way to the train station, we saw a cab dropping off a group of foreign tourists and we were able to snag it. My grandparents and I jumped in. Alison, Ardis, and Greg took the train and walked the remaining distance. Traffic was terrible so they actually caught up to us and ended up passing us.

The cab dropped us off at the start of a pedestrian shopping street leading to the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. I got to push the wheelchair up a steep hill through crowds of people. It was a challenge. In addition to pushing the wheelchair, I also had to navigate through an unfamiliar area. I was juggling a lot at this moment. This wheelchair has been a lifesaver. There is no way we could do this trip without it. Kyoto has been hard because it really is not wheelchair accessible. We went to great lengths to get my grandpa to some of these Shrines. I was extremely grateful when Greg found me a few yards from the top and took over pushing the wheelchair. While he took my grandpa and grandma around to a back entrance (wheelchair accessible) to the temple complex I found Ardis and Alison. They were in the middle of being interviewed by some Japanese students. This turned out to be the second time they were interviewed by some students who were interviewing foreigners as an opportunity to practice English.

I loved the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. It is a beautiful building surrounded by even more natural beauty. We spent another hour or two exploring this temple complex. One thing Alison has really liked at the temples is the written prayers that are hung outside. She purchased a wooden placard and wrote out her own prayer and hung it outside the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple.

The main building was under renovation in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but despite this construction, the temple was still well worth visiting. We also hiked over to a deceptively small pagoda. The English translation for the name of this pagoda was something like easy childbirth pagoda. Alison thought she should pray extra hard at this pagoda (not that we are announcing anything, or that we plan to have anything to announce anytime soon).

We found my grandpa sitting in the shade and we were interviewed by one more group of Japanese students. These students were from up North in an area where my grandpa served his mission. They each took turns telling us about their hometown and inviting us to consider visiting on a future trip. They then took a picture with us and gave us a small gift.

We were on our way to the next temple, which required us to go back down the shopping street and I was on the lookout for something to eat. I saw some fruit smoothies that looked good so we stopped. The smoothies were divine. It was a warm day and these hit the spot. Alison and I each got a mango smoothie. We also tried fish balls and some cheese (that tasted fishy) on a stick.

This is when the wheels kind of came off the trip. My grandpa decided he was done. He wanted to go back to the shopping area of the hotel. He had seen enough temples and shrines and he was tired. We huddled up and made a new plan. Ardis and Greg decided they would take my grandparents back to the hotel area (via the Gion district) while Alison and I continued to visit some shrines and temples.

While we were very sad to see my grandparents go it did make hitting the rest of our planned temples a little more stress-free. Our next stop was Kodaiji Temple. Right next to the temple, there was a building with a large sandstone Buddha on top - Ryozen Kannon. We decided to stop and check it out. There were very few other people at this particular shrine. We wandered around and in the back was a small building dedicated to the unknown soldiers of WWII. It was not dedicated to just Japanese soldiers, but to all of the unknown soldiers. Inside this building, there were also jars of dirt from cemeteries all over the world and a filing cabinet containing the names of all the known foreign soldiers who perished on Japanese soil during WWII. We were very grateful we took a moment to visit this place.

We continued on our way to Kodaiji Temple. We may have stopped on our way to get an ice cream cone. Kodaiji is another Zen Buddhist temple. It is famous for its beautiful gardens and for its tea house, which was designed by the founder of the tea ceremony. This was a very tranquil temple and was a good place to visit to let go of frustration and soak in peace and tranquility from our surroundings.

We strolled through Maruyama Park. As we wandered we found some water to drink - it was such a hot day we were having a hard time staying hydrated. I also noticed a street vendor selling Takoyaki or Octopus balls. I had to try them since we had been talking about them all trip. They are basically Octopus chunks that are shaped into a ball and fried. Our new friend in the food truck even twirled the sauces around in a little performance as he served up the Takoyaki. They have a very strange flavor. At first, I was not sure I liked them, but the more I ate them the better they tasted. I am going to give them one thumbs up.

Right in Maruyama Park is Chion-in. This is a large complex of religious buildings. We strolled through as we passed. Since my grandparents were back at the hotel area (and grandpa was enjoying another egg salad sandwich from 7-eleven) we had time and more flexibility than we expected. There was another temple Alison wanted to see - Ginkakuji. It was kind of out of the way, but we decided to try to see it.

The walk to Ginkakuji was ~45 minutes. We started and made it 10-15 minutes before we began to regret our decision to walk. It was hot and we were tired. Right then a taxi pulled up and we jumped right in. Before we knew it he had us close to our destination. Like many of these Shrines/temples, there is a pedestrian street leading up to the complex. Some treats caught Alison's eye. We decided to try them even though we had no idea what they were. They looked like cake pops, but they were filled with some type of gelatin. They tasted pretty good.

Ginkakuji is also known as the silver pavilion and is the cousin complex of the gold pavilion we visited yesterday. I had pretty high hopes for this temple. The only problem was that Alison neglected to tell me the building was not actually silver in this case. It is brown and white. I guess the reason they call it the silver pavilion is that the building has a similar structure to the gold pavilion and does not look as good. The area around the pavilion was truly stunning. This area also did not have hordes of people. It was a peaceful and beautiful place.

After Ginkakuji we decided to visit one more temple - Hōnen-in. It was a very close ~5-minute walk. This temple was much simpler than many of the others we visited. It had a quiet reverence and is worth a visit.

It was time to get back. We mapped a course and decided to start walking until we found a cab. To walk the distance to the hotel would basically take us an hour. We were in a residential area and expected we would have to get out of it to find a cab. It was our lucky day because we had not even walked 5 minutes when a cab pulled up and dropped off a little old lady. We jumped in and the driver took us back to the hotel.

We met up with my grandparents and Ardis and Greg. We found a nearby Japanese cafe where we got to try a variety of different items for dinner. One of the items I tried was an octopus salad. I had octopus twice in one day today. It was a good place to eat and it was very filling.

After dinner got our bags back and had the hotel call a couple of cabs. They told us they could not get a larger cab (to help with the luggage), but we were in luck and a van was one of the cabs that picked us up. It took the cabs longer than expected to arrive. By the time we arrived at the train station, we only had about ~8 minutes to catch our train. Alison told us we needed to haul ass and we did. We made our train and we were heading to Hiroshima. We had to transfer once, but both of the trains were bullet trains. We arrived a couple of hours later and checked into our hotel. We are staying at the Crowne Plaza. We are very interested in this portion of the trip to learn more about the atomic bomb and the events that transpired here.