Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Japan: The Temples

Just two months after our trip, we are finally at the last Japan blog post. It was too difficult to narrow down all of our pictures, and so I put together some photo albums to complement the blog posts.



We spent a lot of time exploring temples in Japan - and especially in Kyoto.  We visited dozens of temples and shrines and each one had something new to offer.  We did develop a bit of temple fatigue at one point, especially with how hot it was, but I wouldn't have skipped a single one.

These students wanted to practice English with us as Fushimi Inari shrine, resulting in the best non-Hogwarts-related picture of our entire trip.

Most of our fellow temple-goers appeared to be Japanese, and we saw a lot of people dressed in traditional Japanese clothing - especially young women. The kimonos were all so beautiful and added to the beauty of the scene.


Every shrine, regardless of size, sold small tokens and charms. For the most part, people would buy them, write something on them, and hang them back up on the shrine. At Fushimi Inari, however, they were selling small Torii (red gates) for people to take home. This was our favourite temple, so we bought one to take home as our Japan Christmas ornament in the hopes that it's not too sacrilegious!

The different charms and tokens.  The bottom left picture shows a fortune telling box - you put in a coin, shake the box and pull out a stick, then take the fortune with the corresponding number. Rob ended up with the Lowest Fortune, which required additional requests for blessings from the gods.
Before we left, our friends K&JC told us about something called a shrine book. You buy a fabric covered book, and at every shrine/temple you visit, you pay a couple hundred yen (about $2-3) and a monk or other temple employee will add that temple's seal or stamp into the book. This generally involves a red stamp and some kanji, and you end up with a unique, priceless souvenir for less than $100. We filled our book up almost entirely, and can't thank K&JC enough for telling us about these!

Top row: lighting some candles for family; Bottom: people inscribing our shrine book
The areas around the temples are nearly as full of activity as the temples themselves.  We spent an entire day wandering in and out of temples along the Philosopher's Path in Higashiyama, a morning biking around temples in Northern Kyoto, and hours wandering through the temple markets.


Clockwise from top left:  Suffering from heat stroke in Arashiyama - a stork eating a giant frog - washing my hands before entering a temple - we saw beer cans on shrines all over Japan - the red gates at Fushimi Inari
Near a few of the temples there were some Bamboo Groves. Although the most famous ones are in Arashiyama, we found the ones in Higashiyama to be just as beautiful and much less crowded.

Top: Bamboo groves in Higashiyama
Bottom: Bamboo groves in Arashiyama

No comments:

Post a Comment