When people told me I would get a little blase about shrines and temples, I considered it to be an exaggeration, but they are simply everywhere. Lovely, pretty, accessible but also reverent.
Today, with a wonderful Japanese guide who spoke pretty good English; we went to Tenryu-ji Temple. The temple sides on to the mountains, with lovely gardens, beautiful paths, and interesting architecture, a haven of peace and quiet on the edge of the city, and steps through to the Bamboo Forest.
Enormous, almost a monoculture, it sounded fantastic when the wind went through with all the dry rustling of the leaves.
Through Arashiyama (suburb of Kyoto) ducking in to Persimmon House, the abode of a famous haiku poet, and through Myoshin-ji Temple- a simply massive temple complex, containing fifty sub-temples within itself, founded in 1337. No pictures allowed inside the buildings!
Next – Food and Kyoto