Today could be summed up as temples, tea houses, transportation....and gardens.
After getting some routing advice from the concierge this morning we embarked on an ambitious itinerary to western Kyoto. First we took the subway about 6 stops north, then transferred to a bus going west getting off at the Kinkaku-Ji stop for a visit to the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, built in the 14th century as a retirement villa for a shogun and converted into a Zen temple upon his death. The 3 story pavilion is on the edge of a lake and covered in gold leaf. Although the temple has been rebuilt after it was torched by an unstable student monk in the 1950's, the extensive gardens & grounds remain as they were hundreds of years ago.
From there we walked south to Ryoanji Temple, most famous for its Zen rock garden, consisting only of 15 rocks and white gravel, surrounded by walls made of clay boiled in oil. The design on the walls emerged when the oil seeped out of - sort of a Zen statement on impermanence. When you look at the garden from the verandah of the tmple you can only see 14 of the 15 rocks at any one time - once you move another rock appears as one dissapears. In Buddhism 15 symbolizes completeness; appropriate for the Zen experience of the garden, you must have an entire view of the garden to experience it as a whole, but it is not possible to see the whole at any given time. The rest of the grounds here were gorgeous with ponds, tea houses and more beautifuil red maple trees.
From there we continued walking south and took a peak into the grounds of Ninna-ji, the former palace of a 9th century emperor, and then we took two stages of a tram which went west to Arahiyama, the westernmost part of Kyoto in the foothills of the mountains, covered with cherry trees, maples and bamboo forests.
Our first stop there was Tenryu-ji, the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon, with more amazing gardens dating back to the 14th century which was one of the first gardens to incorporate the scenery of the mountains into the design of the garden itself. Upon exiting the temple you come upon a thick bamboo forest and can stroll along wide pathways from there to Okochi Sanso, the villa and gardens of a silent samurai movie actor. The gardens were developed over 30 years and were just stunning as they climbed the mountainside. The maples are turning more each day and were really wonderful here. As part of the steep admission price here we were treated to a cup of the flourescent green tea and a weird gelatinous little cake.
Upon leaving Okochi Sanso we walked some more through bamboo groves and made our way to the JR station, catching the train back to the Kyoto station, feeling quite proud that we had mastered all the logistics of the day.
Last night's kaiseki dinner was interesting. Kitcho has an outlet in the hotel here which is much more affordable than the main restaurant which is located in the Arashiyama area - the choice here is a $60 pp bento box, or full kaiseki dinners for $100, $150 or $250 pp. According to my guide book, at the main restaurant the lunches start at $450 pp and dinners start at $500 pp...
Since we had a late lunch we went for the bento box option which was preceeded by a very creamy tofu dish served with a sake chaser. The menu was only in Japanese so we really don't know what all we had, but the bento box sections were exquisitely designed with a bit of an autumn theme. We ate everything! Our only complaint was the sparseness of the dining room - the lighting was quite bright, in fact Brad mentioned that he thought we were going to be interrogated! Maybe the idea is to put all the focus on the food? There was one scroll on the wall for decoration - in reading about the main branch apparently the scroll is changed and its message sets the seasonal theme of the meal.
Tonight we are having a teppanyaki dinner.
