Japan: The Adventure in Kyoto continues

To conclude our adventure in Kyoto we took a walk through the city. We went backwards along the route that foreigners used to walk through Kyoto.

We started our tour at　三十三間堂, Sanjusangendo, literally 33 spaces between pillars. It is a wide building (pictured), one of the largest wooden buildings in the world. Within the temple there are 1000 idols of the 1000 armed Kannon flanking a much larger statue of the 1000 armed Kannon. At the front there are also 28 statues of guardian deities. Kannon is the goddess of mercy, and is very much like the virgin Mary in Christianity. Each of the statues, other than the guardians, had around 42 arms, which when the two real arms are not considered, each represent 25 arms for a total of 1000. Atop each statue there are 11 heads. This is quite an impressive feat considering all of the statues within Sanjusangendo were hand carved from cypress in the 12th century, and then many of them remade in the 13th centruy after a fire destroyed most of them. Pictures were not allowed within the temple, but you can see images here: http://www.taleofgenji.org/sanjusangendo.html. At one point someone decided to try shooting an arrow from one end of the temple to the other, while on the porch. To achieve this feat one must shoot an arrow approximately 170 meters with very little arch as it can't get stuck in the rafters of the porch. Really good archers can actually achieve this feat. But there are plenty of marks on the floor of the porch from arrows that did not make it. Surrounding the temple are the beautiful Japanese gardens:

 

After the temple we continued on to the Ear Mound. Within this mound are the severed ears and noses of the Koreans killed during the Japanese invasion of the Korean peninsula in the 1500s. There are remains from about 3000 Koreans within the mound. Gross. Creepy. Eerie.
                                         

We then continued on our way towards Kiyomizu temple. There is a tale told that a woman once accidentally dropped her baby girl in the valley. She proceed to pray to Kannon to save the girl from the harm that was sure to come as she tumbled down. The woman then went to her baby girl only to find her completely unharmed. Also at the temple is the Otowa Waterfall, which flows through three fountains at the base of the hill the temple is perched on. The name of the temple, kiyomizu, means "pure water".

(This picture is actually from wikipedia because I
didn't have a good image of the full temple itself)

After stopping for lunch we wound our way through the grounds of the temple down to the bus so we could head off to Osaka (my new favorite city in the world! Although I'm told Tokyo is even better still). Along the way we saw a shrine dedicated to three monkeys, the monkeys that "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". During the Edo period there was a belief that on the 57th day of the 60 day lunar cycle 3 worms that were believed to inhabit the body would report to the Emperor in Heaven on whatever the human had done wrong in that cycle. Reported misdeeds turned into time taken off the person's life. But the worms could only report to the Emperor while the human slept, so people would stay awake on the 57th day. Furthermore, staying awake 7 consecutive Kooshin days (as the 57th day is called) in one calendar year was believed to kill the worms. While the idea was to pray to Shoomen Kongoo (blue faced Vajra bearer, who is often depicted with the 3 monkeys representing the 3 worms), it very often turned into an all night party instead. Reminds me of the song "Only the Good Die Young" hmmm...

Anyways, we also saw a few Geisha on our way which we were very excited about. We stopped for pictures (mine is not on my camera/ipod). While true Geisha sightings are typically a nighttime occurrence, we were still mostly satisfied with this daytime sighting.

Continuing along we came to the part of the temple we had seen glimpses of the day/night before. This time we were able to appreciate in full glory of the cherry blossoms in the temple. Cherry blossoms are really as beautiful as I had imagined and apparently we were lucky with timing because they were in full bloom the weekend we were there. Considering they only last a week or so, maybe two if the weather is really good.

 

After all this it was time to head off to Osaka & Nara, which I'll tell all about in the next few posts :)