May 18 - Onwards to Kyoto

PLEASE NOTE: I have not had the chance to watermark all of my photos, and it will take me a great deal of time, as I published this and my other blogs between 2010-2017. I ask you to respect my property. Feel free to use them as long as you credit me as follows: Photo by Jody McBrien, learningtheworld.org. Thank you.


We left Miyajima in the morning and returned to Hiroshima where we caught a Shinkansen to Kyoto. We were not scheduled to get to our Airbnb where we would meet our host Yoshio til 5pm, so we put our luggage into lockers and grabbed a bus to two of Kyoto’s most famous temples, Kinkakuji (the Golden pavilion) and Ryoanji (with the famous Zen stone garden). Not surprisingly, there was probably about an hour of confusion and trying to figure out how to get to B from A.

The day was warm and cloudless, so our photos have the beauty of blue skies and great lighting. There were many student field trips at Kinkakuji, but we managed to work our way around them. The third shogunate of the Muromachi period, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, acquired the site in 1397 from a statesman. The land and buildings were to represent the “pure land of Buddha” in this world. All center on the Golden Pavilion covered in gold foil and topped with a large phoenix. At the shogan’s request, his temple was converted to a Buddhist temple after his death. In 1994, it was registered as a World Heritage site.

Ryoanji was farther from Kinkakuji than we anticipated, but we got there eventually, and it was less crowded. Also registered as a World Heritage site in 1994, Ryoanji was acquired in 1450 to be used as a Zen training temple. Destroyed by fire during the Onin War, it was rebuilt in 1499.

The temple is famous for its deceptively simple but masterful 25 x 10 metre Zen stone garden that includes 15 rocks. The walls surrounding it are made of clay boiled in oil. Their coloration was made as the oil has slowly seeped out of the clay. There is no vantage point from the ground at which one can see all 15 rocks at once. We had a chance to sit and observe it for at least 10 minutes before moving on to moss and tree gardens at the temple.

After visiting the temples, we made our way to Yoshio’s guesthouse by train and subway. We were later than we had suggested, but Yoshio was patiently waiting for us at the subway and walked us to the apartment. It is in a quiet residential area and very convenient by public transportation. Yoshio is very informative and kind, and his English is pretty good.

I knew the place was going to be small, and at $30/night, I wasn’t expecting glamorous. But this place is far more suitable for young backpacking travellers who are roughing it around Asia. It seems that Yoshio manages it for someone, and the owner would have little work to do to make it far more hospitable. Two rooms – one on the ground floor and one upstairs – are closed off for storage. A good clean-up coat of paint and cleaning out of the ground floor room to create a sitting room would make such a difference. As it is, there is literally no place to sit, and no chair to sit in. The kitchen is tiny, cluttered, and smelled of garbage. The bedroom was up a narrow, steep angle of a staircase with steps less deep then the length of my small feet and an angle that made me feel more comfortable backing down them. The room had space for only two futons and a small table about 18 inches off the floor. There was an air conditioning unit, but it did not work. We could open the slider to a small balcony to get fresh air, which made it bearable at night. So this was Jody’s “you’ve gone just a bit too cheap this time!” reservation. We do like a place to be able to go back and rest for the afternoon, but it was not to be on this part of the trip.

Once we settled in as best we could, we headed back to the subway station to find some dinner.  Like our stay near Miyajima, most everything seemed to close by 6pm, so we only found a couple options above the subway station. Since we didn’t eat lunch, we were just happy to find some food – and chairs! – to abate the hunger pangs and rest our feet before returning to our very small space for the night.

NOTE: June 2018 date on post is republish date, not date of the event.