Japan – Our Days in Kyoto and Nara

After one night in Tokyo, we took the train to Kyoto, where we stayed for the rest of our trip. The first capital of Japan was in Nara, and we visited there later in the week. Kyoto was the second capital of Japan.

Kyoto Station... there was a Starbucks just to the right of this picture!! We took advantage of that since we've been Starbucks deprived in Saipan!!

Kyoto is full of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Wherever you go, even in the smallest of neighborhoods and the narrowest alleyways, you'll find little shrines and some pretty good sized temples. Here in Kyoto we began our serious temple viewing!

One of the most amazing temples we visited was the Kinkakuji Temple, or the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a Zen Buddhist temple in the NW part of Kyoto. This temple is a three-storied building. The top floor was built in the Zen Temple style, the middle floor in the style of the samurai house and the bottom floor in Shinden-zukuri or palace style. The top two floors are covered with gold leaf on Japanese laquer and gleam in the sunlight.

Not only did we see the temple, but our first pygmy woodpecker! This was especially nice, since Saipan and all of Micronesia, has NO woodpeckers (and neither does Australia!).

We then visited Nijo-ji castle and saw some new birds there too. Cheri’s father had visited this castle some years ago and told us we shouldn’t miss it. Nijo Castle (Nijojo) was built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Edo Shogunate, as the Kyoto residence for himself, his successors and other visiting shoguns. Among other things it is known for it’s “nightingale floors”. No, there are no birds under the floor, the floors were just designed and built so that when they are walked on, they start singing like “nightingales”, so enemies would find it much harder to sneak into the castle. It was quite an impressive castle!

Here we also saw white-bellied green pigeons, Java sparrows (introduced bird), and White’s Thrush.

And, of course, Howard made some new friends in Kyoto as well...

After walking probably 25 miles or so in Kyoto, we decided it was time to take a break and take the train to Nara. Nara was the first and most ancient capital of Japan from 710 to 784, lending its name to the Nara period. The original city, Heijō-kyō, was modelled after the capital of Tang Dynasty China, Chang'an (present-day Xi'an). According to the ancient Japanese book Nihon Shoki, the name "Nara" derived from the Japanese word narashita meaning "made flat".

The temples of Nara remained powerful even beyond the move of the political capital to Heian-kyō in 794, thus giving Nara a synonym of Nanto ("The Southern Capital").

Todai-ji Temple's Daibutsuden Hall is the world's largest wooden building and houses the world's largest statue of the Buddha Vairocana known in Japanese simply as Daibutsu. The temple also serves as the Japanese headquarters of the Kegon school of Buddhism. The temple is a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site as "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara". During the 700’s, Tōdai-ji served as the central administrative temple for the provincial temples for the six Buddhist schools in Japan at the time: the Hossō, Kegon, Jōjitsu, Sanron, Ritsu and Kusha.

This temple was a powerfully spiritual place. Throngs of people gathered around a huge incense burner, reaching over and around one another to light their incense sticks and say their personal prayers to Buddha. I felt the intensity and the ancient spirit of this place, felt extremely emotional and joined in by lighting my own incense and saying my prayer ....

and lit a candle for Nathan.

Gojū-no-tō five-storied pagoda

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Japanese legend tells us that a mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital of Heijō-kyō. Since then the deer have been regarded as heavenly animals, protecting the city and the country. Tame deer roam through the town, especially in Nara Park. Biscuits are sold for feeding the deer. After feeding the deer, if you bow, the deer will bow back to you. I'm not kidding!

Nara did have quite a collection of local foods and some that Cheri called "fair foods" -- a lot of fried foods, but some very good snacks, like octupus and the famous fish balls. One that definitely takes on a different meaning than Swanson's Fish Sticks were these....

On the way home Cheri and I decided we were in need of some sake! So, on the train ride back to Kyoto, we made a stop in Fushimi and tried to find the sake breweries and museum. It took about 2 hours to find out that the sake breweries were all closed because it wasn’t sake season! But we did find the museum and its associated store and enjoyed our glasses of sake and bought a bottle for Danielle.