3. Gion district: I don't know if you read the Memoirs of a Geisha (or if you watched the movie) you probably have the image of Kyoto as traditional houses lined up along a narrow street with tea houses and geishas walking around. If so, famous Gion district is where Kyoto in your dreams come true.
Gion district is mainly surrounded around Shijo street. Being so famous and glamorous, Shijo street has many nice and expensive places to eat, shop and visit. Even though there are very well preserved tea houses as well, it would be fair to remind the readers that most of them are recently built for touristic purposes.
If you would like to taste Kyoto style Kaiseki Ryori, Gion is the right place for it. Since I believe that traveling should also include tasting different dishes as much as possible, we tried it, but if I could go back and change the time, I would probably eat sushi for the 6th time instead of Kaiseki Ryori. In fact, Fabio captured the perfect photo in which you can read my regret for not getting the sushi and questioning my order.
It is true that Gion district was the home for real geishas and the tea ceremonies and now they are still trying to make tourists live this traditional experience. But, keep in mind that finding the almost real experience is really hard and expensive. Furthermore, the real geishas do not enjoy getting their photographs taken in the streets randomly by tourists. But, thanks to this touristic approach, there are actually many costume places in which you can get dressed as a geisha and rent the costume for a day and experience Kyoto as a geisha. In 2016, the price of being a geisha for a day was less than 200€, which was way to much for me. But I still enjoyed this touristic industry because thanks to that, I could capture tons of geisha photos at every corner of Kyoto! I agree that it's not very traditional for geishas to take selfies with pop-art Japanese poses but I enjoyed it a lot! You will understand the difference between the real geisha and the daily geisha from their understanding of getting their photos taken but also from their makeup: the real geishas wear the famous white makeup on their faces with their neck exposed, while the daily ones wear regular makeup.
Yasaka shrine is located at the entrance of Gion district and is definitely worth a visit. This Shinto shrine is free to visit and open to public all day long. If you ever visit Gion for dinner, check the place out when the lantern lights are on. Due to its location, it's one of the most popular locations of tourists and locals.
Traveling Kyoto, we actually never stopped for lunch or breakfast but we kept getting snacks here and there to taste more things. This worked for almost all Kyoto, but this historic street was one of the best locations for it.
 |
| www.japan-guide.com |
From Yasaka shrine, keep walking to explore the preserved historic streets, where you will find yourself in a fairy tale. The buildings here are preserved in the most traditional way and are still open for business. You can find tens of shops for souvenirs, Japanese crafts, snacks or home made sake.
4. Kiyomizudera Shrine: In the 8th century, people from Kyoto realized that the water coming from the Otowa waterfalls is one of the purest in the city, so they decided to build a Buddhist temple here. In 1994, the temple was added to the list of UNESCO world heritage site and this is why it gets really crowded as long as it's open.
The shrine alone is gorgeous and impressive, but it gets better with the view of Kyoto behind these amazing buildings. You should just keep walking around and breath in the clean air as much as you can.
Admission: Adults 400 Yen
The name Kiyomizudera literally means the pure water. The waterfall is divided into three parts right before the temple and each part is claimed to be beneficial for the prayers in different ways: long life, success at school or luck in love life. Yet, Japanese people believe that trying all of them is very greedy and each individual should pray for a single thing at a time. To complete the ritual, prayers should hold the cups with the long handle, fill the water in the cup with no direct contact with the water source and drink from the cup without spilling a drop.
5. Fushimi Inari Taisha Sanshuden: This actually should be number 1, since this is why I decided to include Kyoto into our Japan trip. Walking under this amazing tunnel formed by thousands of torii gates is an unforgettable experience indeed! Entrance is for free and open to public all day around.
Inari is the Shinto god of rice. So, to pray for generosity of this god and get more rice to use for food and sake, they built this huge temple. The main area is in fact for the prayers and leave their offerings to the god. You can find all wishes and prayers of people written and hang in the main building on the gate miniatures.
Then, you head to the best part, the tunnel. From the main building up to the Mouth Inari, they built a tunnel built by thousands of gates such that the prayers can gather their thoughts and get in touch with their inner self as they head up to the top of the mountain. Going up and back takes about 2-3 hours but with my passion of capturing the best shot, we couldn't even reach the half of the path in 2 hours, so we had to come back without completing the path. Even though the top actually shows a pretty good view, it's actually not a huge lost.
6. Arashiyama bamboo forest: Another must-see location in Kyoto is the bamboo grove in Arashiyama region. If you have the time, you can spend a whole day to visit Arashiyama alone with its natural beauty and temples. For my case, we had to cut to the chase and simplify our trip to the forest and go back.
As bamboo tree is not that available in Europe, getting yourself surrounded by these giant bamboo trees is an amazing sensation, almost like stepping into another world. The forest is a bit far away from the city, but reaching there with the bus or the JR train is quite easy. Walking around for 30-40 minutes would be enough to experience it.
Being one of the must-see locations in Kyoto, the forest attracts tons of people every day and this is why coming here as early as possible might give you a more peaceful experience.
7. Kinkaku-ji: Kinkakuji means the golden pavilion and was first built as the retirement villa. But then, he devoted the villa to be a Zen temple in the 15th century after his death. Today, the temple itself is a huge attraction for tourists to see the temple and the gardens around.
Visiting the villa itself is not open for public, but the visiting area and the ancient tea houses can be visited easily. During our visit on April, we got even luckier to catch the cherry blossoms, geishas walking around and the leaves flying to make this scene even more romantic. Japan is such an amazing country to visit!
On your way out, you will pass from the tea house, in which they used to have ceremonies. Today, they are open just for demonstration, but next to that you can find recent tea houses in which you can get the ceremony and a tasty cup of matcha. If you haven't tried yet, this might be the right time.
Admission: Adults 400 Yen
8. Nijo castle: The first shogun of the Edo period asked the Nijo castle to be built in the 17th century as his residence in Kyoto. In the 19th century after the Edo period, Nijo castle became an imperial palace until it was donated to the city and opened to public as museum. In 1994, the castle was selected as a UNESCO world heritage site.
The palace itself is magnificent in general but also in terms of details. Even though the purpose and the owners of the palace kept changing over time, the originality of the buildings was preserved as much as possible.
Visitors can visit the palace and the garden, but not the Honmaru palace part, which is not regularly open to public. Nevertheless, watching their decorated architecture and magnificent details is definitely worth the visit.
9. Hiroshima: It is true that there are many attractions in Kyoto to visit and the distance between these places and the limit of the opening hours make this visit even harder to organize. Nevertheless, if you are in Kyoto and have a JR pass, you should definitely spend some time and visit Hiroshima to see the destroyed dome, which still stays as the ghostly remainder of the history and the peace museum dedicated to the bomb and its survivors. It was also an interesting experience to see how Hiroshima built itself again from the ashes and stands strong almost as nothing happened.
I hope you'll enjoy visiting Kyoto!
