Kyoto Tour - Heian Shrine

Kyoto has about 1'600 shrines and temples. It's easy enough to believe because I couldn't turn a street without tripping over one.

Whats's irritating interesting is how there's so much crossover in designs. Not only is it fascinating to see how China, Japan and Korea took and implemented similiar ideas differently  in design but there is a ridiculous amount of overlap when it comes to buddhist and shinto places of worship. It made things a mite confusing.

Behold the Heian shrine in all its' primary coloured glory. Nice, ain't it. C:

In the lower picture you can see the sake barrels hanging on the far right. These are sacred..... -_- Wait why aren't we shinto again? Rice wine is sacred and it's a good thing to drink it and lots of people get it, not just the priests.

 

Above is where you purify yourself  with water before entering the shrine. (Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha, ha, haaa. Oh darling we're going to need a little more than a dab of water to purify me.)

You wash your hands and rinse you mouth in a particular order (Which I naturally fumbled) before proceeding inside the shrine.

 

The entrance, note the sacred ropes, and from there we turned on our heels to see the Torii of the shrine all the way down the street which should give you a clear idea of the intended scale during the construction period.

Enormous, right?

Afterwards we proceeded inside where I saw an employee dressed in miko robes and had a little squee. Ah, Christian nuns never dressed so nicely did they?

This was considered sacred so there are no pictures of the interior - understandable but I wish I understood the baseline for allowing such things as it seems to vary greatly.
The outside and gardens however...

This was very interesting. Now, while Buddhism and Shinto does seem to light candles, lanterns and use incense this seems to be something that we don't do. This is a tree of O-mikuji, discarded fortunes. From what I understand you pay a small fee, shake the box and draw a stick. This corresponds to a fortune which the miko on duty or the shrinekeeper will fetch for you.

However, randomly drawn fortunes drawn on the grace of potentially capricious gods has its' risks so if you get an 'unfavourable' fortune (Hoorah for Euphemisms!!) you can leave it behind by tying it to the 'trees' provided. This is done in both Buddhist and Shinto shrines.

Above is a stand of votive prayers - Ema. Traditionally they have images drawn on one surface while your prayer is written on the other. I think they're gathered up and burned in a special ceremony every so often.

No, I did neither of these things. Mostly for practical reasons to be honest. The guide didn't really have time to read everyones fortune and I certainly couldn't do it myself.  Oh, yeah and I suppose it would be disrespectful.

Mostly I just get iffy about giving gods and otherwordly entities my money.

This temple is particularly famous for weddings. We actually encountered one on our way and people were taking lots of pictures. The wedding party didn't seem to mind but I was a bit embarrassed to do so. It seemed a bit too creeperish for me. That being said their clothes was fantastic. The fathers were dressed in full-on black tie suits while the mothers wore formal kimonos with crests.

The couple themselves: well, he wore the traditional kimono, hakama and haori (his spiky hair looked good with it.) and she wore a beautiful furisode (Seeing that as a married woman she was no longer allowed to wear that long-sleeved style.)

We learned that there are auspicious and inauspicious days for weddings and the shrine prices them accordingly. SO , if you fancy saving  few hundred dollars on your wedding you can get one of the 'unlucky' days.

Anyways, enough with that. There was carp and turtles abounding in the waters. Please note that this was the evening before the typhoon came so, cloudy. Not raining- yet.

Here's the gardens.