Kyoto Tour - Kasuga Shrine

The Kasuga Shrine is a shinto shrine. All of the stone lanterns are donated by families. Originally they were stone, in later years they donated bronze but that is no longer the custom.

They decided that they no longer had space so when the festivals roll round, for a nominal fee, families have paper lanterns of their dedication put into the stone lanterns.

Depsite the torrential rain it was quite a striking sight. We ended up not going up to the temple. In fact, only four of us even went this far.

What ticked me off really was that we ended up not having time for hot wine at the souvenir shop before heading back to Kyoto. A day like that we could have used some!

Kyoto Tour - Todai-Ji and Nara

So when you hear of Nara, what do you think of? That's right!!

Well, Todai-ji temple is attached to Nara park with the famous deer that have not the least amount of fear. You can feed the deer with crackers but unfortunately Nara was in the grips of the Typhoon so even though thw wind was not too bad the entire day was pretty much like this.

Seriously though, we did get to see some of the deer. There are signs up warning everyone that while they are pretty amenable to a pat and some cookies they are not tame deer and have been known to bite.

The breed is Sika deer and the males I saw had their antlers removed (For which I am quite glad) They are fairly large animals and definitely of a sturdier breed than those that live in central park here in Songdo. According to Seth (Master Ball - Animal Whisperer) deer can scream. I didn't seek to test that today though.

It was interesting how these deer were not the least bit afraid of humans. They wandered right up and stuck their noses into our hands looking for treats.

This was also the site of Todai-Ji temple.

Todaiji has a colourful history of fires. In that, it has been burned to the ground at least twice and technically isn't finished because they ran out of money. There are heads of god statues awaiting the cash.

Here you can see where camera issues really got mad.

We were actually allowed to take pictures of this gargantuan buddhist temple but I have no idea as to why it's yes here but no in other places.

Before you ask, yes I was mincing and skipping through the puddles and I still got soaked through. My umbrella has holes too so it was a party all round.

I'm afraid these pictures do not do justice to the sheer scale of the building.  It was built to contain a fifty foot, 500 tonne buddha statue after all.

The temple is dank and dark and lit only by candles (Guys, let's try to avoid another fire, kay.)

The statue is made of bronze and was built in layers after being cast from a specially made clay sculpture. It was partially melted a few times but it was rebuilt each time.

It was definitely a 'wow' spectacle. It was a terrible pity about the rain, we couldn't really dally in the grounds.

Kyoto Tour- Kiyomizu Temple

I visited the famous Kiyomizu Temple the evening of the Typhoon so it was dark, dank, damp and overall oppressive. (And my camera&phone were not co-operating) I would say the thing that actually annoyed me was that the cloud cover blocked the reputably spectacular view from the stage.

Behold the ticket!!

Kiyomizu (Which translates to something like 'pure water') is built on the mountain. It's fairly steep and rather high up. When you glance off the stage you can see the streets lined with shops. (Of course, nowadays they're all Tourist traps.) The height is about 13m.

 

Now, there is a saying in Japanese that I have actually heard of: 'to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu' which essentially means 'to take the plunge'. What I did not know is that people actually did this in the Edo period (85% survival rate) because the belief was that if you survived the sharp plunge your wishes would be granted. -_- They have a book of records and no, they did not use a bungee.

Here is the view from the stage. It looks down onto a range of shops and temple outlets selling charms etc. The crowds were fierce despite the ominous weather. Who'd be desperate enough to jump from here? You'd use all your luck trying to survive.

You leave the stage by going down some very steep steps and doing so takes you under the base of the stage so you can see exactly how it's being held up.

Apparantly this was constructed on the orders of Ieyasu Tokugawa Iemistu (Yes, of that Nijo Castle Clan) and was built without the use of a single nail.

This is also the site of the famous Otowa-no-taki.

Seeing as this buddhist complex is named after the pure spring water it is unsurprising a sacred spring would be here. From the three sprouts you drink from one for either intelligence, beauty or longevity but it is bad luck to drink from all.

............................I didn't drink from any. =.= Well, for one thing I'm not a buddhist, another I can't put my fate in such things as water I'm likely to drown in. More importantly, the line was HELLA long and I did not have the time to queue up if I wanted to to hit the shops before heading for the bus.

So Kiyomizu, don't jump. If you survive you'll be fined.

Kyoto Tour - Sanjusangen-do

 

Now, I only have one photo of this place. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, my camera was acting up, despite being fully charged, and secondly these statues are sacred. What the latter means is that there are monks on patrol and if they catch you they will delete your pictures and treat you to an ear-blistering buddhist lecture.
So I couldn't take any pictures myself but I can show you a few official snaps of the statues.

You can see above the most unfortunate weather as the typhoon rolled in. :C
Right at the base of the building you can also observe the 'tree' of abandoned fortunes.

Sanjusangen-do is a buddhist temple devoted to Kannon, the goddess of mercy - in particular the incarnation of the thousand-armed kannon. The hindu influence is very strong here

According to the guide. 1000 is a number of perfection and there's lots of careful calculation to have it appear throughout. Although several statutes were on loan to museums.

Unfortunately I can't find any photos of the diagram but I found this particularly interesting. None of the statues are bolted down. They're standing under their own power but the hall is so built that earthquakes have never bothered of knocked any of the shrine. The support pillars go right down into the foundation and are earthed on a pit of pebbles and gravel designed to absorb the shocks. It works, the statues are never bothered. Yay- science.

So, official statues 'borrowed' from erm...look at the pretty pictures!!!

What these photos utterly fail to express is the intimidating scale of this hall and the eerieness involved.

The statute are made of wood and painted with gold dust and they are built by many different artisans - which makes how similar they all look that much more terrifying.

When you turn the corner and see them all, it's definitely a 'wow' moment. Very impressive and the central image is, as always, gigantic.

It's still in service and there were devotees praying while we were there and monks everywhere snooping about waving incense, beeds and other......monk things.

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.