So, this is our penultimate blog for our Japan leg of our journey.
Over the past week we have managed to visit 14 of top 15 temples/shrines and a host of smaller ones. The city of Kyoto is amazing as it surrounded by hills with huge temples overlooking the city and literally hundreds of smaller temples down narrow side streets – plus visiting the ‘Geisha district’ of Gion where the 70 practicing geishas still operate.
The highlights of theses temples being Kiyomizu Temple, Higashi Honganji Temple, Kinkakuj Temple (Golden Temple), Fushimi Inari Shrine (this is the shrine with more than 1,000 Tori gates that cost between 400K to 1M Yen!!), Tofukuji Temple, Nishi Honganji Temple, Yasaka Shrine, Temple, Imperial Palace and Nijo Castle – without a doubt the most visually stunning one being the ‘Golden Temple’.
We also went to Arashiyama went to see a Bamboo Grove which doesn’t sound that interesting but the feeling of peace and tranquility is sooo cool. We also had to (well choose to) climb to the top of Mount Arashiyama to see some more monkeys, but these weren’t in snow this time. During the hike up we walked across a bridge and were lucky to see a Kingfisher diving into the water.
In addition, we visited city of Nara where deer are revered, and as such they are just walking throughout the town. Interestingly, when you bow down to the deer them they all bow back – just like the Hippogriff in Harry Potter. Whilst in Nara we also had to visit the massive Todaiji temple, due to the fact there was a 15 metre Buddha (some other stats Head 6.7 metre, Hands 2.56 metres and fingers 1.08 metres).
To ease our sore feet from all the walking, we have splashed out to sty in a hotel for a couple of days – and we have the luxury of ‘foot baths’ to relax our feet.
Following over a month of non stop travelling seeing both large cities and small towns we’ve reached saturation point (you can only see so many temples, shrines and monuments) and need some down time. Therefore, before our final 4 days in Fukuoka on the mainland we’ve replanned and decided to fly to the Japanese island of Okinawa, which is 2.5 hours away. This change in scenery will allow us to recharge and come back to view the Sakura (Cherry blossom) for the very last time.
