A Fall Day in Kyoto

“Presiding over the Southern Higashiyama Sightseeing district, with a brilliant view across the entire city, Kiyomizu-dera Temple is just about everything a temple shouldn’t be: it’s noisy, crowded, crassly commercial (in its sales of amulets and fortunes), and as gaudy as an attention-starved peacock, but it somehow manages to transcend all of this to become one of Kyoto’s most worthwhile temples to visit.”

-Chris Rowthorn

Although Japan can be a pleasure in any season to visit, there are two seasons that stand out.  Summer here can be very humid and hot.  Winter is, well winter - cold and snow - sometimes a lot of it.  There are snow monkeys though.

Old Town Kyoto

However Spring offers mild temperatures and Cherry blossoms making it the most popular time to visit (And most congested).  It can also rain a lot.

Fall offers mild temperatures as well as well as brilliant fall colors amongst the many temples to see.  Cyclone season is this time, but the risk is low.  Obviously we came in the Fall hoping to see the legendary glorious display of Fall colors.   For the most part we have been disappointed.  Despite being in the country when the leaves should be changing, they were late this year.  The news had a story on it here as well with local scientists attributing the late turning to climate change.

Finally, Kyoto delivered.  Perhaps in all the places we have seen, it could not be better here.

This is Kiyomizu-dera Temple, another of the great tourist bucket list spots here in the city.   This great temple is dedicated to the worship of the Buddhist deity Kannon.

The deity Kannon

It is very old, founded in 778 and shrouded in legend and mystery.  A pure water spring is found here and said to have mystical properties.

The temple in 1880

The highlight is this large stage that looks over the city and the Fall foliage.  There was a tradition here for many years that dated to the Edo period.  It was said that if you leaped off the stage into the void to land on the hard ground 43 feet below and survived; well you could have any wish you desire.

The stage

During the Edo period 234 people took the plunge and astonishingly 85% survived.  What became of their wishes is not recorded.  The practice was outlawed in 1872

One of the many, many school groups

The stage - and this is a light day

Just a small part of the crowd

Not surprisingly there were a lot of people here including the ubiquitous school field trip groups.  However, based on our own research, this crowd is relatively mild in size.  It can be as dense as a mosh pit at a Who concert here.   If you do not get here early in the morning or wait until late afternoon, you are pretty much doomed to crowd surf here.  As anyone can attest who has come to Kyoto, the sites here are often overrun with visitors.  It is hard to imagine anyone seeking quiet reflection and contemplation at these temples can find satisfaction with those goals.

Personally, I feel very grateful we had already seen some beautiful and peaceful sites across the country before coming to Kyoto.  The crowds, the many tourist t-shirt shops, and bad tempura restaurants that cluster around the locations can be very off putting.

This is also the Kyoto experience

We walked down from the hill side to find some lunch away from the madness and through some of the side streets here in the city.  Similar to our time in Seoul, there are dozens of shops that rent Kimonos here and hundreds of people were enjoying cos-play at the various sites.  Some of the costumes were quite colorful and added to the old buildings.  It is always fun seeing a young woman dressed up complete with a parasol as a 17th century geisha and texting on an iPhone at the same time.

I was getting a bit homeless looking with my grooming, I mean more than usual, and found a Japanese barber.   I was his only client that morning and I have never had a more pleasurable haircut and shave.  The careful detailed technique was a sublime pleasure.  The older man was like an artists as he was constantly using different ointments and gels to try to make my bald pate look better.  I am unsure if he succeeded in that department, but if I had Elon Musk’s money I would totally travel here every month just to have this artist work on me.

After a leisurely walk back to the hotel the day concluded.