Traditional Kyoto

Up front, I should have known better but blaming George is so much easier. After all, it was his idea that we should take the ship’s tour today  rather than explore on our own. Exploring would have worked had we stayed in Kobe where we docked, but noooo, he wanted to see temples & palaces in historic Kyoto. Yes, I know that Kyoto was the capital for centuries upon centuries and important in both the history of emperors and shoguns (objectively – the Wikipedia article is reasonably informative and provides further links and references.

(Cue in 90 minute bus ride on an elevated highway while the tour guide talked nonstop.)

Our first stop was an historic  Buddhist temple. Home to 1600 statues of Buddha + several dozen representatives of other gods (India pantheon I am assuming based on all statues with multiple arms). There are no photos – no shoes, no photos. I can understand both – with thousands of tourists from foreigners to school children tramping through everyday the wear and tear on old flooring would be horrible. As for the no photos – well it is one way to sell more books.

Ignoring my general crankiness, all of this might have fine had it not been for the incense. I should have remembered from India & Nepal that temples = incense. I hate the smell and find the taste even worse than Paxlovid if that gives you the idea of how strong it all was.  I escaped fairly quickly and went to walk the grounds instead.

Instead I enjoyed the small reflective pond and admired

the roofline at the end of the temple

and the gate off to one side of the main complex.

From there we went on to the historic Shogun Palace and (obliviously shoeless) walked through the palace with seemingly endless corridors passing to the outside of rooms with sliding panel walls, murals of tigers, pines, cranes etc depending on the use of that particular room. Again – no photos allowed and I am not feeling tacky enough at the moment to photo the brochure.

Instead – the architectural detail of the outside were what I found more fascinating –

from the entry to the roofline details on various buildings –

I but I especially loved the cranes

and the outside pond with small waterfall

The final stop for me was lunch at the Shozon Resort.

The last stop was The Golden Temple? I skipped it  which turned out to be a good decision as there was “something” going on and no one got inside)