A Day-Trip to Kyoto

The Forbidden Kyoto Imperial Palace, Kyoto

Our day trip to Kyoto was an interesting event to meet Yuki’s uncle and the tomb of another. It was an interesting experience to visit a small graveyard at a temple in Japan where there are many tombs of various sizes, all made out of granite. Typically, they were rectangular towers on square blocks with inscriptions such as the name and dates. There was also a small sink area and we cleaned the tombstone which is a pretty common practice for showing respect in Japan.

Entrance to the Temple, Kyoto

Photo by Yuki

I found the small graveyard a pretty calm and peaceful setting. Perhaps it was not being able to read the writing or distancing myself because I was in a different country, but it seemed a lot more peaceful than my image of graveyards in Canada which are large grassy fields with a lawnmower rumbling across in the distance.

Nijoji Castle, Kyoto

A family portrait in front

Visiting Nijoji castle afterwards was interesting to see the insides of an ancient Japanese building. In addition to having hallways with floorboards that intentionally creek to alert the occupants to intruders, the building is raised above ground to facilitate natural ventilation and cooling through the floorboards from underneath. I found the walk through the building rather confusing as there are a lot of rooms to walk around but the paper screens that divide walls were really cool to see.

The Kyoto Imperial Park nearby also had a distinctive bridge which I was able to photograph. I found this park odd because it’s mostly large tracks of gravel. It’s so much gravel that there are distinctive bike paths along the most frequented routes. Fortunately, there was also a small pond with turtles, koi, and a heron.

A bridge over the Turtles, Kyoto Imperial Palace Park

This park use to be a highly functional political and economic centre and I think, over time as structures died or burned down they weren’t replaced which lead to the large tracks of gravel leading up to the forbidding walls of the palace.

It was a pretty empty place without many people around but that didn’t make it bad or odd. We snoozed on some benches and used Yuki’s umbrella for shade for a while before our last stop of the day at Heian Jingu Shrine.

Heian Jingu Shrine, Kyoto
I’d really like to go back here at the right time of year to enter the expansive gardens in the back. There’s a fee attached but the shrine maps make it look like it would be an incredibly picturesque place.