Day 17

We got up a little late and had a 'fast food' breakfast of grilled fish and fried beef with rice, coleslaw, and miso soup. Not a bad breakfast for about 4 pounds. We took a few trains to Kyoto; we had unfinished business there!

The first destination was Sanjusangendo, famous for housing 1000 life-size statues of Kannon (the buddhist god of mercy). Once we left the station and headed off I felt my back starting to get wet. I dropped my rucksack as fast as I could and removed the, now burst, bladder from it. Damn! oh well, all my possessions seemed okay. I dumped the bladder and continued on. We stopped in at a post office to withdraw some money. Card denied. Turns out Nationwide considered my trip to Koyasan to be 'unusual activity', despite my informing them of my visit to Japan. I sent some emails to try and solve the problem.

We continued on until we arrived at Sanjusangendo. The hall is very long, as it is required to hold so many life sized statues, and plain of colour, wooden and white, but it was once painted in vibrant blues, yellows, and reds to mimic the kaleidoscopic nature of buddha's world. I like it better like this. In the near distance cranes reconstruct the city and a helicopter circles overhead. The new and the old sit side by side together.

A cleverly designed layered wooden foundation makes this building earthquake resistant

Inside two sets of ten tiered rows of 50 standing golden statues of Kannon await, with one large Buddha between each group of  500. Each Kannon has 42 arms (although it is called the 1000 arm Kannon) each holding some kind of implement which helps to ease the suffering of the people, and improve their joy. At first the Kannons look identical except for the location of the patches of black rust upon their shining gold leaf. They stand, eyes closed and at peace. Upon further inspection however they each have slightly different features, a straighter moustache here, gaunter cheeks there. They were in fact created by 700 craftsmen, so the similarity is rather impressive. A further 28 Japanese guardian deities, such as Fujin (god of wind) and Raijin (god of thunder), protect the hall.

A strictly no photos policy was in place, which irritated me for the same reason as it did in Kamakura. I still did not know whether the reason was financial or religious however. Walking around behind all the statues more 

information about the hall was available. It used to be home to an annual archery festival, Toshiya, in which an event called Oyakazu (many arrows) was held. The archer would sit at one end of the veranda outside the hall and fire arrows at a target at the other end of the veranda (120 metres away) for 24 hours without break. Records are kept and the greatest ever competitor, Wasa Daihachiro, fired 13,053 arrows of which 8,133 hit the Target. This is an amazing feat. Remember these are traditional Japanese bows, not recurve bows!

I headed into the gift shop and found various photos of the statues for sale, thereby confirming my more cynical hypothesis about the financial motivation behind the prohibition on photography. How disappointing. But it is for this reason that I am able to direct you to this wiki page to see them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sanjusangendo_1979.1.55P01B.jpg.

We left and started walking towards the Kiyonomizu temple, being only briefly distracted by the Kyoto museum advertising its exhibition of one of Rodin's thinking men. On the way we stopped into a shop selling rather stunning traditional Japanese crockery at equally stunning prices.

yup, that says 100,000 yen.

Following the wrong path up the hill towards Kiyonomizu we found ourselves in another large cemetery, but didn't hang around for long. We turned back and headed up the correct path past rows of omiyage (souvenir) shops selling fans, swords, jewellery, matcha (rice flour based cakes to have with green tea), and just about every green tea flavoured sweet imaginable. When we arrived the temple looked impressive, but much like many we have seen. A large gate, a pagoda, a few temple buildings. A bell tower still had buddha's colours applied.

Colourful painting is the gate to buddha-land!

When we reached the main building the view was good, but nothing compared to mount Misen on Miyajima, or the Umeda Sky Building, since it does not face the city and the trees cannot be viewed far into the distance. The view of the main building from a side building is actually far more impressive.

Kiyonomizu (perfect water) temple.

The statue of Buddha inside Kiyonomizu did not have any restrictions on photography, which seems to confirm my earlier hypothesis.

When we were done we left and, after grabbing a green tea ice cream filled choux pastry (surprisingly good), we started walking to Fushimi inari shrine (famous for its 1000 torii). After repeatedly cross referencing the appalling tourist map of Kyoto with local maps and course correcting as necessary we found ourselves on a tiny hill path behind a suburb. Almost ready to turn back I asked a man walking his dog "sen torii, doko desu ka?" (i had forgotten the name). "fushimi inari?" He asked and when I confirmed he continued "masugu itte. Ikimasu. Ki o tsukete." Pointing the way. What a kind old man. Thank goodness he was around to help. So we continued hiking up the dirt path, for it was steep, and eventually found a torii, then a few more, then a dense row of them forming a path which split and regrouped forming loops. We came across this sign a few times which made us giggle:

The first rule of monkey club is, you do not talk about monkeys!

We took a 30 minute walk around the largest loop, which led us up into the forested hillside and past many smaller shrines. Each torii has inscribed upon it a name and the amount of money that person donated to the shrine in order to buy the torii. I began touching each gate and counting in Japanese. I reached hyaku hachi jyu (180) and gave up; the torii were so closely packed that were I to count them all I would have been there for half a day. However we did get some lovely pictures and videos.

To get this photo I pressed the button on the camera and then sprinted up the stairs!

When we finally left the Fushimi Inari shrine we found the main entrance with its giant Torii, shrine buildings and two of these fearsome fellows:

Nature's guardian

We caught the train back to Osaka since it was getting late. It's probably possible to do all of that in less than the 6 hours it took us, however you'd need to do a lot less walking and get lost far fewer times, and what would be the point in that?

Now we're off for some yakitori and beers to celebrate the conclusion of our time in the Kansai region of Japan, for tomorrow we head back to Tokyo where many wonders may await us, such as Sumo or Tsukiji Fish Market. Who knows for certain? Not I! Tune in next time on Khan and Ed's aimless wanderings in the land of the rising sun!