Tuesday May 26

In the morning we went to Kinkaku-ji, a golden pavilion temple that was originally built in 1397 for a Shogun as his retirement home. When he died it was converted to a Zen temple by his son. It has been burned down three times in its history, the latest being in 1950. It was rebuilt in 1955. The temple is amazing because the top two floors are covered in gold leaf. It is set in front of a pond where you can see a clear reflection of the building on the water.
The next temple we visited was called Kiyomizu, a Buddhist temple, which means clear water. The temple is high above the city and its buildings are built on the hill. It was originally built in 798 and the current buildings date from 1633. There was an old tradition that if one jumped off the 13 m high stage an survived then their wish would be granted. There is also a stream that flows through the area where drinking from each of the three streams confers wisdom, health, and longevity. It is said to be bad to drink from all three because it shows that you are greedy and misfortune would happen to you. So I only drank from two. The area had great views of the city and really cool pagoda.
Finally the last temple we went to was called the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This shrine is based at the foot of a mountain and the paths are lined with Torii or large orange gates. Each of these gates are donated by businesses in hopes that their business will be prosperous. There are also many statue of foxes around the shrine because it was thought to be the messenger of the god. The place was amazing. We hiked about 30 minutes up the mountain on paths that were covered with orange gates, one after the other. It was very neat to see these bright orange gates run through the forest. At the top we took another path back down and ended up in a neighborhood where we had no idea where we were. We had a certain time to get back and the people we asked did not know English. Eventually we started running through the maze of streets trying to find a main street. We found the street and asked a shopkeeper where the shrine or train station was and we got in a cab which brought us all the way back to Kyoto.
It is amazing that these sites have been maintained for centuries and are still a place or worship after all these years.