Coffee culture is big in Japan

Kyoto is regarded as Japan’s spiritual heart and is the home for over 2000 temples and shrines, so if you want to overdose on Japanese religious architecture, tea rooms, and gardens, this is the place to do it. Tempting as it may well be for someone visiting for a short period of time, to try to cover as much of Kyoto as possible, it would be a mistake because you will be missing the very heart of what makes Kyoto so special. Better, to slow down, visit fewer places, and absorb because, as with most things in Japan, less is indeed more.

That said, while this was our third visit to Kyoto, it was the first with the boys, and we again fell into the trap of trying to see as much as possible in too short a time and record it on camera, to the extent that it became impossible to remember from the subsequent photos which temple is which!  So, in the subsequent sections, there is some focus on the major temples that we visited and a general section on the Northern Higashiyama district. In spite of my limited camera technique, a beautiful scene appears in almost every direction that the camera is pointed to the extent that it is easy to glaze over the many pictures taken.

But first things first. Kyoto is a major city in the Kansai region of the island of Honshu and is the capital of the Kyoto Prefecture. Osaka is about 25 minutes away by bullet train, while Tokyo is about 2 hours 30 minutes away. Any extended trip to Japan should include a visit to Kyoto as a counterpiece to the modernity of Tokyo or Osaka.

The history of Kyoto is very much caught in the see-saw of conflict and conquest as in the rest of Japan and since the buildings have traditionally been made of wood, built in the traditional way, much of Kyoto is not as old as it seems because of fires set deliberately at times of strife. But perhaps Kyoto’s and the world’s special piece of luck was that it was removed from a list of potential targets for an atomic bomb attack during WW2. Today, the temples, shrines, palaces and gardens collectively have been designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Click on smaller photos for larger size and correct aspect.