Kyoto, Round 1, Wrap Up

It's a quiet morning here at Yoshimizu Inn. We're all recovering from the various animal sakes we drank last night, and it's raining fiercely outside. So, I'll use this time to ponder Kyoto and what we've seen since we're moving onto Nara today by train.

I didn't give you a good scope of what we saw Thursday or Friday, so I should do that here. Thursday was the day of walking, and we went from Kyoto Station and the Toji market to the 10,000 torii walk (Fushimi-Inari) to the Silver Pavilion (Ginakakuji). We ended the day with a long trek to the beer garden down the Philosopher's Walk along the canal. On Friday (which feels like a million years ago even though it was just yesterday), we started off the morning at a quiet retreat that is now a temple at the foot of the mountains called Shisen-do and then we walked to the modern art museum to have lunch. We saw a traditional Kyoto craft exhibit and a mid-century Modern performing arts complex. We then went to Nijo castle, a huge fortification in Kyoto that was meant to protect the imperial palace, and then we moved on to Okariba, the infamous restaurant.

Since this is an architecture trip, I'll make a few related comments. Kyoto is a much more historical, small-scale city than Tokyo. It's all mid-rise buildings where the extremely old mixes with the modern. We've seen temples from the 700s and modern houses being built right now. What strikes me about Japanese architecture that I had learned about but wasn't something I really understood is that the gardens and landscape are just as important as the building. You'll walk off a busy street into a quiet home and move through to the courtyard that has rock gardens, perfectly manicured bushes, and then maybe see the wild forest beyond. Also, the indoors and outdoors blend frequently. A home will have sliding panels for walls so the entire building opens to the outside, and there are frequently covered outdoor spaces used for circulation that connect actual buildings or wrap around the building as a gallery. It's amazing. So, I have loved Kyoto; everyone has. We're glad to be coming back here in a week or so for more.