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I did a bunch of photography of Kyoto and Nara back in 2000, at the height of cherry-blossom season, so I was somewhat restrained this time around; there are no photographs at all of Nara here, although we did go there for a day. Overcast skies made most of these photos unworthy of the "artistic" section of this website, but they're presented here for completeness. The first ones are from Todai-ji, the tallest pagoda in Japan by a few centimeters, if I recall correctly, on the south side of the city.   Now we're at Kinka-koji, the Golden Temple, to the northwest of downtown Kyoto. After that, we visited a Zen rock garden nearby, and strolled around the rather large grounds there.       Next we took an interminably long bus ride to the east side of town (Kyoto is a big city!) to Ginka-koji, the silver temple that is the sister temple to Kinka-koji. It looks older, and is not visibly silver; but it has a more traditional, less kitschy feel to it that was nice.    Then we hopped in a taxi, hoping it would be faster than the bus (which it was) to a temple up in the hills a bit on the southeast of downtown. It was quite lovely; the way it was set into the trees on the hillside was very beautiful.       The next day we went to Nijo-jo and the Imperial Palace, huge complexes of gardens and buildings in the middle of the downtown area. These photos are all from those. Be warned that to go into the Imperial Palace you need a pass, which you get by standing in line with your passport ahead of time.                    Part 4: Kamikochi |
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