Osaka Trip (4)

On Sunday,we went for a day trip to Kyoto. We took the bullet train ride or Shinkansen. It was very fast! It only took us 15 minutes to travel from Osaka to Kyoto.

Kyoto is mainly famous for it's shrine, temples, castles and scenery. First stop is the Fushimi Inari Shrine. It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari, which stands at 233 meters and belongs to the shrine grounds. Foxes are thought to be Inari's messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds. Unfortunately, we are too tired to hike up to the mountain.

Next, we took a cab to Sanjusangendo Hall. It is a temple which is famous for its 1001 statues of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. The temple was founded in 1164 and rebuilt a century later after the original structure had been destroyed in a fire.  In the center of the main hall sits a large, wooden statue of a 1000-armed Kannon (Senju Kannon) that is flanked on each side by 500 statues of human sized 1000-armed Kannon standing in ten rows. Together they make for an awesome sight. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the temple. 

We did a lot of walking on that day. From Sanjusangendo, we walked for about 30 minutes to Kiyomizudera Temple. We stopped halfway for lunch. We had ramen as usual. 

Kiyomizudera (means "Pure Water Temple") is one of the most celebrated temples of Japan. It is best known for its wooden stage that juts out from its main hall, 13 meters above the hillside below. The main hall, which together with the stage was built without the use of nails, houses the temple's primary object of worship, a small statue of the eleven faced, thousand armed Kannon. We stopped for ice-creams again as usual. After that, we took the train to Nijo Castle.

Nijo Castle was built in 1603 as the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period (1603-1867). His grandson Iemitsu completed the castle's palace buildings 23 years later.

The castle can be divided into three areas: the Honmaru (main circle of defense), the Ninomaru (secondary circle of defense) and some gardens that encircle the Honmaru and Ninomaru. The entire castle grounds and the Honmaru are surrounded by stone walls and moats.

By the time, we finished visiting Nijo Castle, it was already dark. We took the train back to Osaka and had dinner before heading back to our hotel...........