Kyoto

Kyoto offers up a smorgasbord of visual delights in a very compact area. Sim and I took a vaguely planned wander early one evening and bumped into three of them without even trying!

Here are some of my favourite moments:

Walking to the top of Mt Inari at the Fushimi Inari Taisha (Shinto shrine) and having some quiet moments with the torii gates and smaller shrines along the way. I especially loved when the throngs of visitors slowed to a trickle and I could hear the stream, birds and chanting…

Having a giggle taking silly selfies with Sim at Yasaka Koshindo, a small Buddhist temple with prayers written on thousands of colourful balls, and then sharing photo-taking services with what looked like a Japanese mother and daughter dressed in kimonos (no photo as I didn’t ask their permission to publish). They even wanted a photo with me in it!

The grand Kiyomizu-dera Buddhist temple. This is one that Sim and I ‘stumbled’ upon late one afternoon (as much as you can stumble upon a large temple!). We went back early the next morning with Aelie and walked through the whole thing, including scooping water from the streams of the Otowa Waterfall. The structure of the Hondo (main hall) is very impressive and there are plenty of arresting views.

Visiting the Yasaka Shrine in the evening, lovely for a number of reasons. It was cooler for one and there were slightly less people. But something also felt a little magic about this place. Maybe I caught Aelie’s buzz as she raced around taking photos, or perhaps it was watching the lanterns sway in the breeze, or maybe the vibe was related to the Gion Matsuri festival that was on while we were there and for which this shrine is a key location. Either which way, ‘twas lovely.

Chilling out by the Katsura River near the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, watching Sim and Aelie and other families skipping stones. I really appreciate all the ‘sites’ but, so often, the moments I enjoy the most are small, unplanned, peaceful interludes with my people, usually in nature, often by or in water, and often involving me looking up at the sky through some leaves.

Turning a corner in the small, peaceful moss gardens at Gio-ji Temple to this iridescent vision!

Discovering Black Thunder chocolate! This is a cocoa-flavoured cookie with rice puffs covered in chocolate. I love the advertising on the package, which Google translates as: ‘chocolate feeling of 200%’ and, depending on which angle I hold the bar, ‘thousand and three mouths full of desire’ or ‘chocolate greed is satisfied’. Given how much my sweet tooth has rebounded after relaxing my FODMAP intake, it really does feel like I have a thousand and three mouths full of desire for chocolate!

While we’re on sweet treats, I also really fell for ice-cream, brownie, cream and chocolate topping-filled crepes. Gonna try and replicate that when we get home! I really love the cold of the ice-cream in amongst the rest of the concoction - it reminds me of a candy I read about in a sci-fi book when I was a kid that has really stuck with me!

Alongside all of this loveliness, a couple of factors coincided for us here, giving us some more challenging moments:

• It’s really, freakin’ hot in Japan in summer! And more so in Kyoto, where the surrounding hills create a bit of a heat sink.
• For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to book a traditional wooden townhouse in the historic Gion area for 6 nights - think tiny, two-storey hostel with steep stairs, paper-thin walls and shared bathrooms, set on a tiny alleyway and with questionable hazard safety. I must have thought it would be like a ryokan. It had some charms, but these wore off as my sleep took a nose dive and the pain around my serratus anterior flared up again with very little space in which to exercise and stretch it out.
• Kyoto’s compactness concentrates its gazillion visitors so it can feel jam packed at times in places like the major shrines/temples, Pontocho Alley and Nishiki Market.
• The first few weeks of travel honeymoon started to wear off and we hit a bit of homesickness and ‘speed wobbles’ in trying to adjust to a more leisurely pace (less ‘days governed by sightseeing’ and more allowing for smaller, unpredictable moments, ideally involving engagement with local folks).

All part of the process!

Next stop: Shingu and the Kumano-Kodo pilgrimage area