Let’s
start with this today: I am generally not fond of doing what average tourists
do. In the other words, I prefer not to go only ‘must-go’ places where tourism
brochures and guidebooks recommend us to visit or do (well, it doesn’t mean I
wouldn’t visit Taj Mahal if I got to Agra of India). I would rather do
something like trying local resident’s everyday walking course. That’s the
concept of the trip for today.
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| Hello! |
Kyoto
A
bit of background about Kyoto for you: Kyoto is generally known as the ancient
capital of Japan, according to Wikipedia (sorry for being lazy),
the city was the capital of Japan over 1000 years (four consecutive eras from
795A.D. to 1867A.D.) up until the
capital city was moved to Tokyo. Kyoto literally means Kyo(京)
– Prince and To(都)
- Capital. Thus, it means the capital city of prince is Kyoto. Interestingly, Tokyo
literally means To (東) – East and Kyo(京)
– Kyoto. Therefore it means East of Kyoto.
Considering
the fact that the city has a great and well preserved cultural significance,
the entire city is inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List as ‘Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto’, making one of the
best visited tourist destinations for both domestic and international tourists.
This medium sized city with some of 1.5million residents hosted 4.5 million
visiting tourists (Japan View, 2007). Consequently,
the major attraction of Kyoto is visiting temples and shrines, learning a history
of this ancient capital.
Daimonjiyama Mountain
Hike
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| Feel the earth! |
Daimonjiyama
Mountain(466m) is one of the mountains around the Kyoto Basin (yes, Kyoto is surrounded by
mountains ranging from those little ones to about 1000m ones). Daimonjiyama (Mt. Daimonoji) is one of
the local’s favourite Hiking rounte, with its easy to medium 45 min walk return.
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| Walking map of Mt. Daimonji |
My suggested route starts from just off the Ginkakuji Temple (Silver Pavilion). It’s a fairly enjoyable walk
which could be done with high heels on for girls (but not certainly
recommended). Anyway, it’s a good walk. This mountain
gets a bit busy on 'Gozan No Okuribi', every 16 August, the day when the mountain is decorated by the word '大','dai' which means big or giant, created by fire but otherwise, it a pretty quite trek to do.
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| Mt Daimonji (Normal) |
On the top you can get one of the best views of Kyoto City (personally, it is much better view than
the view from Kyoto Tower, which you have to pay to get in). You can end up the
walk at Honenin Temple, which is one of my heavily visited temple, as I like
the style of this beautifully yet sophisticated temple.
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| The view of Kyoto, The top of Mt. Daimonji |
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| The view of Kyoto, The top of Mt. Daimonji 2 |
Honenin Temple
Honenin
Temple is one of my favourite temples in the world (well, I’ve visited temples
in Indonesia and India before too).
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| The Gate of Honenin Temple |
It is not a massive temple like
Kiyomizudera Temple, it is rather one of the smallest ones but because its
small scale it has a full attention to the details of the set up of the temple (video-graphic image of the Temple). The generous dedication
to perfection is seen from every single angle of this temple. The way the
temple preserve is the harmony with the nature.
It means, the temple apparently looks like very wild and untouched, but
it’s been highly sophisticatedly well considered for its design mixing
different types of trees, flowers, moss and even roots of trees are integral
parts of this attractive design of the temple.
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| Sand Garden |
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| A bit of colour added |
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| Beautiful mix of different trees and vegetation |
Roots of trees are also the parts of the package
My journey still continues slowly for a little while.
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