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japan » day 10 » cemetery in arashiyama

japan » day 11 » ryoan-ji

Kyoto is famous of their infinite number of temples and shrines, old building, Japanese gardens, imperial garden and palace and the geishas. Having only one and half days in Kyoto (what is way less you really want to spend there) we tried to get the most in little time: we hit Ryoan-ji (The Temple of the Dragon in Peace) as our target. Old temple (now everybody knows that because it ends with -ji, right?) with many sub-temples and zen gardens. All of this it one place, nice one!

Here you can find photos of the temple itself and the garden between the sub-temples. Unfortunately the main temple was closed.

The garden was very nice, but it is hard to take good photos to preserve the atmosphere. So if you want to see impressive zen gardens: please wait a soon to come post about a sub-temple or even better, click here!

japan » finnish » neljä

Ehkä söpö was already presented here, but it seems Japanese has their particular Finnish fetish (but what kind of fetish they don’t have?). Anyway, here it is our second contestant.

For non-Finnish speaking humans: neljä = four

japan » day 09 » different deer, same sound

japan » day 09 » hand cleaning tools in front of the todai-ji temple

japan » day 09 » feeding the animals

This is a very special place because they (or rather we) were separated.

japan » day 09 » todai-ji and the great buddha

The main reason of visiting Nara: Todai-ji temple: largest wooden building in the world, biggest Buddha statue in Japan, largest bronze Buddha statue of the world. Pretty impressive facts and not to forget that the building itself is also pretty impressive.

japan » day 09 » sacred places in nara

Few of the many temples and shrines located in Nara Park. Hard to walk few ten meters not to see one. It is good to know that the traditional Japanese religion, the Shintoism and the Buddhism can live near each other without any problem, they don’t mind if there is a shrine near a temple or such.

Few basic (and relatively easy observable) differences:

Shintoism

shrines 

clapping is okay before praying

shrines are centered around gods

the name of shrines ends usually with Jingu

one or more torii archways

Buddhism

temples

silent prayers

temples are centered around Buddha

name of the temples ends with Ji

instead of torii-s there are pagodas

japan » people » nara

Cheese!