One of the top tourist attractions in a city full of them is Kiyomizudera temple. Situated in the hills to the east of the city it’s a large and important temple complex with a good view of the city, and historic and charming shopping streets lead to and from the temple. All of this adds up to – a lot of tourists.
My plan was to was to walk to it from Yasaka shrine, which we had visited Saturday evening, following various paths and Nene-no-michi street. Nene, as I found out, was Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s wife (well, one of his wives, and the principle one) who was accomplished in her own right, and after her husbands death, she became a Buddhist nun and founded the temple of Kodai-ji. Which, as it turns out, is on Nene-no-michi street, and which I wandered into with no prior plan to do so.
This being Kyoto, there were a variety of things to see even before I got to Kodai-ji…
As you can see, there were any number of things I could stop and look at, though my goal was Kiyomizudera and the streets leading up to it. Then I saw a sign for “Zen temple”, and these stairs leading up and I thought, well why not?
Kodai-ji was pretty, peaceful, and relaxing. Which was good, because pretty soon I arrived at the first of the streets leading to Kiyomizudera, which were a bit busy.
Finally arrived at Kiyomizudera temple… along with everybody else.
I elected not to go into the temple. I thought I could walk around to some parts below the temple (including a spring which is the “mizu” part of the name, meaning water) but apparently that was part of the paid area. Still, found a nice garden.
Out and About 