22. Uji

Stubbornly I'm sticking with the timeline I laid out for the day, i.e. Kyoto temple, then I guess go to hotel and change clothes, train to Nara for a long day of hiking and temples. It gets a bit more complicated, because I'm sure that on the way back to Kyoto we stopped at the small town of Uji, pictured here. This is Byodo-in, built in the 10th century as a home for one of the Fujiwara clan. As usual, it was converted into a Buddhist temple after his death. It's incredibly elaborate for a Japanese building, which generally lean heavily toward minimalism. Unfortunately, it was also under renovation, so it was pretty much a big construction site when we were there, so I'm impressed we were able to cover up most of the ugliness in these photos.

The Fujiwara family built Kojuku-ji temple in Kyoto in the 600's, but decided to move it to Nara 100 years later to consolidate their religious complexes in the new capital. While they were powerful, they clearly weren't prescient, as the capital promptly moved to Kyoto almost as soon as they had moved this temple in the opposite direction. This was a Shinto shrine as well, but did something of a merger with a neighboring Buddhist temple, and now it's a bit of both, just like Japan. There are two pagodas, both pictured here, with the five story one at left the second tallest in Japan. I didn't see many Japanese pagodas in my travels, mostly I think due to the fact that they attract lightning so most burn down over the years, but you'll see lots of exuberant pagodas when/if I get to blogging about our Nepal trip.

After lunch, we walked deep into the forest to get to our next temple, Kasuga Taisha, which I think is the coolest of the bunch although quite out of the way. There are lots of windy paths through the forest that eventually will take you here, but once you get anywhere near the place, the path is lined with thousands of stone lanterns, which is a really striking sight. The temple itself has lots more lanterns inside, as you'll see, and twice a year, it has a lantern festival where all the walkway and temple lanterns are lit, which must take forever. It's a Shinto temple, built by the powerful Fujiwara family as their family temple when Nara was capital.