Coming to Kyoto

I arrived in Kyoto after a three-hour Shinkansen (high-speed rail) journey from Adawara Station (the closest Shinkansen station to Hakone). I’m already having second thoughts about my booking in Kyoto.

It’s not that I regret coming. It’s the opposite. I loved Kyoto when I visited seven years ago, on my only other trip to Japan so far in my life. I haven’t even been here even half a day yet this time, but I already fear I haven’t booked long enough in Kyoto. I’ll be here for four nights. That gives me less than half a day today, and then three more full days. That may not be sufficient. We’ll see.

First, a word about the Shinkansen trains: they are amazing. Alright, that was three words, not a word. The point is, they’re amazing.

I read somewhere that Shinkansen trains are late by an average of 30 seconds. I’ve only been on two of them so far this trip (I have more Shinkansen trips to go before I return to Toronto), but the two data points so far support that. Both trains were spot on time. And I seem to remember having the same experience for all the Shinkansen trains I took on my previous trip to Japan.

We don’t have high-speed trains back home in Canada yet. The government is in the planning stages of a line. I was about to say, “We’ll see.” But I’m now 72, and I can say that only for a little more than a month. Canada may eventually get high-speed rail. If it happens, will I live to see it? Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, my experience with our non-high-speed rail is that it’s rarely on time. I don’t know the statistics, but I’m fairly certain that Via Rail (the Canadian passenger rail crown corporation) trains are late, on average, closer to 30 minutes than 30 seconds. And sometimes they’re delayed even more than that. Heavy sigh.

I arrived at my hotel in Kyoto at around two in the afternoon, which left me a little time to tour a bit. I spent that time visiting a temple and a tower.

Sanjusangen-do Temple

The temple was the Sanjusangen-do Temple. It’s not awe-inspiring to look at from the outside, just a long, low building with what I think of as a characteristically Japanese peaked roof.

When I say long, I mean long. According to my walking tour app, it’s 118 meters (387 feet) long. The app also says that it’s the longest wooden building in the world. I can’t vouch for that. It’s certainly long, but I’m a bit skeptical about it being the longest. If it’s the longest, someone else will want to build an even longer one, just to get in the record books. And there can be only one “the most” of anything. It’s hard to believe that little, old me saw a “the most” anything.

The temple was originally built in the 1160s, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1249. It was rebuilt shortly after that.

There are a couple of rules that visitors to Sanjusangen-do Temple must follow. First, you must remove your shoes before taking so much as a step into the temple. You leave your shoes in one of the cubbyholes provided. There is a subsidiary, unspoken rule to that one. For the entire time you’re in the temple, you are required to worry fiercely that your shoes won’t still be there when you get back to the cubbyholes. But that might just be me.

The second rule is that you can take all the pictures you want outside the temple, but nary a one anywhere inside the temple. This rule was verbalized by the ticket seller outside the temple and reinforced by myriad large signs inside.

That’s a shame because the interior is spectacular and mesmerizing.

An open space runs the length of the temple beside one wall for visitors to walk along. There is another walkway on the opposite side of the temple, but it’s essentially a hall. A wall separates it from the rest of the temple.

It’s what’s between those two hallways that makes the place magical. Behind a low barrier along the open visitors’ route, there is an evenly spaced row of 30 stone statues, evenly spaced, that is, except for a gap in the centre of the length of the temple. Two are statues of gods, the Thunder God and the Wind God. The other 28 are statues of deities. Don’t ask me what the difference is between a god and a deity. I’m just relaying what the signage said.

Many of the god and deity statues have fierce and/or resolute visages. Some are wearing or carrying things like dragons or snakes. One has three arms on each side of his body.

A sign in the temple says that the god and deity statues are almost life-size. Which raises the question in my mind, “What the what? How the heck do they know what the size of a god or other deity is in real life?”

In addition to the general sign that mentions the scale of the god and deity statues, there are individual signs in front of each god and deity naming them and describing their role.

(Thankfully, the signs were in Japanese and English.)

Behind the row of gods and deities, there are ten tiers, each running the entire length of the building except for the same gap in the centre as for the gods and deities. Each tier is, I’m guessing here, a little higher than a normal household stair riser.

The tiers are deep enough to barely hold a human-sized, humanoid statue. That’s what they hold. Standing on each tier is a tightly spaced row of statues.

The statues aren’t placed haphazardly. They form a series of columns up the tiers. But the columns aren’t at a 90-degree angle to the front. They are at a slight angle to an imaginary perpendicular line.

The statuses are gold- and grey-coloured. In total, there are exactly 1,000 of them.

According to a leaflet handed out at the temple, the statues are of “the Buddhist deity, Juichimen-senju-Sengen Kanzeon, which is often called by the simplified name, ‘Kannon’.” The leaflet also says that the statues are made of Japanese cypress.

All of the 1,000 Kannon statues are standing. Each has a different countenance. And the adornments differ slightly among them.

Of the Kannon statues, 124 are the originals that were made in the 12th century. The other 876 original statutes were destroyed in the fire in 1249. The replacements in the temple now were made in the 13th century.

So, what is in that gap in the centre of the length of the room? There’s another Kannon sculpture. But this one is sitting and significantly larger.

In the hallway behind the statues, there are displays of artifacts and text describing some of the temple’s history and its activities. There are also two touch-screen displays. Visitors can use them to call up a map of the 1,000 statues, then zoom in on individual ones. The display then provides a close-up picture and the name of that Kannon. (Each has a different name.)

On the home screen of the display, there’s an option to select Japanese or English. When I selected English, the names were in English. But when it zoomed in on the specific Kannon, the screen provided the name again in Japanese and English and then a long block of text only in Japanese. I have no idea what it said.

It’s an amazing sight to see. They wouldn’t let me take pictures inside, but the temple has a picture of a portion of the 1,000 standing Kannon statues on its website. (I couldn’t find an English option on its website, but your browser should be able to translate it for you.)

Outside the temple, there’s a small garden with trees and two ponds. There are no fish in the ponds. Sorry.

At one end of the garden, there’s a lovely, bright orange structure holding the temple’s large bell and its chiming rod.

The temple made for a great start to my visit to Kyoto.

Kyoto Tower

There’s an interesting story about the design of the Kyoto Tower. Its Japanese architect was inspired on a visit to the United States. There, in a small town in Connecticut, history does not record which one, he went to a fall fair. He was intrigued by the novelty-food booths at the fair. His favourite was a vendor who sold donuts on straight, pure white candy cane sticks.

They were plain donuts, but decorated with candied sugar protrusions on the perimeter of the pastry. The vendor sold the confection on a stick wide enough such that, when stuck through the donut hole, the donut remained in place near the top of the stick due to friction.

This both amused and energized the architect. He used the mental image he had of the donut on a stick as the basis for his design of the Kyoto Tower.

I thought that was an exceptionally beguiling story. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered to fabricate it. In truth, I know nothing about what inspired the design of the tower, but it looks like a giant donut on a stick to me.

A leaflet handed out at the tower told me that it was completed on December 25th, 1964. It was then soon visited by three wise men who were guided there by a bright star in the sky, as opposed to a dim star in Hollywood. No, of course, the leaflet didn’t mention the part about the wise men and the star, but it did say the Kyoto Tower was fully completed on December 25th, 1964.

I had been a bit hesitant about going up the tower because when I arrived at its base, sundown was less than half an hour away. I worried that there wouldn’t be enough light to see anything clearly.

In addition, it’s not terribly tall. Back in Tokyo, the Tokyo Tower‘s two observation decks are 150 and 250 metres high. And the Tokyo Skytree‘s two decks are 350 and 450 metres up. The Kyoto Tower’s one observation deck, in contrast, is only 100 metres high.

Nevertheless, I did go up to the observation deck. Despite my reservations, I was able to get a good view of Kyoto from up there.

There are two parallel mountain ranges on either side of Kyoto. The city sprawls considerably between them.

Kyoto is a much shorter city than Tokyo. Kyoto has some high-rises and a lot of mid-rises. Furthermore, a sizeable proportion of the city is low-rise. But, unlike Tokyo, there are no skyscrapers that I saw in Kyoto. The Kyoto Tower is the tallest structure here.

(I can’t believe that it was only after typing the preceding paragraph that I noticed for the first time that Tokyo and Kyoto both have the same letters when written in English, but in a different order. Does that cause a problem for people with dyslexia?)

One of the advantages of heading up the tower just before sundown is that you get to witness the sunset. In Kyoto, the sun sets behind one of the mountain ranges. It was gorgeous. That must mean it rises above the range on the other side of Kyoto, but I’ll never see it.

That was not a bad less-than-half-a-day in Kyoto, I’d say. More tomorrow.