All Shrined Out

It is our last day in Kyoto, so apart from a little wander around Nishiki Market to look at the weird food we thought it was an ideal day to do a few more shrines and temples.

There are over 1600 to see in Kyoto, so we were never going to manage them all. When I first started looking at them I was taken with the idea. I’m not against religion. I think it’s comforting. Growing up in England, with my High Church grandparents and the baptist minister’s children as best friends my experience of religion has mostly been Christian. My Welsh grandmother (on the other side) was always more open to my questions and told me about other religion’s beliefs whenever she got stumped. I remember quite liking the idea of a religion with loads of gods, rather than one all powerful being. For me, Christianity was always a bit violent. As I grew up and started doing Yoga I thought I preferred Buddhism because it was more peaceful. It was just a shame that I’ve stamped on so many snails.

The problem with seeing so many in four days is that you start to get temple/shrine overload. They all blend into one and you confuse them with the palaces, which seem to have shrines in anyway. There are Buddhist temples and Shintō Shrines. I think some have elements of both. Then, I think some are purely old houses that someone has turned into a tourist attraction. (I could be wrong about this).

Today was a day to search for happiness. There are a couple of people in my life who I think need a bit of help and so I decided to make today about thinking of them. I’m not above a little superstition and this trip has helped me find a little more peace, so there’s no harm in spreading it around a bit.

The Long Suffering Husband had checked the internet and found that Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine and  the Kiyomizu-Dera temple were on most of the ‘must do’ itineraries.  The guidebooks told us to get  to Fushimi Inari early for that Instagram moment. We have been following an influencer around and her holiday looks exhausting a cold. She’s always in some flimsy floppy dress being told where to stand and how to look. We aren’t photogenic enough for Instagram but aren’t too keen on crowds, so we were there at about 9am.

 

I’d read somewhere that this was a shrine people made a pilgrimage to at the beginning of a new year to wish for happiness and that it was a climb to the top that made all the difference. We got some of the way up when the LSH claimed that I had broken him again. His other calf muscle had popped but as I wanted to get to the top he said he’d wait for me.

Once I was on my own my thoughts started to be less sensible.
“The staff are a bit miserable here.....Bit ironic for a happiness shrine....oh, look, this is actually a Torii gate forest....there are lots of ‘Don’t’ signs....how do you see eyes with a monkey?...”
I tried to make myself concentrate.
“Come on Julia this is a wish for happiness. It’s never going to work if you keep getting distracted.”
I did my best to focus and only stopped for a little while to take photos of the man painting the gates but, as my friend who teaches RE occasionally says, “It’s all made up anyway.”

On the way down I took a time lapse picture to show the LSH that he didn’t miss much. We noticed all the signs on the way down and he suggested that we should rename it The Don’t Shrine. I’m not sure if he means don’t bother.

Kiyomizu Temple was more promising. You could tell it was a bit more up market because instead of fast food stands on the way to it there were cute little pottery shops. It was like comparing Market Harborough to Leicester, or Maldon to Basildon. This had all our favourite things. Gorgeous, peaceful gardens (embrace the moss), singing birds, an enormous temple, a pagoda (the LSH loves a pagoda), a giant singing bowl, a gentle climb to the top, some fat Buddha statues and a sense of peace on top of the clouds. The only downside is that has scaffolding around the large hall while it is being renovated.

It also had O Amorim charms for happiness, so I could buy a couple and let someone else do the magic.  As we walked back we stumbled across several other shrines and temples that we hadn’t seen. Each time we looked at each other and said, “Nah, can’t be bothered. I’m all shrined out.”