We decided to take our free day that we had in Kyoto (a number of days ago now) to go see a whole bunch of torii gates.
"Torii gates are symbols of Shinto shrines and mark their sacred space from the mundane world. The basic structure consists of two pillars with a top rail and a little below that a second horizontal rail piercing both columns, providing stability to the structure."
- http://www.japannavigator.com/2007/01/14/another-way-to-use-a-shinto-gate/
So naturally, this found us at the Inari Shrine. The shrine was alright by it self but continuing on through the shrine reveals that there are all these bright orange gates. It's quite a sight to see. They are so close together, they almost touch. They vary in size slightly and material. Most are wood but some are made of stone (and not orange). I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. We walked through the path of the hundreds of thousands of torii gates for what must have been an hour before turning back and heading into town. We did manage to find a soba shop up where we were within the torii gates. Japan's got it all figured out! It was all traditional tatami mats with small tables and pillows to sit on cross legged or on your heals. I'm still not sure the proper position. I should definitely look that up.
The biggest find that was just by chance happened next! We were just wondering and stumbled upon a fairly large shrine gate and decided it might be good to check out. We walked over to find just a giant temple gate surrounded by a bit of a moat (with koy fish!) and a wall. The funny thing is where the shrine main building often is - right in front of the shrine gate - there was a fairly large white warehouse looking building. Little did we know what was underneath the skin. We walked over to find a map of the temple showing the gate and then two HUGE structures. One was offest to the left as the smaller of the two as the main building pictured on the map was huge. this was just a birdseye type map. We walked to the side and the large #2 building was revealed. This is when we clued in that there was a temple underneath the warehouse looking structure. It was all sealed off though so we couldn't exactly walk in the front door. We walked into the #2 building to find it was a shrine to Amida Buddha. This is related to something called Pure Land Buddhism. It's similar to Christianity in the way that to reach salvation at the end of your life you only have to have true belief in Amida Buddha and you will reach Nirvana. I think this is a somewhat skewed and broken down summary of it but it's super interesting.
Anyway we walked from that building across into a phenominal and giant structure. It is one that claims to be one of the largest wooden structures in the world. I say claims because there are a number of structures claiming the same. It had 90 giant wooden pillars and was originally built in 1604. It suffered from 4 fires and was rebuilt each time most recently in 1895. They had a rope from that rebuilt that had been made out of human hair of all of the followers to see that the it could be rebuilt. It was a giant rope, about 4-5 inches in diameter. It would have been used to move the wooden pillars and other pieces for construction. Sorry to go on and on about this place but to put the size into perspective, look at this photo. It's just nuts. Most temples we've been looking at have about 3-6 doors to the main building and this one had 15-20 huge ones. The building covering it is for restoration. The temple will be fully restored by 2011. They are doing it all bit by bit, cleaning every bit of gold, copper and bronze. It's remarkable how they can restore metals that have blackened over the years.
Anyway, I'm sure that's enough about shrines and temples.
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