This Saturday, I went to my favorite motorcycle shop in Kyoto to get the oil changed. Usually, I go back home right after the oil change, but this time, I decided to do some sightseeing in Kyoto and visited Kinkakuji Temple.
It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the parking lot to reach the impressive gate. 80% of the visitors were foreign tourists.
The fee to visit is 500 yen.
Kinkakuji is a very magnificent building. There is a lot of excellent culture and art from that time. On the other hand, it seems that the lives of ordinary people were quite terrible. While the nobles and samurai enjoyed great prosperity, the lives of ordinary people were quite harsh. School textbooks focus on the good aspects, but not much about the lives of ordinary people at that time.
There was a Chashistu （a tea house）behind Kinkakuji Temple.
A chashitsu (茶室) is a traditional Japanese tea room used for the Japanese tea ceremony. It is a simple, quiet space designed to create a calm, meditative atmosphere. The room is typically small and features minimalist decorations, natural materials like wood and bamboo, and tatami mat flooring. In a chashitsu, people gather to prepare and drink matcha tea in a ritualized manner, emphasizing harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility.
You can also see Kinkakuji Temple from the teahouse.
A short walk from the teahouse there was a spot that tourists could use. It had a nice atmosphere. If it wasn’t so cold I would have liked to use it.
This is the Kannon statue that is enshrined here. I bought some incense and offered it to the deity.
I think the way this space has been utilized is very stylish.
The stairs leading down from the temple to the parking lot were also a wonderful sight.
Ice cream was popular at the concession stand. I didn’t feel like eating ice cream in the cold.
There were several tourist buses parked in the parking lot. The parking lot was about 60% occupied. There weren’t many visitors, but it wasn’t too few either. I felt that there were enough people to visit the shrine at a leisurely pace.
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