National Culture Day

Equaled lots of people and lots of traffic but it all went well.

It just worked out that it was Culture Day.

Culture Day or Bunk no hi.

A day for promotion of culture and the love of freedom and peace. On culture day, schools and the government award selected persons for their special cultural achievements.

This was our second organized tour and just like the day before we were picked up at the hotel and put on a bus. The first stop was Nijo Castle.  You can read all about it here. Our guide did an excellent job of explaining everything and getting us through the crowds. It seemed like at this stop and all of the others that everyone was on the same schedule and we all got to the same place at the same time and the crowds lessened by the time we left.

The second stop of the morning was Kinkaju Temple or the Golden Pavilion. It is a reproduction as the original was burned down by a man who had gone there to study but was mentally ill. The setting and the grounds were very picturesque. Huge crowds that evaporated by the time that we left and we kept running in to people who had been with us at Miyajima and Hiroshima.

The last morning stop was the Imperial Palace. Kyoto was the capitol of Japan at one time and this is where the Shogun ceded power to the Emperor and modern Japan started, completing the unification of Japan. My only complaint was that we did not go to To Ji Temple, considered by many as the finest of Kyoto's 1500 temples.

We had our first lunch where parts of it were cooked on the table, being told once the fire goes out it is ready to eat. They were right and it was all very good. On a side note, the size of Asian meals is incredible but very few Asians were overweight. Must be all of the walking.

We left Kyoto for Nara with everybody else celebrating the holiday. Traffic was horrendous but we made each site and saw everything we were supposed to see. Our first stop was the Todaiji Temple. It was the largest wooden building in the world until 1998 and houses the largest bronze statue in the world as well. The statue is of Buddha, seated in a classic pose and and is over 15 meters high.

Our last stop in the twilight was the Kasuza Grand Shrine. I loved this place. Lantern after lantern after lantern. Shinto and Buddhism exist together in Japan. Shinto takes care of the life in the present and Buddhism takes care of the afterlife. Imagine, two religions getting along peacefully!

Once back in Kyoto we ate at an Irish Pub we had passed while walking on the first night.