The philosophers trail is supposed to be one of the better mainstream walks in kyoto. A famed philosopher (sorry, cant remember the name!) used to walk this path all the time while he was 'philosphizing'. On the whole, i wasnt too impressed by the cars/bikes/mopeds zooming by. It did however, run by a series of temples and shrines. I went into the first big temple (ive restricted myself to paying for at most 1 temple a day to help both reduce costs and prevent temple overload) Ginkaku-ji which had a nice zen garden. Visited a few other free temples and shrines but on the whole there isnt very much else along this trail. There was an interesting portion which was part of an extended hike which followed an aqueduct from nearby lake Biwa. The path the goes up to a little shrine which miraculously had only 2 other tourists. The shrine itself was ok, but the surrounding area, being pretty far up into the mountain, was very nice.
I then took this little trail along the mountain to what i thought would take me back down to the bottom of the shrine trail.
Well...i was mistaken about that, ending up in the back of a cemetary (with a locked gate)...i then went back up the mountain, and kept proceeding along it and miraculously ended up at a pretty neat subtemplate with a monk chanting sutras and a thin waterfall flowing by the alter. From there, the trail ended up above the aqueduct where i was earlier in the day. Phew! Had me a little nervous, but this was the first time ive been in japan with neither
buildigs nor people around me (didnt run into a single person till the monk).
Today was a little less exciting, rainig for the first half then remaining gloomy the rest. I visited higshi hongan-ji temple which i belive is reputed to have the largest wooden structures in the world...and it looks like it. They mustuve torn down an entire forest to build it! They also have a sample of a rope they used to hoist the beams up which was made of human hair. Oh, one other nice thing was that this temple was FREE. There were also some nice galleries further in and even a very nice auditorium where a monk was giving lectures...on what, i had no clue, but he had a fair sized audience.
Thats about all for today, ive also finallized my schedule deciding to return to Tokyo on the 20th, leavining me with 13 more days here in kyoto and 2 weeks in Tokyo before i come back home.
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More interesting tidbits. So i was reading some japanese news. In osaka, apparently theyve been having problems with people jumping off bridges into the river! This has become a ritual that fans of the Hanshin Tigershave been doing more frequently on their road to the championships (i think theyre still going through the playoffs now). Police are having problems preventing people from doing it cuz its not really a crime...but 1 dude apparently died so theyve setup cameras to try and discourage people from continuing.
Another interesting tidbit...Japan is trying to get Mt Fuji registered as a UN World Heritage site, however its been rejected so far because of the environment problems its caused. Apparently lots of people climb Mt fuji every year..enough to make it a stinky trip up due to the fecal matter these avid climbers release on the way up! The volume is so great that theyve devised a new contraption to deal witht he problem..toilets with built in incinerators!
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The place im staying at keeps getting more and more backpackers coming through. It was fun to start (backpackers love to party), but i think ill be returning back to my old place for the remainder of my stay in Kyoto.
Posted by eric at October 6, 2003 02:10 AM