Kyoto Tours
Whether you want to explore the temples of Kyoto Japan, or discover the gardens and secret alley ways, there are Kyoto tours for you. Dozens of tours abound at travel agencies, through hotels, and even on bulletin boards, especially around the University area. There are nighttime Kyoto tours, half-day tours, castle tours, day trips to Nara or Osaka, Sumo tours, temple tours, traditional culture tours, and historical building tours. Some of the places you won't want to miss, no matter what type of Kyoto tour you take, include:
- Imperial Palace
- Heian Jingu
- Gion
- Sanjusangendo
- Kodaiji
- Ginkakuji
- Kinkakuji
- Arashiyama
- Ryoanji
- Nijo Castle
- Toji
- Pontocho
- Honganji
- Nishiki Market
- Kiyomizudera
Featured Points and Spots
When you search out a Kyoto tour, there are certain choice items which should be on the list of any good tour of Kyoto, no matter what the theme, destination, or price. A good half-day tour will include walking to a famous shrine or one of the many Kyoto temples, a Japanese style lunch, whether it be a tempura restaurant or noodles, and a walk down a historical street in central Kyoto, where you can sense the historical significance and vibrance of this important city. If you can work in a traditional Japanese art or craft viewing, go for that as well. Tea ceremonies, dancing Maiko girls, or theater are offered to tourists at a number of cultural ceners in Kyoto, and present an excellent opportunity to sample traditional Japanese culture.
Night Tours of Kyoto
A night tour of Kyoto will probably include dinner and a stroll through the streets either to look at historical spots, or to a show or tea ceremony. This is a great way to savor life in Kyoto, since the dinner enables visitors to taste authentic gourmet Japanese food, and the stroll through streets and alleyways with a guide gives you a street-level experience through the eyes of a local. Nothing is better than a walking tour, or a Kyoto tour that features a walk, for soaking up the flavor of a city. You come face to face with the people, the sounds of the streets, the flavors in the breeze that waft through the alleyways where the best restaurants are found. Dinner will feature something like an authentic tempura meal, which is a light batter-fried assortment of vegetables and seafood or meat. It's authentic, and popular with locals and tourists alike. It's a chance to dress up fancy and see Kyoto nightlife personally, since dining out at Kyoto's finest restaurants is a number one activity of business people, friends, and all sorts of Japanese get togethers at all levels. This is what Japanese people do out on the town at night!
Temple & Shrine Tours
Kyoto is a city of shrines and temples. Although you can walk all day through the streets and see temple after temple, and shring after shrine, a Temple & Shrine tour can make the most of your time if you're only visiting Kyoto for a short time. These tours range from walking through various districts of Kyoto where some of the more famous temples or shrines are located, to fully-themed tours which include a zen-style meal and some zen-style meditation. It all depends on how much you want to enter the spiritual world! In other words, you can simply view temples or shrines and admire the beautiful architecture, the integrated landscaping that makes Japanese temple style so famous and peaceful, or you can sit down with some monks and try out some zen meditation, eat a vegetarian meal, or even stay the night at a temple, in some cases. Zen meditation is called Zazen in Japanese, so look for this term if you want a tour that involves some meditation.
One of the most popular intense zen Kyoto tours is a visit to Mt.Hiei and the Enryaku-Ji Temple. Mt. Hiei, or Hiei-San, as it's called in Japanese, is a mountain just northeast of the central part of Kyoto. Enryaku-Ji is a Buddhist monastery on Hiei-San, which is historically one of the most important monasteries in Japanese Buddhism. It's the birthplace of many sects of Buddhism, and the headquarters of the Tendai Sect. The temple was founded in the ninth century and was extremely powerful and governed over thousands of temples throughout Japan. It had an army of warrior monks, and did not simply exist to manage the spiritual lives of its parishioners. Nope, this and other powerful temple complexes were constantly and actively engaged in power struggles, battles, and political maneuvers as bitter, complex, and important as any in history. The monks in power at Enryaku-Ji finally lost the long battle for power in the 16th century, when a rival band of monks burned the monastery down and most of the monks with it. They were led by Oda Nobunaga, who had set out to destroy all rival monasteries and other concentrations of power, so that he could unite Japan and rule it one day.
Day Trips from Kyoto
Day trips from Kyoto are easy, fast, convenient, and affordable. Taking a train to a nearby village to explore is one of the best ways to get to know Kyoto. It affords the visitor a realistic slice of life, riding the trains with realy Kyoto-ites, and it gives you a taste of how well the trains run in Kyoto and in Japan as a whole. It's fascinating to observe public behavior of train-riders, from dozing office workers to dozing high school students to, amazingly, tiny grade-school age children riding unaccompanied by adults, to school. Japanese society deems it safe to let their small children ride the subways and trains on the way to school. You'll see packs of little kids, 100% of them dressed in code: brightly colored school backpacks, little caps for boys, and cute outfits for girls. They are happy, loud, chirpy, and cute as buttons. Taking a day trip in the morning will be exciting right from the start if you happen to catch school kids riding the trains. Of course, they are very loud, and when they get into junior high school, very very energetic and enthusiastic about everything so the trains sometimes feel rowdy when they get on and off, but everything stays orderly and peaceful nevertheless. There is no feeling of danger, and no feeling of terrible crowding, either, even though train employees do their best to pack everyone in as tightly as possible. Something about Japanese culture and behavior in public spaces makes the crowding tolerable and unoffensive.
The easiest and shortest day trip from Kyoto is a trip to Nara. Nara is very close to Kyoto, and holds many treasures which cannot be found in Kyoto. You won't want to miss Todaiji, which is the largst wooden building in Japan to house a stone Buddha. The Buddha is magnificent, sitting in his dark wooden structure, and you really won't forget the eerie, sacred feeling you get in side this space. It's kind of like an art installation, in the sense that it creates a very strong mood, and evokes feelings from the participants. You might be inspired to write in your journal, or capture the mood with your camera, or just stroll some gardens and meditate afterwards! After Todaiji, you can go over to Kasuga Shrine, which is a Shinto shrine that houses over 3,000 bronze and stone lanterns which make for some of the best pictures ever. Nara is also home to thousands of deer, which seems to be the symbol of Nara. Most of them live in the 1200-acre Deer Park, which offers a rare bit of expansive nature for visitors weary of the cities and the crowds. Nara is definitely worth the trip, which you can complete in half a day if you're pinched for time.
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Kyoto is full of things to see and do. You can live here for an entire year and still not have time to see everything!
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