December is a tremendously busy month for me, so I’m glad that I got to spend a few hours relaxing in Kyoto while I was there for a conference. I spent a few hours on Wednesday night to go to see Kiyomizudera (or try the official Kiyomizudera site), my favorite temple. Because of the Kouyou (紅葉, the short time in fall when the trees sport red leaves, or other colors too as the case may be) the temple was lit up at night for special viewing. This special night-service was ending in a few days, so when I went (with Yukawa Aya, a nice librarian I met at the International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries) it was very crowded, but still quite nice. The views were just spectacular. I tried taking a few pictures, but my simple point-and-click camera doesn’t deal very well in low light conditions. Using nearby railings and things for some stability, I took a few long-exposure shots that turned out fairly nicely I think. You can see them (and many other pictures) from the Temples in Tokyo and Kyoto photo set on Flickr.com. After walking around Kiyomizudera, we walked to Gion and I had a nice eel dinner — beats my cooking any day easy.

Before coming home on Thursday I also made some time to visit two major sites: Kinkakuji and Nijyou Castle. I have been to Kinkakuji numerous times, but have never taken any good pictures, so this time I went to buy some gifts for family, and to take pictures. I am absolutely positive that every single picture I took has been taken better a million times before, but now I have my own pictures, and I can use them as I wish without worrying about copyright issues. Isn’t it strange that we have to worry about copyright issues for pictures of places that are thousands of years old?

My trip to Kinkakuji was relatively uneventful, except I started to notice the throngs of school kids running around town. Every year schools take field trips to places in Japan, and Kyoto is a very popular destination because they teachers can give students some sort of questions or workbooks to fill out on temples, helping them to learn history. I’m sure that it does the students good as well, but they probably just enjoy being away from home for the first time for a few nights and spending time with friends. I ran into many groups of school kids (usually middle school aged or younger, maybe early high school, I have a tough time telling) and first started to notice them at Kinkauji. Previous to that, it was either dark, or I was at a conference all day.

Nijyou Castle was quite nice. I had never been there before, and thought it would be fun to look around. They have a large garden that is very nice, and have a tour of the castle interior. It is a very different kind of castle than the European stereotypical castle. In a way, I could see how it was very impressive – large, and with a very nice landscaped view – but you could see how a common person (or noble at least) could aspire to and achieve a similar sort of residence. When walking around barefoot through the place, I noticed how the floor squeeked as you walked around. Of course, some of that is due to age, but I also recall hearing (who knows from where) that castles and such were intentionally squeeky so it is hard for assassins (Ninjas!) to sneak around. That’s probably a (dis) urban legend though.

The last thing I did in Kyoto was visit the newly-opened Kyoto International Manga Museum. That was a very different sort of Kyoto activity, and if you are interested in Manga, I highly recommend it. If you don’t know Japanese though, expect to spend a lot of time not reading things.