Category: Kyoto
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Why Kyoto is the way it is — A review of “Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital”
I first came to Kyoto in 1999 for university. My first jobs out of school were here. My second daughter was born here. I lived in a dorm, four apartments, and a house, all in different areas of the city. Walked pretty much every street. Even when I lived in Nagoya for those four years…
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Maker Faire Kyoto 2023
Last March, while hanging out at the Engineer Cafe in Fukuoka I heard about the annual Maker Faire in Kyoto. Some of the Engineer Cafe folk planned on coming up to Kyoto to attend. I have never been to a Maker Faire before so I decided to join. After canvassing on the HN Kansai slack…
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Saturday morning walks in Kyoto
In recent weeks, as the kids sleep in on the weekend, my wife and I have been taking early morning walks around the city, hitting temples and shrines before the tourists. We chitchat while strolling along, poking around areas of the city that we have not taken the time to explore. Sometimes we talk about…
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Visiting the Kyoto State Guest House
A few years ago one of the members of Writers in Kyoto shared a broadcast from NHK’s Core Kyoto S05E02 Kyoto State Guest House: Hospitality Imbued with Beauty and Craftsmanship. This is a special compound located in the Kyoto Imperial Palace but run by the Cabinet Office. It is where the Japanese government receives foreign…
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Minamiza
Took a walk up the Kamogawa tonight and saw Minamiza, the theatre where all the kabuki greats have been performing for the the past hundred years.
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On Shijō this afternoon the Naginata-hoko is going up. Look at the rope work and the size of some of the posts! #gion #祇園祭 #kyoto
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Such a glorious day today in #kyoto 😁 Hope you all had a lovely Tanabata 🎋
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My neighbourhood has a lot of Buddhist craftspeople. They make altar fittings, carve statues, etc. One warehouse is used for cleaning parts of temples. I pass by every day and there is some new chunk of a temple that has been hauled over to be cleaned and repaired, before it is sent back to be…
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Blowing away your sins
Although we live in downtown Kyoto, we are somehow still within the precinct of Fushimi Inari, the mountain shrine south of the city with all the torii gates (some photos from our hike up there a couple years ago →). The other day, to my surprise, an envelope arrived unbidden from that famous shrine. It…
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Rainy remembrance
In the rain today I walked to Bukkō-ji 佛光寺, an important temple in the centre of Kyoto for Shinran, the founder of Shin Buddhism. I am not a temple member, but this is the neighborhood temple. In a famously gridded city, its grounds are the local shortcut. Every day we walk diagonally through Bukko-ji to…