Culture & Nature In Kyoto Japan

Culture & Nature In Kyoto Japan

After my time in Tokyo, I boarded the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto which is considered the cultural center of Japan. It was actually the capitol of Japan in the old days before it was moved to Tokyo. A much smaller city, I found Kyoto less hectic but still busy with tourists. There was a nice mix of old Japanese culture including the Gion district which gave a glimpse of what Japan use to look like. It was here in Gion where I took in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony as well as get the iconic shot of the Yasaka Pagoda.

One of the most popular attractions in Kyoto is the Fushimi Inari Shrine with its 10,000 Torii gates. I took the path through these gates which was a 4 kilometres trail up a mountain. In order to get the shots in the video where I was the only one in this trail, I had to get to Fushimi Inari before 9 am and get past the tourists who tend to linger around near the first section of the trail. The efforts were totally worth it as you will see in the video.

The Nijo Castle enabled us to look inside what a Japanese residence for a shogun would have been like but it was the beautiful exterior gardens that really caught my eye. It’s interesting that the modern city of Kyoto was built around such ancient landmarks as the shot of the moat shows the city in the background which gives a nice mix of old and new.

Much like with Fushimi Inari Shrine, the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest is another main tourist attraction that requires getting up very early in the morning to be there before the crowds arrive. I got there around 8 am and went deep all the way to the end of the trail. Once again, I was rewarded with great video footage of an empty trail in the bamboo forest.

I found Kyoto much more walkable than Tokyo since it’s a smaller city. Sometimes one can find interesting sights not even listed in main tourist attraction lists like when I accidentally came across this temple with a moat filled with big fish. It wasn’t crowded and it was only about 2 blocks from my hotel across from Kyoto Station.

Wonderful Mix Of Old And New

Kyoto is a wonderful mix of old and new. The old is represented by the castle and many temples while the new is the modern city structure itself. At the other end of old is the addition of the newest Teamlab venue in Japan which is Teamlab Biovortext which ended up being my favourite one out of the three Teamlabs I went to. Teamlab as shown in the video on my Tokyo article is high tech digital art that will mesmerize audiences.

Kyoto is only 2.5 hours from Tokyo via the fast bullet train and certainly has a more relaxed vibe compared to the big capitol. In addition, the city of Osaka is only 30 minutes by regular train from Kyoto so of course I had to visit it as well which is covered in the next article. Osaka will have a different vibe than Kyoto since it’s known as the food capital of Japan.