Todaiji temple ground also has other temples up along the mountain side that provide great views of the area. Even has a rest location with free tea!
So if you visit there and want to have less crowd, just climb up the mountain a bit 🤩 Almost all the buildings you saw are wood buildings!
4. Kasuga Taisha 春日大社
This shrine locates just aside of Todaiji Temple on a small hill. It is really enjoyable to hike up to it because the paths are heavily forested. If timing is right and you dont have hundreds of tourists, the walk has great tranquility to it. There are a ton of stone lamp stand along the way, as well as offering of alcohol (typically sake) to the Kami (deities in Japanese Shinto religion). Yeah, it turns out they drink beer too...
there is a huge tree inside the shrine inner court, which was believed to have become spirit. The waiting area also have a natural/man-made shed out of living plant! Later it turns out this is quite common in Japan:)
5. Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) You like Torii gates? how about a couple of thousands of them 😎
Basically if you want to show people you are in Japan with one photo, this will be the place. Could not be more iconic than this!
Quite convenient for me to visit because it is just 4 stations from Obaku (where Kyoto U Uji campus is) by JR, for a cost of merely 140 Yen. Fushimi area used to host the retirement castle for Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉, the peasant samurai who conquered Japan. But the castle was not preserved. But the Shinto shrine for Inari (rice plant) lasted over the history and became the Tiktoker/Instagramer's heaven in the year 2024....
They always say it is a thousand red gates. In reality, it is definitely more than that... Basically you have the entire mountain hiking path of a few kilometers covered with these gates at an impressive density of about 2-3 of gates/meter... you do the math 🤩
It is beautiful and kind of sucks from an engineering/longevity point of view. Basically the Torii construction violated one fundamental rule of wood construction. Dont get untreaded wood in direct contact with soil. The footing of the Torii has to be embedded into the ground because it is a planar structure (for out of plane stability). While the construction of the foundation gives you an illusion that it is just seating on a pedestal stone as columns in a temple, you can see the wood really get piled into the ground and the pedestal is fake. However, since every year there are new torii put in by people and companies (there is probably a waiting line....), replacing these routinely would not be a big issue.
On top of the mountain, I even found a wood-stone composite joint using traditional carpentry detail. Looking around, we also found a random cat 😏
6. Osaka Castle (Replica based on original design)
Best known as the last holding place for Lady Cha-cha and her son Toyotomi Hideyori against their former general Tokugawa Ieyasu. The siege of Osaka Castle happened in 1615, leading to the death of the entire Toyotomi Clan. Ieyasu moved the capital to Edo (now Tokyo) and started the Tokugawa Shogunate. This is the start of the Edo period of Japan that lasted 260 years, until the U.S. forced Japan to open the door again... Well, it all started here!
Original structure is made out of wood of course. Since the building is not original, structurally there is not too much to say, they even got an elevator in it now. The outside looks authentic and cool. The Osaka Castle ground is a public park now, so you can see a ton of people here. Some Japanese people also do jog and exercises here. Walking around you can find unique sewer covers (remember the Tsukuba city one?), this is Osaka Castle and a manga character... I like how in detail Japan is...
It is a must visit if you ever pass Osaka.
7. Uji and Byodoyin 平等院, "Temple of Equality"
I always like smaller town places with a major river and surrounded by mountains. My hometown in Sichuan is such a place( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujiangyan). Uji is a town to the south east of Kyoto, famous for tea and Uji river, as well as the most important Japanese literature "Tale of Genji" (源氏物語 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Genji) by Murasaki Shikibu from the Heian period. The city also host a UNESCO Heritage site Byodoyin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By%C5%8Dd%C5%8D-in), mansion and temple built by Fujiwara clan around year 1000.
Byodoyin Pheonix temple is very famous because it is on the back of the 10-yen coin, and the Pheonix of the room is on the 10,000 yen paper bill!
The family and love relationship in Tale of Genji is very complicated! There is an entire Genji Museum that is nicely done!
Uji is recently also famous for a slice of life Anime about local highschool band from HitaUji ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound!_Euphonium). You can see the advertise material everywhere in the Keihan train stations!
I have not even talked about the famous tea shop that has hundreds of years of history, and great mocha ice-cream! Anyway, it is a nice city to visit if you have an extra day in Kyoto or Osaka (Gee... they should pay me for promoting tourism for the city).
8. Kyoto's Gion district and Temples
The Itinerary 101 for Kyoto tourist must include Kyoto station (you NEED to go through it to get to Kyoto, but later), Gion area where you thought you can see Geisha (unlikely, mostly you just saw a lot of tourists, Gion - Wikipedia), and Kiyomizu-dera, a temple on the slope of the hill overlooking Kyoto. Kiyomizu-dera - Wikipedia
Kiyomizu-dera is famous for its outdoor wooden stage platform that has great details for wood preservation in open environment (the key is to not allow water to stay). It has some mountain spring shrine a lot of people line up for cleansing wash (some also drinks it). Inside the temple you can see some really old wood columns dated hundreds of years ago!
The main shrine near Gion- Yasaka Shrine - Wikipedia is quite close to Kiyomizu-dera (which is a Buddhist temple) attractions are closely linked together and one can just hike from one to the other. The small streets down the slope of the hill is very nice and mimic the ancient street of Kyoto. Sometimes you actually see Geisha or Maiko there when they come out during the day for fun. I dont think I need to re-post all the classic temple photos you can find online, so just some random views from streets that I took! yum-yum 😘 😋
Overall, this area is very touristy, but it is also so classic that you just cannot not go!
9. Two Huge temples near Kyoto Station (Higashi Hongan-ji (東本願寺))
If for some reason you only have 2 hours passing through Kyoto (who's going to do that 😆 ?), it is not enough time to visit other attractions, but there are two huge temples just 10 min walk from Kyoto Station that really worth visiting. The Eastern and Western Monastery of the Original Vow are two Buddhist temples that are some of the largest wooden temples in Japan (Eastern one is larger, so if you can only visit one...)
The cool thing about this temple is that you can sit in the inner hall on tatami mat and just chill out:) This is less of a tourist attraction than the Gion and Kiyomizu temple so people density is low, and you can really feel the temple as a reclusive location for meditation and inner thinking.
The building of these temples were no joke, people use ropes mixed with human hair to help drag the huge logs out of the mountain in winter times using huge sleds. People even perished for the construction.
10. Kyoto Station
Most likely you have been there if you ever visited Japan. It is huge and iconic, got shopping mall, gift shop, grocery store, ramen street, a theater, outdoor performance platform, and a roof top garden! Compared to (spoiler...) Roma Termini (which you have to pay 1 Euro to go take a leak...) it is night and day! this is so well done! There are dedicated tourist guides for just visiting Kyoto Station!
there are areas on the mid-floors for public places that people hangout. Got a lego replica of the station, and a piano for people to play!
I passed it so many times during my stay in Uji and never get tired of visiting the station 😍 If you have about 30 min to kill in Kyoto, make sure you go to the top of the station!
11. Isoda Lab @Kyoto U Uji Campus
What? a research lab?
Well, I actually do some work during my travel, such as interacting with researchers and students at my host Isoda lab, which I visited many times in the past 20 years. Although students come and go, I always enjoyed hang out with Hiro (Prof. Isoda) and Nakagawa-san @tkfm0820
This is very different from typical XXX-research group in the U.S., it gives you a family feeling where students work and hang out together in a shared office, doing cleaning and garbage together, take shifts in things, weekly meeting of progress, and cook/drink together (Kyoto U is definitely NOT a dry campus!)
The best is the drinking parties 歓迎会 (かんげいかい) to welcome visitors and 送別会 (そうべつかい) for good-bye. Everyone get together with food some some cooking on-the-spot!
This year I am with @jianhuizhou as guests of the lab. It was so fun!
There is a good tradition for former students and industry partners bringing local sake to the party. I actually met some former students of Isoda Sensei who have become professionals and professors themselves. I even met this friend from the 2009 NEESWood test who was a student back then, now a design lead in a HK firm!
So Isoda lab is an attraction for well qualified tourists to Kyoto. You cannot buy tickets or something, you just need to be very good at timber engineering and know Prof. Isoda. I guess a lot of people on the forum might qualify....it is a fascinating place!
I do have my office on the KU campus:)
12. Kyoto History tour, Nijo-Castle and Imperial Palace
Heian period in Japan is quite fascinating as the name does mean "peace" in Chinese. It is true that right after this period, a lot of military power started to dominate Japanese political system and the Emperor's position was continuously weakened. Imperial Palace in Kyoto (Kyoto Imperial Palace - Wikipedia) is not where the Emperor lives now, but part of it was used by retired Emperor if he wants to visit or stay in Kyoto. Back in history, Kyoto was definitely considered more "cultured" than Tokyo region. The existing palace was built around 1200 and maintained pretty well. The entrance is free and again, not as crowded as those popular temple attractions. But if you are into history, it is a nice place to visit.
Around 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu moved the political center from Kyoto to Tokyo to start the Edo period in Japan. Edo (Tokyo area) was his base when he started as a subordinate of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Back then that part of the country is not considered too important for political power, but it does have a tradition of hosting shoguns, given the first shogunate of Kamakura established their offices nearby. It is like "redneck samurai" heaven for quite a while. But Ieyasu also has a residence in Kyoto, as the shogun will need to handle business there also. That is why Nijo Castle is here as the official residence and office of the Shogun (who is the real ruler of Japan). This is also where the last shogun of Japan returned power to the Meiji Emperor (whom I consider the luckiest Emperor of all Japanese history, more later:) ), so both the beginning and the end of Edo period!
You can totally cover these two places in one day. They are quite close. A little background in History would help as you would not see these as merely nice wood buildings and gardens.
13. Nagoya (what? Where?)
This is actually the 4th largest city in Japan! It is not as famous as Tokyo, Kyoto, or even Kobe because it is kind of an industry hub instead of a tourist attraction. But it does have something unique. A shrine (Atsuta Shrine - Wikipedia) that supposedly holds one of the 3 Divine Relics of Japan, the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (草薙の剣) (or replica of it, as the original was lost during Genpei war, the losing side who had the Emporer with them at the time just throw it into the ocean when defeated... not cool!). Forget about seeing it yourself as it is only used when they throne a new Emperor, it is not for normal people's eyes! In fact I was a bit disappointed when I visited Atsuta Shine as it is basically not really open for public to enter. The garden/forest around the shrine is pretty cool though. They got a nice big tree where people worship....
The real attraction for Nagoya is Toyota Museum:) We have some good Toyota cars in the past (got a Camery before, and then a Siena minivan, nice practical family cars). I also got a friend who is a big fan of Toyota Landcruiser. The Museum can take a normal people 2 hours, but a car enthusiastic all day. It has collection of not only Toyota cars, but some other vintage cars from around the world. A must visit if you are in Nagoya and have driven a Toyota car.
14. Costco (Yeah...)
If you plan to rent a car during your travel in Japan, and you have Costco card, you should visit Costco in Japan:) It is an experience as you can get HUGE plates of fresh Sushi there! The roasted Chicken is also available for 899, which is about $6.
I visited the Costco near Nagoya, at one point I felt that I was in the U.S. again!
15. Train Museum by JR
If you ever travel in Japan, you are likely a customer of JR (Japan Railways Group). This is the firm that operates Shinkansen bullet trains as well as many local lines and slower lines in Japan. Train culture is part of Japan's National identity, completely opposite of the American Car culture. One is that you have to follow the train schedule, be there on time, have almost no control of how train is running, but highly efficient. The other is My way or highway, I do whatever I want, and everyone get a huge F150 that is not really that resource efficient. Probably the reason why Japanese people fantasize about U.S. and U.S. folks fantasize about Japan....
Anyway, there is this very cool Train Museum by JR in Nagoya, hosting almost all generations of trains in JR system from the first Shinkansen to the latest Maglevel train for Central Shinkansen planned in the near future. If you like trains, you can spend an entire day there.... They also have a great miniature train set that represents Tokaido Shinkansen line and the cities from Kobe to Tokyo. The trains will run on schedule from early morning to midnight! Yes, all trains stop around midnight in Japan. I remember many years ago I was on a slow train from Tokyo to Kyoto, it stopped midnight in Nagoya and I had to spend a night in a manga cafe near the station until morning.
16. Ghibli Park
This is probably one of the things that do not need much introduction. I could not imagine anyone interested in Japan who did not see a Ghibli movie. There are 2 official Ghibli attractions in Japan, one is a Ghibli museum in Tokyo, which likely requires advanced ticket booking about half a year ago. So I did not go to that one. This Ghibli Park in Nagoya is bigger, and only need to prebook about 1-2 months ahead of time.
It is interesting, but I have to say it is not Disney...(there is NOT A SINGLE RIDE!) I think when it comes down to squeezing $$$ out of IP, U.S. is still ahead of Japan by a lot. Which might not be a good thing....
The last pic is the bridge towers on the highway on the way back:)
17. Osamu Tezuka museum in Takarazuka
Since we are on anime stuff, might as well visit the museum for "Father of Manga" near Osaka. One hour of train from Kyoto, you arrive at Takarazuka, a small city famous for being the hometown of Osamu Tezuka 手塚 治虫 (1928-1989), and the Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe The Takarazuka Revue 宝塚歌劇団.
Tezuka is the first person who introduced movie-like dynamic manga panel set up in Japan and created the first ever international IP in Manga: Astro Boy. I was a reader even when I was in China as a child. He later worked on more mature and philosophical works like the Phoenix series, spanning from primitive times of humanity into the future of space travel. Great artist and also a workaholic!
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