Japan 2006: Kyoto

Zen Garden at Ryoan-ji

The must-see destination of Japan would have to be Kyoto. The capital city for more than a thousand years, Kyoto is chokeful of Buddhist temples, palaces and zen gardens.

The city is partly a source for the classic image of Japan: small traditional cobbled streets, zen Buddhist temples and geishas in bright kimonos. Though much of this image - an image cultivated no doubt by movies like Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha, can be misleading. I did see a few geishas (not couting the rent-a-geishas that eagerly line up for photo ops with tourists) and visited beautiful shrines. But much of Kyoto is like the rest of urban Japan, where large departmental stores and telecommunication towers dominate the skyline.

The new Kyoto train station

A visitor is likely to first arrive at Kyoto at the spankling new train terminal, a typically ultra-modern giant complex of shops, steel, restaurants and hotels (mixed use has always been big in the urban areas). Tourism forms a large part of the Kyoto economy, as seen in its endless stores of handicrafts and Japanese candies. Giant toriis (the red wooden gates) in the major shrines, iconic of the Shinto religion, are sponsored by corporate entities and bear their names on the columns.