Me chillin' and eating some breakfast. By the way, if anyone has an explanation for me about why milk tastes different in Asia, please tell me. The milk here tastes somewhat like the milk in the Philippines!
And view of my breakfast and the alcove with the hanging scroll. There's totally a name for it that I had to memorize when I was learning about shoji architecture, but it escapes me now.... just know that the inlet thing with a scroll is a feature of traditional Japanese architecture.
Cool sliding doors and mats and drawers. The wood floor back there leads to the kitchen/the food.
This room is actually really big. Another view.
Trays for eating. ^^
Annnnnd, the room opens right up to the gardens! You're supposed to stare at nature and quietly contemplate while sipping tea. This was another cool feature about Japanese architecture that I learned about in class - space is often very malleable, and usually walls open up, to either the outside or to enlargen a room.
Decorative water-thing.
Another view of the garden, with stepping stone path.
So then it was off to meet my 10 o'clock tour. I was still on jetlag time, so I had woken up very early and, after a failed attempt at trying to figure out how to take the standing brake off the bikes that were available to guests, decided to just walk, since it wasn't really all that far. Maybe a mile or so. Anyway, with my map in hand, I make a rather well-timed departure, since I arrived onto the castle grounds at around 9:50. However, I neglected to take into account that the castle grounds were rather enormous, and I had no idea where the tour was meeting up.
This here is the inner wall of the castle (on the other side of the vast expanse of gravel are more gardens, some museum type things, gift shop, etc., which are all surrounded again by an outer wall), which I think I had to circle around for about half a mile before I found the entrance. Once arrived, I went through two check points where I had to present my passport (advanced reservations through the Imperial Household Agency are required to get into the palace, I'm assuming they run you through a background check or something before letting you in), and barely made it as the group was leaving. We had a nice Japanese lady giving the tour in English, to a group that was mostly older groups and families. I think it's probably a rare type 20 year old that would spend a solo vacation abroad seeing world heritage sites rather than partying in the city. Not that I ever found anything in Kyoto I'd deem "city," but then again considering my standard is Tokyo, this may not be entirely fair...
So first a little background on the Kyoto Imperial Palace: Kyoto was Japan's capital for about 1,000 years, and so this palace has quite a bit of history attached to it. I think they moved it to here from Nara in the 700s or so, and then moved it again to Tokyo when the Tokugawa Shogunate took over, and decided to move the seat of government to some swamp in the middle of nowhere, just to mess with everybody else. You know, kind of like what happened in America. (Really, the potomac? ::scoff::) Anyway, this is one of the gates into the palace that wasn't open - I think it may be where the emperor used to enter in his carriage/whatever. The empress had a smaller gate through which she entered, off to the side. The emperor needs his own gate I guess. Note here the roofing: it's made out of about 70 thin trips of Japanese Cypress, which works well to keep things cool in summer, though I don't know what function that would have in an outside gate. Probably to match the other roofs I guess. ^^;; It needs to be replaced every 20 years however, and these ones are getting a bit old. They were really just in the process of restoring a few things when I got there.
I'm not really sure what this building is, but I took a picture of it anyway.
And here's a snazzy door all decked out in gold. I think this is the door the emperor went through after he got off his carriage/horse/whatever.
Then we went and looked into a reception room. There are three rooms, and the more important you are, the farther into the building you get to go. Gorgeous Kano school paintings adorn the walls, and I think I've seen these in a textbook somewhere, but can't for the life of me pin down which Kano painter it was. I mean, they were all named Kano...
Anyway, the first room is the Cherry Blossom Room. The least important officials would be received in this room.
Slightly more important guests would be lead through the Cherry Blossom Room and into the Crane Room.
And the most important guests would be lead through both rooms and into the Tiger Room, which I guess was supposed to reassert the Imperial Family's authority over whoever was visiting, but intimidating them with scary pictures of tigers. I'm not sure how well it worked.
Further down, there was a display showing a cross section of the roofing I was talking about eariler. You can see all the many many layers required...
Wait, nevermind, I think THIS is the Emperor's carriage entrance. I have no idea what that other gate was. But anyway, this is definitely the Emperor's gate, because it leads straight to this:
Past the bright red arches, and well-roped off from us foreign visitors, is the most important building in the Imperial Palace. This is the place where all ceremonies are held, including the coronations of all the Emperors, which continued to be held here even well after the capital had moved to Tokyo. I think the Emperors of the Taisho and Showa periods were both crowned here.
A super zoomed picture of the crowning site.
And a random picture of some pretty gabling on the gates that surround the coronation area.
The raised floor in this building (forgot it's purpose, but really, they're all just for the emperor to hang out in) allows air to go under the floor and keeps the building cooler in the summer time. Also, the dark wood/whitewash contrast is stunning.
One of many buildings, I think this may be the emperor hang-out building, where the Imperial family used to stay when they visit Kyoto. Now when they visit they have a fancy modern room somewhere with aircondition and Nintendo Wii and all that other good stuff.
Steps that I just thought were pretty.
Now this building I remember! It was built to house Amaterasu's mirror. The legend goes that the sun goddess (the most important of the gods back in the day), is the divine ancestor of the imperial line, and that she left the family three sacred relics to help in their rule: her mirror, a sword, and a gem/orb. This building was constructed specifically to house the sun goddess' mirror (which I don't think the public is ever allowed to lay eyes on), though the mirror is now located in the shrines at Ise I think, which is where the sun goddess was supposed to have lived I think.
And then after this they opened the gates to the Emperor's Gardens/private quarters area.
Here's a better view of the garden. The layout of the stones here was made to look like a natural beach - I guess cause Kyoto is pretty far inland and they wanted to recreate the feeling of the sea.
Directly opposite the garden is the Emperor's hanging-out building, where he can sit and watch the garden.
Here's an island in the garden's lake. I love how the trees are all cute and bonsai like. ^^
And a cute little bridge going over the lake. ^_^
A side view of the bridge, quite spectacular really.
Though I think this is my favorite bridge picture. ^^
Or maybe this one. I think there were two bridges actually.
Also, a lot of garden designers were really into the whole making it look almost like it could've happened naturally thing. This rock bridge for instance, almost looks like it could've just formed on its own. Also, this little river here (which leads to the pond) was often a source of amusement and games. I think they'd make very intricate boats and see who's won in a race, or place cups of sake on the boat and have people sit at different points in the river and have to compose a poem before the cup reaches them. I can't remember if they have to win or lose to drink the sake, but either way, I consider it an early precursor of coveyor belt sushi restaurants.
And here was a court for this one game where you hit a ball around. I'm not kidding, they're really all they do - no points, or goals, no teams, no score... I don't think this even qualifies as a game anymore. A form of exercise? Either way, throw-the-ball-around was a popular sport with the nobels.
Deteriorating roof!!! This is probably the worst case I saw here, and judging by the proximity of restoring, I'm guessing will be replaced quite soon.
Some more brilliant wooden contrast. All the colors - red, white, dark brown, gold! So pretty. ^^ Although you'd think they'd switch to a different material after fires destroyed the palace more times than Godzilla has destroyed Tokyo. This is why all the buildings were rebuilt as disconnected - so that if something did catch fire, hopefully only one building would burn down. Though the precautions against such a thing happening again are pretty good. I think if you light a cigarette within a mile of the palace secret police pop out of the bushes and scold you for your carelessness.
Pretty wood!!
Gorgeous gold-embossed doors.
And a close-up so you can see the intricate detail that goes into all the little decorations. I think this is a chrysanthemum in the center, which is also part of the crest of the royal family.
And here is the throne room, where the Emperor conducts his day to day business. It overlooks a garden of.... white rocks. I think it's supposed to be calming. O_o
His yearly schedule is up on that bulletin board there.
Throne room. There are fold screens on the left, his curtained chair in the middle, and I forgot what the thing on the right was.
Close-up of the throne. Not exactly grand, but oh well. It's on two thick raised tatami mats, just so everyone knows that the Emperor must have the highest place in the room.
Another room that opens up to the gardens/rocks.
And a picture of the paintings decorating the walls. Japanese people were never into wallpaper or whatnot, old palace walls and such are always decorated with paintings. Anyway, this one is of aristocrats hanging out. It's apparently all they do.
And the exit gate! This concludes our tour, blah blah blah. The gate leads out into a big open expanse, which used to house the servants quarters and kitchens. That way, if a kitchen fire started, only the servents would get burned. -_-;; They actually did burn down I think, but where never rebuilt because at that time no one lived in the palace anymore, and it became more of a historic place/tourist attraction.
And so this concludes the Kyoto Imperial Palace tour! I was determined to squeeze as many attractions as possible into my Kyoto stay, so after a quick look around the palace grounds (a few shrines, a bunch of joggers, more gardens, some official buildings, etc.) I decided to head out to Nijo Castle, which looked only about a half mile more away.
