Kyoto

Nijo Castle in Kyoto

We took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto early today and then took a bus tour of the main sites in the morning. One of the places I most wanted to see in Kyoto was the Rock Garden of Daisen-In. It turned out to be quite far from the center of town but our taxi driver finally found it. It was almost closing time by the time we got there, it was bein renovated, and we couldn't take pictures, but it was still the best experience of the day. The garden, called a dry garden, uses only rocks and sand to represent nature and was made about 1509 A.D. by Kogaku-Zenji, the monk who founded the temple. It was a timeless place.

On the other hand, we could photograph Nijo Castle, originally built in 1603 as the official Kyoto residence of the first Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu. It has a "nightingale" floor, especially designed to squeak when walked on. It was a way of preventing sneak attacks.