Kinkakuji temple, etc

This was 3 days national holiday so we went to Kyoto around kinkakuji.

I had visited there two times before, but it is our family's first visit since my son was born. Kinkakuji is a little inconvinient to go because it is located north west of kyoto where there is no train. Bus is only way of public transportation so my image is tha  bus is always crowded and move slowly due to traffic jam, that's why we didn't go this district.

Anyway, we decided to go there, and my wife agreed with this plan because kinkakuji is among world heritage so she thinks that it is good for his education.

We took keihan railway, changed to bus No. 59 at sanjo-keihan, got off at kinkakuji mae. Especially last bus stop (kinkakuji dou to kinkakuji mae) was in heavy traffic jam, took 15 min in this section, so it was about 1 hour's bus tour.

Before arriving the last bus stop, I found the name of district "murasakino(紫野)" and I was surprised, because the name of murasakino appears in my favorite waka  which is "あかねさす　紫野行き標野行き　野守は見ずや　君が袖振る" by nukata no ookimi in manyo-syuu(japanese first poet book).

Manyo-syuu is published around mid 8 a.c. so I felt like I was going back to this period of time. 

I'm so amazing that there was so many people. It was not special season and there are so many sightseeing spot around kyoto so I didn't expect such peoples.

I didn't remember the exact day but last visit to kinkakuji was around year 2000 and I remember there was not so many people.

Most significant change was portion of other country's people. Maybe 2 of 3 people are from foreign country, I guessed. In addition to that, there are so many souvenir shop in kinkakuji temple. I think that it should be outside temple because it is like amusement place. It seemed to lost heart of temple.

Anyway, we left kinkakuji temple and walking south.

About 20 min. walking, there is hirano shirine.It is famous for cherry blossom so they were preparing cherry blossom festival.

And next to hirano shirine, there is kitano tanman-gu shirine.
It is famous for the god of education and also famous for japanese apricot tree.
It is well maintained compared with hirano shirine so this temple is beautiful and flower of apricot was very beautiful. This was my first visiting of this shirine but I liked it.

There were long line of people, maybe they came here to thank their passing of examination (The result of school's entrance examination was published around early March).

Then we took a bus and arrived at sanjo-keihan. The bus stop In front of kitano-tenmangu were very crowded so we selected another bus no.15 whose bus stop were a little far from there.