Kyoto Temples

Kyoto is absolutely dreamland beautiful. It was Japan's capital city for nearly 1000 years until the capital was moved to Tokyo in the late 1800's. Kyoto escaped the double devastation of natural disasters and Allied bombing that leveled many/most Japanese cities and left them to undergo the ugly rebirth that modernity and poor urban planning has wrought. Nowhere is Kyoto's beauty more visible than in the thousands of small temples and shrines that are so easily happened upon in any short stroll out your hotel doors. The big shrines are mobbed by the busloads of tourists but we found the small neighborhood temples to be the most charming. Here is a photodump of our temple explorations