This site provides visitors with variety of information on Kyoto, a historic city that had been the capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years, from the year 794 through1869. The information includes photographs of historical buildings and gardens of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines as well as maps of those landmarks. There also are photographs of festivals, brief descriptions of history and climate of Kyoto.

Kyoto is said to have more than one thousand Buddhist temples and hundreds of Shinto shrines. This site introduces about 100 temples and shrines as well as other places of interest that I selected arbitrarily.

About 70 percent of this country is forest and abundant wood resources are available, while the country is earthquake-prone. Because of these facts, and maybe some others, almost all historical buildings are made of wood. A scale of the buildings may look inferior in comparison with overseas huge stone buildings. You should appreciate the form of buildings, and construction technology, such as quakeproof structure.

Since the buildings are wooden, they easily catch fire and they were repeatedly lost by lightning strikes or fires of war. Especially during the Onin civil war that continued from 1467 to 1477, many buildings of temples and shrines burned down. Still, some of them survived. The five-storied pagoda of Daigo-ji temple (photo left) has been keeping original structure for more than 1,000 years. If a wooden building would not catch fire, it could not stand forever. A temple called Kiyomizu-dera has planted the trees that will be needed to rebuild their buildings 500 years later.

Most gardens introduced here are those of temples or shrines. Karesansui, or dry landscape garden, of Ryoan-ji temple (photo right) and Chisen Kaiyushiki Teien, that literary means pond/spring stroll garden, of Kinkaku-ji temple would be of prime interest. One of the techniques to design a garden that is called Shakkei or "borrowed scenery" is also interesting. Typical examples of this technique can be seen at Entsu-ji or Shoden-ji temples.

Many of Buddhist images are artistic and worth seeing. But, photography is forbidden in many temples so that only a few photographs are carried in this site.

There are many beautiful fusuma-e paintings in Kyoto but most of these are also put under ban of photography. Again, only a few photographs are carried in this site.