Day 10 - Friday, July 1st

Today we went to the Kyoto Imperial Palace we took the #59 buses to get there.  You can get a one day bus pass and the buses go to most sites in Kyoto. In order to visit the Kyoto Imperial Palace you must apply for a permit to view them. There are two English tours one at 10:00am and one at 2:00pm. At the Imperial palace we saw the gates that the courtesans entered on foot or by cart. Much of the palace has been restored as it is a world heritage site run by The Government of Japan. We saw the waiting rooms on the tour of the palace. Each waiting room had painting on the sliding doors and the rooms were arranged according to class the tatami matts also had different colours as one was red in the cherry blossom room and the other three tatami matts were white this symbolized class. As the lower class would wait in the cherry blossom room with the red tatami matts and the higher classes in the other 3 rooms with white tatami matts.  Then we saw a gate the Emperor always entered by the south gate. Then we saw the ceremonial section of the palace. The outside hall around the ceremonial hall was painted orange to symbolize power. The chrysanthemum flower is a symbol of the royal family of Japan and that symbol was everywhere at the palace. In Japan sometimes people would wear their family symbol on their kimonos. Outside the ceremonial hall there were two trees a tangerine tree on the left and a cherry blossom tree on the right also the stones in the courtyard outside the hall are white.The big outside gates were painted partially with white paint made from oysters that help protects the wood from insects and erosion of the cedar wood which was only used by the Emperor and Shrines in Japan. Cedar wood which much of the Imperial Palace was made is quite expensive today. The palace was not heavily fortified because he was the Emperor and no one dared to kill him because he was considered a descendent of one of the gods. There was a room for poetry, a library, shine and a beautiful garden where tea parties were held.  The Emperor also had an audience room with a tatami mat for the Emperor and a screen to cover him when he was tired. Also, the Emperor would be carried on long trips. The audience room also had silk curtains, places for lanterns and a schedule of the emperor's events on New Year's day,( his busiest day of the year). In the winter the people who lived in the palace would keep warm by wearing extra kimonos and by placing coles in clay pots to warm one's hands on. At the palace a lot of the buildings were dismantled when the Emperor moved to Tokyo and during WWII as they did not want them to catch fire.Some buildings burnt down and were not rebuilt. The North East direction is considered where evil comes from so in Kyoto they built a shrine in that direction to ward off evil spirits. After seeing the Imperial Palace we went to the University in Kyoto where the University of Alberta has a spring exchange program. It was very busy and crowded. Then we went to a Zen rock garden there was not much to see there and it was not worth the $5 admission fee. After this we went to The Golden Pavilion it was not too busy today and it was nice to look at. We bought a book that explains it better and has pictures of what the pavilion looks like inside. There was also a tea house and religious symbols which people threw money at or charms that they bought for luck.