Kiyomizu Temple sits on the side of Mount Otowa and has beautiful views. The walk up to this temple is quite a hike. Because it was so hot, we caught a cab as far as we could up the mountain. At the Jishu shrine on the Kiyomizu grounds are two "love" stones that are about 25 feet apart from each other. The story goes, if you can walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed, your true love desires will be granted.

Sanjusangendo Hall contains 1,000 life-size (for Japan, at least) statues of the thousand-handed Kanon, which are displayed in a 400-foot-long wooden hall. Five hundred are on each side of a 19-foot large Kanon. While we were there, some Buddhist monks were chanting and incense filled the air. Wow! Was it cool!! By the way, each statue does not actually have 1,000 hands--they only have 40, but each hand can save 25 worlds!

The temple sits on Kyoko-ike, or Mirror Pond, which takes its name from the fact that on a sunny day, the temple itself cannot be differentiated from its reflection in the water. Seriously. The two look exactly the same (see photo). Unfortunately, we were in Kyoto on a dismal rainy day, so this could not be seen properly. So, I swiped a badly-scanned photo from the Kyoto Convention Bureau to give you at least some idea of the incredible serenity of it all.

Even if you're there on a gloomy day, like we were, the overall scene presents a commanding, unequaled beauty. The painstaking detail with which the garden and the pond were created is evident, and the temple functions along with them as an integral whole.

In 1950 a man thought the temple was so beautiful that he decided to commit suicide and take the whole temple down with him. So he burned the entire thing to the ground, inspiring Yukio Mishima to write a novel based on the incident. (The concept has something to do with attaining a true state of beauty and is beyond the scope of this write-up).

The temple was rebuilt shortly thereafter and still remains one of the major tourist hot-spots of Japan.