Landmarks' Life

In the previous blog, I talked about the legend of how the Kiyomizu-Dera temple came about, but to most of us here, Japanese isn’t a language we are particularly familiar with. Therefore, we might not even know what “Kiyomizu” mean! To better understand this topic, I did some research and found out that Kiyomizu means “pure water” in English, so the Kiyomizu temple literally means the pure water temple. It may seem like a pretty random name, but it actually isn’t since the name was inspired from where it’s located in, the Otowa waterfall in the wooded hill east of Kyoto. This temple is an amazing place to look at the astonishing view of cherry blossoms and maple trees. The pink colour from the cherry blossoms and the red-orange colour from the maple leaves combine together to create a picture of spring and autumn. In fact, a wooden stage just outside the main hall made it easy to do so. Although nails were not used in the construction of the wooden stage, it still manages to st...

When I say the word temple, what comes to mind? Perhaps an image of a spiritual structure would float up in your mind and pictures of people kneeling down would be seen. However, that’s not the case for the temple in Kyoto, Japan. It is incredibly unusual how it is often crowded with people, noisy with children’s voices, and busy from selling amulets and fortunes. Despite this difference, it still became one of Japan’s most famous landmark. This oddly different temple is the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple.🌸 Temples usually have various stories behind it on how everything started, and one of the legend about Kiyomizu-Dera said it started in the late eighth century CE with the dream, Engine, a Japanese monk of the Hosso sect of Buddhism. The dream was about a golden river flowing down Mount Otowa right on top of Kyoto. Curious about his dream, Enchin visited the mountains and to his surprise, encountered an elder there. ⾦✨(gold) That old man was named Gyoei and he stated that h...