Koshoji Temple (興聖寺)

I started walking, as I am apt to do, in the direction of Uji.  The main road was rather boring - long, wide, straight, without anything to see - like so many streets in Los Angeles.  I was about to give up and turn back when I saw a pointed rooftop in the distance, that signature architectural detail of centuries old Japan.  Then the great Uji River came into view.  My day was about to take a turn toward the beautiful and serene.

I had by chance (and with some determination) stumbled upon historic Uji.  I only had to follow the markers through the twisty streets lined with traditional machiya wood houses.  I followed some stairs leading from the Uji Shrine down to the river.  There were some men fishing.  I walked along an impossibly narrow road that hugged the bank of the river listening to the fast moving water.  I came to a large stone gate, the sort of noble structure that leads to something big and important.

Up the hill on the edge of a forest was the magnificent Koshoji Temple.  For better or worse, a lot of what we know about other cultures comes from film.  This looked like something out of a samurai film.  I wondered if I hadn't stepped through some sort of time portal when I crossed under that stone gate.

I was wonderfully alone there, no tourists swarming over the place, just me and 3 or 4 other people.  I wandered around in quiet awe.  I climbed some stairs up through the ancient graveyard and found a woman weeping by a tombstone, as if she were visiting the grave of a recently deceased relative.  So odd I thought.  Then I realized I don't know anything.