A little of each town’s story

Gion Shinbashi and the banks of the Shirakawa

From: An ordinary morning in a hundred-year-old Kyoto townhouse

Townhouses above the stone embankment of the Shirakawa, with a bare cherry tree

The Gion Motoyoshi-cho area along Shinbashi-dori, north of Gion, was designated a national Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings on September 4, 1976, as a teahouse town (1.4 hectares). Most of the surviving buildings date from just after the great fire of 1865: two-storied, gable-roofed and tiled, with red-ochre lattices on the ground floor and a tatami room above, its veranda hung with bamboo blinds. The stone paving and embankment along the Shirakawa, Tatsumi Bridge and the Tatsumi Daimyojin shrine, where geiko and maiko pray, are the sights of the area.

Sources: bunka.go.jp tabi-mag.jp

This moment in the journey

A stroll after the rain

Now that the rain was over, it was time for a walk through the streets of Kyoto. Seen through the bamboo blind, the wet garden was deep in color.

I followed the stone paving along the Shirakawa stream. Townhouses with red-ochre lattices stood in a row above the stone embankment, and a leafless cherry tree reached its branches over the water. Then through a narrow lane between wooden houses, and down a dim passage toward the light at its end.

Watch this scene on YouTube1:20

Read this scene in the full journey