Temples & Shrines

Grounds are usually free. What costs money is going further in — a treasure hall, an inner garden, a pagoda you can climb, a hall with a specific statue in it — and those run from a couple of hundred yen to around a thousand at the major sites, payable in cash at a window rather than a card reader. Thirty to forty-five minutes covers a single hall and its grounds; a mountain temple with a climb, or one of the big walled complexes in the old capitals, is a half-day.

Telling the two traditions apart takes one glance. A torii gate means a Shinto shrine; a heavier roofed gate with guardian figures in it means a Buddhist temple. They have shared space for over a thousand years, so finding one inside the other is normal rather than a contradiction.

The etiquette is short. Bow slightly as you pass through the gate, and walk to one side of the central path at a shrine rather than straight up the middle. Use the water basin near the entrance: one ladle, rinse the left hand, the right, then pour into a cupped hand for the mouth, and never drink from the ladle. At a shrine's offering box the sequence is coin, two bows, two claps, one bow. At a temple you do not clap — a coin, a bow, hands together, a bow.

Photograph the grounds freely. Inside a main hall, and of specific altars and statues, often no — there will be a sign, and where there is not, the absence of anyone else with a camera is the sign. Take your shoes off where there is a rack or a step up to polished wood, and keep your voice down within earshot of anyone praying.

Almost everyone's first temple or shrine is whichever one is nearest their hotel in Kyoto, at eleven in the morning, in a crowd. That is a bad introduction to a kind of place whose entire architecture is arranged around quiet.

Choose for time of day before you choose for fame. Grounds generally open at first light and the halls from eight or nine; the hour after opening is a genuinely different building from the same place at midday, and it costs nothing but an early alarm. Late afternoon, an hour before the ticket windows close, is the second-best window.

Then choose one with a walk in it. A temple you step into from a bus stop is a building; a temple at the top of a flight of stone steps through cedar, or at the end of a path along a ridge, arrives in the right frame of mind because the approach has done the work. This is why mountain temples convert visitors who found city ones underwhelming.

Third, prefer one that is still in use over one that is essentially a museum. A working parish shrine with a wedding in progress, an old woman doing her rounds and a priest sweeping tells you more about what these places are for than the most significant National Treasure with a rope across it.

Save the famous walled complexes for after you have seen two or three ordinary ones. They are more legible — and much better value for a ticket — once you already know what a main hall, a pagoda and a purification basin are for.

Walking up the middle of the path at a shrine. The centre of the approach is nominally the god's; people walk to the side. Nobody will correct you, which is exactly why visitors keep doing it.

Drinking from the ladle. The basin is for rinsing. You pour water into your hand, not into your mouth, and the ladle goes back rinsed and face-down.

Treating a prayer hall as a photo opportunity. The moment to check yourself is when someone is standing at the offering box. Wait, or shoot from the side. Photographing a stranger mid-prayer from two metres away is the thing visitors do most often without noticing.

Turning up with no cash. Offering boxes, ticket windows, stamp desks and candle stands are all coins and small notes. A card is useless at almost every one of them, and the hundred-yen coin is the working unit of the whole category.

Buying a stamp book and then using it wrong. The goshuin book collects a calligraphed seal written for you at a desk; it is not an autograph book and it is not for tickets or stickers, and handing it over open at the right page saves everyone time.

Booking the day around one famous site. These places cluster — the reason there is a great temple on that hill is usually that there are four more within a walk. Arriving with a single name and a taxi back is how people end up seeing one crowded hall and concluding they have seen the category.

Shorts, bare shoulders and shoes. No dress code is enforced at almost any of them, but shoes must come off where the floor changes, and socks with holes are a real and avoidable indignity.