Excusemimasen, have you seen my wabi-sabi?: Gone Fishing with my Mind

Wednesday I took the bus into town to pick up my netsuke from the shop near Daitokuji, but it turned out they were closed that day.

I probably should have tried calling to make sure, but I'd lost their number, and I wasn't entirely certain the who the unfamiliar number was in my missed calls log. As the shop being closed was something of a deterrent to my original plan, I instead found myself glancing at the map on the nearest bus stop looking for nearby shrines or temples. The first little temple I actually found just by looking across the street from the corner of Daitokuji.

Unrin-in is quite small and dates to the Heian period. Originally it was a part of a villa called Murasakino-in built by Emperor Junna in the early 800s, but it was later converted to a temple in 869. It doesn't seem like there's much left of the villa actually, or perhaps it just looks different. The sign out front indicated the hall dedicated to Kannon was rebuilt in 1707, so it's very possible parts of the villa burned down over the course of history.

I double-checked the bus stop map once more, and from Unrin-in I started meandering through hushed, peaceful residential streets in a southwesterly direction.
The journey to Kenkun Jinja was brief (but not too brief) and pensive. I'm finding more and more that wandering the residential areas of Kyoto is a calming experience, and a kind of beautiful sight-seeing in and of itself.

residential area surrounding Funaoka Hill

alstroemeria and raccoon-dog

Before I came around the hill from the north, the first mysterious glimpse I caught of the shrine were the bright red fences tucked into the lush greenery.
Kenkun Jinja, also called Takeisao Jinja, was built in 1869 during the Meiji era, first at the bottom of Funaoka Hill. Later they moved it to its present location at the top of the hill.

Kenkun Jinja is dedicated to the posthumously deified daimyo Oda Nobunaga. A couple of centuries prior to the founding of the shrine, Funaoka Hill was designated as as Nobunaga's graveyard. The treasures kept at the temple include his armor as well as the sword belonging to his enemy Imagawa Yoshimoto.

After climbing stairs and stairs--and still more stairs--up to the top of the hill, I discovered the main shrine grounds, nearly deserted. One man came by to offer a prayer during my entire visit. The only other person I saw was one of the caretakers, perhaps a priest, behind a sliding screen door in one of the shrine office rooms. When I asked him if the shrine was closed, he told me it was, but perhaps he meant it was closed for official shrine business...He was still kind enough to sign and stamp my nokyo-cho anyway.

While the view of Kyoto from the top of Funaoka Hill isn't exactly comprehensive, it was a wonderful, soft pause, with the darkening clouds, the splashes of blue, and the shadow-play on Hiei-zan and the city below.