Kyoto Imperial Palace - Kyoto, Japan

October 22, 2008 by Jeff · 2 Comments

In my last post about the Kyoto Imperial Palace I discussed how to get access to the Palace. Since that time we've gone on the tour of the Kyoto Imperial Palace.

The tour of the Kyoto Imperial Palace takes about 60 minutes and tours through the outside of each building and gates. You start the tour with a video of what you'll see throughout the tour, which, I've always found a bit weird. Why show us what we'll see if we're just going to go see it? Our tour was provided in English and was a tour group of 130 people! This was (in my opinion) too large of a group. To take a picture or see a detail you had a long wait and were unlikely to see it before being rushed off to the next stop.

The highlight of the tour (in terms of buildings) is the entrance gate to the main courtyard. The gate is a brilliant orange colour and the buildling is a massive structure in behind. You can see in the picture below how impressive it looks. Although, it's really not the best picture as it was a quick snap before getting ushered along.

The other highlight of the tour is the Imperial Palace garden. It's a beautifully manicured garden with a small island and bridge. There was actually a pelican standing on a rock looking like it was modelling/posing for everyone. Anyway, here's one of the pictures that we got from the garden (sorry, that it's overexposed but that's camera life!) The garden was really pretty and quite nice because it seemed that people were more interested in the buildings behind the garden then the garden itself!

If you only have time for one tour I highly recommend going to see the Shaunkin Imperial Villa rather then the Imperial Palace. Overall, I thought the Imperial Villa was much prettier and was a much more intimate atmosphere. The Imperial Villa group was around 25 where as this was 130 people. That's a huge difference when you're trying to take pictures and appreciate the surroundings.

Although, if you want to see impressive structures and templets rather then beautiful scenery then the Kyoto Imperial Palace should be your choice. Either way you should definitely make time to see either of these great places in Kyoto.