京都御所

Unfortunately I have had only chance to visit it when they only let people in with f¥guided tours. The tour was nice and helped me learn a lot about different things about the palace, but it did not give you as big of a chance to see everything closely and to just wander around the place, which now days you can. You should visit it, if you are in Kyoto

The place is huuuuuuuuge. You can easily kill an hour or two here, wandering around. But that's all there really is to do...wander around. There's not really much to see here. Most building have no entrances, and the majority of the palace grounds is empty unused space (Which is kind of cool in its own right). You don't feel like you're in central Kyoto when you're inside the palace grounds. So if you need a not-so-far-away getaway, this may be the place for you. Add half a star if you enjoy walking. You'll be doing a lot of it.

The gardens within the grounds of Kyoto Imperial Palace are quite impressive, they feature Omiya Palace, Sento Palace, multiple shrines, a peach grove, and of course, Kyoto Imperial Palace. The peach grove is odd, the peaches are within arms reach, I can steal a few if want to, but don’t. The best looking shrine is the Isukushima Shrine; it sits quietly over a lake. There are signs in some areas of Kyoto Imperial Palace Park that say, “Not to be visited by tourists.” There are little to no other tourists here anyway; perhaps the signs have driven them all away. As I wander, I find that some of the paths are overgrown, others forgotten many years ago. I see one gardener delicately pollarding the branches of a tree. Just one gardener for a park 1.3 kilometres in length. As for the Kyoto Imperial Palace, it is behind a moat and a tall wall. The water in the moat has dried up. The wall too high to see the palace beyond. Even if the wall wasn’t there, the palace would be completely shrouded by trees anyway. There is one thing I do like though, and that is the sound made by the Cicadas. These little insects just love to sing. The trees here are full of them. And there are a lot of trees; ten thousand trees in the Palace Park alone. The noise these insects make sounds alien to me, maybe robotic; but calming. I spend a full hour wandering the park, and despite not being able to see the palace, I do enjoy the other little distractions the palace grounds have to offer.