What is Kyoto known for

What is Kyoto known for?

Kyoto has been called the “city of water” from their beautiful landscape. 

History of Kyoto

In the past, the unique landscape with the rich natural environment of what is called “Sanshi suimei” or “Purple mountain and clear water”, was how Raisanyo (Author of Nihon Gaishi) expressed the beauty of Kyoto. The word shows that Japan has four beautiful seasons, with sunset beyond the mountain and river running through the landscape.

Japanese has three language characters; Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Kanji is also known as a Chinese character, since it’s said it arrived in Japan from China.

In kanji, water can be expressed by “水, water”, “川, river”, “池, pond”, “海, sea”, etc etc. If you stop and look at the name of the place in kanji, you might notice that many names have the “water” characters like, Kiyomizu temple “清水”, Kamo river “鴨川”, and Oike “御池”.

Famous for water??

When the capital of Japan was relocated to Kyoto in 794 which is known as “Heiankyo”, between Katsura river in the west of Kyoto city and Kamogawa in the east They built a harbour in both places as a stopover for goods being transported around Japan. This can be explained as to why Kyoto is called the “City of water”.

With the beautiful scenery and clear fresh water, some people say the origin of Japanese tea and sake is from Kyoto.

Now you know why Kyoto is famous for Japanese tea and sake!