Upper Saga Toriimoto Historic Preservation District

 

Saga Toriimoto is a small district at the very edge of Kyoto, up a narrow road leading to the mountain Atago Shrine.

It is one of the historic architectural preservation districts in Kyoto, though I would wager probably the least visited.

In my last post, I looked at two of the 400-year-old thatched buildings still operating as eateries.

This time, some of the other thatched buildings around the same area.

The area was originally farmhouses, but developed into a "shrine town" serving the growing number of pilgrims heading up to Atago Shrine.

Toriimoto means "around the torii", the vermilion first torii on the path up the mountain.

I became quite fascinated by these preservation districts, of which there are more than 120 scattered around Japan.

Some are well-known and very touristy, but many are off the beaten track and, to my mind, a bit more authentic.

click on the "preservation district" tag at the bottom of this post for more of my posts on them.

I believe the tags don't show in the smartphone version of these pages..... 

The previous post in this series on Arashiyama was on the kaiseki restaurants in two of the thatched former farmhouses.

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