Photo: Picturetokyo at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
One of the most popular spot for cherry blossom viewing in Kyoto, and can get extremely crowded at that time of year. The park's star attraction is a weeping cherry tree (shidarezakura), which offers an ethereal vision lit up in the night. Outside of the season, a nice spot to rest yourself during travelling around the Higashiyama area. Main entrance to the park is through Yasaka Shrine.
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八坂神社
At the eastern end of Shijō-dōri, at the edge of Gion, is the shrine responsible for Kyoto's main festival - the Gion Matsuri, which takes place in July. The shrine is small in comparison with many in Kyoto, but it boasts an impressive display of lanterns.
高台寺
This temple was built for Toyotomi Hideyoshi's widow by Tokugawa Ieyasu and is located right next to the Ryōzen Kannon temple on the Higashiyama mountain. If you really like temples this is a very nice one. It's got a nice bamboo grove that you walk through on the way out. It was established in 1605. The remaining buildings survived a fire in 1789.
東大谷; 大谷祖廟 Ōtani Sobyō
Located in a cemetery, tourists typically visit this site accidentally however, because some of the ashes of Shinran, the founder of Jōdo-Shin Buddhism, are contained inside the mausoleum, it is a popular place for Buddhists to come to pay their respects.
霊山観音
A memorial to the unknown Japanese soldiers who died in World War II, with a 24-meter-tall statue of Kannon.
知恩院
The head temple of the Jodo sect of Buddhism. The Sanmon gate at the entrance to the temple is the largest of such gates in the nation. Visitors can walk freely around the complex and inside the buildings, except for those that house the temples "Seven Wonders".
護國神社, Gokuku-jinja
This shrine was built to house the souls of all those who died in the Pacific War, from the Meiji Restoration uprisings and the Russo-Japanese War to the end of World War II. It is the first shrine in the nation to be officially recognized as a shrine for war dead.