Kyoto to Osaka

With an early start to our last day in Kyoto, we headed over to the Nanzenji complex of temples and gardens that circle a massive sanmon (three-doored gate, san = three and mon = gate). First the beautiful gardens, both wet and dry, at Konchi-in.

Then the gardens that thread through the abbot's quarters or hojo, where we encountered (again) a horde of Japanese school kids; many are shy, but many others eager to practice a little English with us, to ask us where we are from--and to have their picture taken with us.




Finally we ended with the garden at Nanzenji-in. All these temples have enormous history, with emperors, shoguns, priests, poets and architects playing a part.





After checking out of our hotel, to Kyoto Station by taxi and then a train ride to Osaka. There was no direct route to the hotel, so we had to change from the intercity line to a local circle line (which took a few minutes to figure out maps, tickets, and so on) and a short walk to the Imperial Hotel.

Imperial is right, and our hosts reserved for us a room on the Imperial Floor--I'm not making this up--which only special key cards get access to. More luxury than we can stand. A wonderful view of Osaka--which is known more for industry and shipping rather than culture--from our window.



In the evening we met with our friend Aya and Kazushi (who are the marital couple) and another couple from America.

Water and sky and earth and other things

Today it rained, hard and cold. We continued to delve (slightly) deeper into Japanese culture. In the morning we took a taxi to the outskirts of the city to Katsura Imperial Villa, with some of the most famous and sublime gardens in Japan. We only brought one umbrella, so the tour guide kindly found an extra for the foolish gaijin huddling together.






Even in the rain--or perhaps especially in the rain--or perhaps equally well in all weather--the gardens were sublime. Word do not do justice, and pictures fall short of the full glory.



Soaked, we took the bus back to Kyoto Station, had hot soup for lunch, and shopped for a bit before heading back to the hotel, where we relaxed before our evening's entertainment.



In the early evening we headed for Gion, the famed geisha district of Kyoto. Keep in mind that geisha were primarily entertainers--the western view of them primarily as prostitutes is erroneous (although it certainly happened). Although many gaijin tourists wander through Gion, many of the tea houses and restaurants have signs and menus only in Japanese and some have no signs at all; you have to be invited in order to enter.




One of the skills of geishas is dancing (mai in Japanese). In April it is, apparently, traditional for the maiko to perform dances. This afternoon we went to a spectacular performance. The theater, Gionkobu Kaburenjo, was in the same complex as Gion Corner, a slightly cheesey rendition of traditional Japanese performing arts, five performances a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, for crowds of sweaty tourists. (Which we saw two years ago--we're not above such a thing.) Donna had read about maiko performances in April, but in the states all we could find out about were performances at hotels, including overpriced meals. Once here we were able to track down the Miyako Odori performances at Kaburenjo (which locally is not hard--there are signs all over Gion advertising, and throughout April there are several performances a day). It was 1/5 the cost, and probably ten times better.





No pictures were allowed once the curtain went up. Which, while understandable, is a shame because it was truly spectacular. On both sides of the stage were musicians (women--maiko and geiko--on all instruments and in all roles) playing traditional instruments and singing traditional songs, as maiko in elaborate turquoise kimonos processed up to the stage.

During the hour-long performance, the maiko took us through spring, summer, fall, winter, and back to spring again, with stories of love, rejection, and red-haired demons. I didn't understand half of it, but I felt I got more out of it than the kyogen. (This may have been the compressed nature; the kyogen plays, performed by monks, were in their original format, unedited for your television viewing.) The stagecraft was magnificent, and I'm sure no matter what, the overpriced performances at the western-style hotels could not possible compare to this spectacle. It was a great climax to our week in Kyoto.



Of course, it's hard to know how to place these performances. Are they akin to, say, compressing the Ring cycle into one hours (which, frankly, I'd gladly pay $40 to see a good staged summary for), or more like the musical staged version of Disney;s Beauty and the Beast?


Afterwards, happy and full of culture, we went to an Indian restaurant near our hotel. The food was excellent, much better than I frankly expected, and the Japanese owner who also waited on us, even understood when I said "Bahut achaa" ("very good" in Hindi). There is a dish called curry rice in Japan, but it is terrible compared to real Indian dishes.

Tomorrow we transition to Osaka, where we'll spend the weekend celebrating the wedding of Donna's friend Aya and Aya's fiance Kazushi.

Cultural experiences

Today we switched from pure sightseeing to taking in Japanese culture at a slightly (though not very) deeper level. In the morning we started off at a vast flea market at Toji Temple, where we feasted on fried balls of batter and octopus and roasted slices of yam, and bought a couple of used kimonos for Donna plus a lovely embroidered obi (which, being cultural barbarians that we are, we will probably use as a decorative table runner--it matches one of the Edo era wood block prints which we bought on our previous trip and which hang in our dining room).




In the afternoon we went to Mibudera Temple to watch performances of kyogen, classical comic plays which are only performed 3 times a year. When kyogen are described as "comic" it does not mean Adam Sandler/Jim Carrey kind of comic, but more "less somber than Noh" comic. Kyogen are wordless and alleged to be more accessible than Noh and Kabuki...in which case I'd better drop my ambitions to see Noh. The performances were fascinating (though, alas, no pictures were allowed), and this being a kind of opening day for the April performances, they started with a real bang, a traditional smashing of hundreds of clay plates meant to drive out mistakes and evil spirits.



We're taking the rest of the day easy. Tomorrow we have a couple of more cultural experiences arranged, and will tell you all about them soon.

A Contemplative Day in Kyoto

Yesterday was sunny and warm. Today Kyoto was cool and drizzly, a perfect day to visit Zen gardens. We took a bus to the famed Ginkakuji, also known as the Temple of the Golden Pavillion. Unlike Kinkakuji (Silver Pavillion), this one really is gold plated! By arriving early...on a rainy Tuesday in late April...we missed the large crowds, although buses were starting to pull in.

Another short bus ride took us to Daitokuji, a complex of small, beautiful shrines, gardens, and historic tea rooms. The first was Daisen-in, the most famous. Pictures were not allowed inside.


But Daisen-in contained elegant, exquisitely sculptured rock gardens, justly famous. (Just down the street is Ryoanji, home to the most famous rock gardens. But it is crowded with tourists and loudspeakers blaring "interpretation" in multiple languages means Enlightening is a hard task at Ryoanji. Calvin visited it 10 years ago, but we decided to give it a miss. A good idea--Daisen-in, in my opinion, is superior.) On such a quiet, contemplative day we had the small temple nearly to ourselves. We bought a souvenir picture book and the abbot himself came out and autographed it, transliterating our names into the Japanese syllabary.

Further on in the same complex is Koto-in, surrounded by bamboo forest. Green and mossy, with rain dripping from the limbs of lonely pine trees, it was inexpressively subtle and moving.





Zuiho-in, another small temple, had sand and rock gardens, lovely if not as tightly expressive as Daisen-in. (I'm sure that each temple and garden has its own advocates.)



The morning over, we returned to the Sanjo shopping arcade and had lunch at Musashi, a sushi restaurant. Here the sushi dishes go by on a conveyor belt, and one picks out the items you want to eat. At the end, a waitress counts up the number of dishes to get your bill.

A visit to the shops around the Kyoto Art Museum for some gifts. When you purchase something, the merchants have you draw for a free gift, usually something small. But when we purchased a modest bottle of sake, our prize, surprisingly, was another bottle worth twice as much.

Our final stop was the famed Nishiki food market, where we bought fresh soy-milk doughnuts, hot out of the fryer, and some unagi (broiled eel) and pickled vegetables for an in-room dinner.

I'm sure there will be more news later....

Our feet are worn to stubs, our eyes throb with so many beautiful sights

A busy day of major sights. We woke early, still slightly jetlagged, caught the subway and a bus to arrive before eight at one of the major temples, Kiyomizudera, sited on an eastern hillside overlooking Kyoto. Kiyomizudera is Buddhist but has on its grounds a Shinto shrine, more evidence for the comfortable syncretism of Japanese religion. (Nepal similarly incorporated both Buddhism and Hinduism with comfort.) As we expected, the crowded were down, the major tour group being middle school children from Niigata who wanted our picture taken with them, and an opportunity for the sensei to encourage the children to practice their English.





After walking downhill from Kiyomizudera, we caught another bus up to Ginkakuji, the Temple of the Silver Pavillion. When we had been here almost two years ago, in the summer of 2006, the ground had been open but the pavillion itself covered with scaffolding undergoing restoration. It is now visible again--although it never was covered in silver (and hasn't been for a long time), but rather with a cypress-wood roof. The grounds are particularly lovely, combining both dry (sand) and wet (pond) elements, with much mossy terrain climbing up the hillside.






Then we took the Philosopher's Walk along a canal. Two years ago, in the middle of summer, the Walk had been dominated by cicadas, each loudly proclaiming its own tedious and repetitive brand of philosophy. Today the philosophers, er, bugs were quiet, but there were still some remaining cherry blossoms to decorate the path. We took a lovely lunch canalside.



Then we took the subway to the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Kyoto had been the capital for over a thousand years, but the palace kept burning down (cypress-bark roofs and paper walls will make for flammable , so the structures we saw today were 'only' 155 years old. The Imperial Household keeps a fairly tight hand on visitors, especially gaijin, so one has to present a passport to request permission to visit. The grounds, while not as overwhelming as say Nijo Castle, still are impressive, with particularly beautiful gardens with water features. On Thursday we have gotten permission to visit the grounds and gardens at the Katsura Imperial Villa southeast of Kyoto.







And then we were tired out. We braved the insanity that is Daimaru (thinks Harrods, only Japanese and maybe twice as intense) for a picnic dinner and a bottle of sake to take back to our hotel room. We barely made it out to come down to the business center to log into the internet and post this.



Yr faithful correspondents...

In Kyoto!

We made it!

The trip was long and of necessity tiring, but otherwise it went well. We flew to San Francisco and then an 11-hour flight to Osaka's Kansai airport. From there we took the Haruka train to Kyoto, caught a subway, and then walked the last few blocks to the Hotel Fujita. Our room has a lovely view of the Kamo river, as you can see. (The downside of this hotel is the internet connection is not in-room as we had hoped, so our posts will be less frequent.) We did go to the nearby tourist district and had soba in a restaurant we discovered on our last visit.

The next morning we awoke early, and took a walk along the Kamo to the train station, where we fortified ourselves with yen (ATMs that work with US cards can be surprisingly hard to find), had breakfast of pastries, and then bought train/bus passes.

From the station we caught a crowded bus and went to Sanjusangendo Temple, home of the thousand kannon, or statues of the Buddha of Mercy. It is one of our favorite temples in Kyoto, but you cannot take a picture inside, so I only give you the picture of the outside. In the middle of the thousand kannon is one enormous gold-plated Buddha.



After Sanjusangendo we went to Maruyama Park, just outside the famed Gion district. We are in Japan just after cherry blossom season, but there are still some beautiful blossoms to see. This also means lots of tourists, especially Japanese tourists on a Sunday like this, so we hit Maruyama in late morning before it became too crowded. Afterwards we went to a restaurant just off the Kamo river--negotiating meals in Japan is sometimes interesting, as we aren't always sure how (and when) to consume a particular item. Do we pour this sauce over the soba noodles or dip it in it?

We took the rest of Sunday easy, assuming that everything will be more crowded on a weekend, and will return to our adventures Monday morning.

Off to Japan!

We're off to Japan. We'll land at Osaka's Kansai airport, then take the train to Kyoto where we'll spend a week. Then back to Osaka for a friend's wedding. News and photos soon.