The last leg
[I wrote this last post over the past week and a half. It's taken a little bit to fully digest the trip.]Looking back on Kyoto. It’s been some time since I’ve sat down to blog, and I have to admit that I haven’t really felt the need during this latter section of the trip. We’ve been here long enough that traveling around the country feels comfortable, and the little things aren’t nearly so surprising any more. Then again, there are always the little things that come up. The other day, I noticed that a lot of girls walk around pigeon-toed. The first few times I saw it, I thought they must have been crippled, but all the girls who were doing it seemed, well, dressed in awfully nice clothing. When I mentioned this mysterious pattern to Anja, she enlightened me: cute girls in manga are always drawn with their feet pointing in, and that’s one of the little things that girls will do to look good. Once I knew that, I couldn’t help but notice that it was only the girls who were dressed up and made up and otherwise trying really hard to be cute that were walking around with their toes pointed in. One girl looked like she was practically twisting her ankle with each step. Oh, and about five minutes later I saw a twentysomething guy with a sweatshirt that said “Stüssy” on the back. Not very unusual, except that it was sewn in red above a hammer and sickle. Apparently it’s quite fashionable to combine being late-90s-skater-hiphopper with a desire for working-class revolution. These people are just awesome.
Kyoto was a great time, and I’m glad we got to spend a full four days in the city. The morning we left, Mom commented that she could easily come back for another week. We’ve had some really interesting experiences.
New Year’s Eve. Our first night in town was New Year’s Eve. It’s a big deal for the Japanese, so we couldn’t wait to see what the celebrations would be like in Kyoto. Anja ran into a couple gaijin girls in the train station who gave us a tip about an indie rock concert that was happening at the university, so we figured we were pretty set. Once we’d gotten set up at our ryokan du jour, a cheap comfy spot that turned out to be a real pleasure to stay at, it was time to set out for some dinner and a night on the town. Food came in the form of a Chinese restaurant that we discovered along the main drag near the train station. If you’re thinking, “Chinese food in Japan on New Year’s Eve?”—this was the most delectable Chinese I’ve ever eaten. For a reasonable price, with a comfortable atmosphere, this place served us a string of gourmet small plates, each dish a unique creation of the master chef in residence. Next came a long walk from the subway station to find the university, and hopefully the concert. We found the campus without much of a problem, but locating the concert proved a challenge. Thankfully we ran into a Buddhist temple along the way, where a congregation had just finished its service and was starting to gather around a bonfire. Cold, we joined the cluster around the flames, and a few minutes later there was a commotion nearby. An ancient sage of a priest, dressed in wonderfully embellished brilliant orange regalia, was being helped up into the structure holding a bell that was easily four or five feet across. The poor man stumbled and lost his hat, then chanted in a deep voice and swung a miniature battering-ram at the bell to let out the first peal. It let out a rumbling baritone that threatened to reset your heart rate. All the young priests took a turn ringing the bell, and then everyone in the congregation lined up for their chance. Smiling priests served everyone hot saké with milk, and we took refuge in the temple to join groups of young people who were sitting around the space heaters. One had heard of the concert and spoke a bit of English, and with his help we were back on track to hear some music. (It turns out that we were looking in the wrong part of campus, so it’s a good thing he gave us some solid directions.) There was only a few more hours to the concert by the time we got there, but we were up for a show. We certainly got one. The bands that Anja had hoped to hear were long gone, having played earlier in the night, but we got to hear some jazzy rock and blues from a pretty talented bunch of middle-aged musicians who just might have been professors at the university. They played ‘Georgia,’ ‘Route 66’ and one guitarist even did a solo rendition of ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.’ That capped the evening, and we took off when the next act turned out to be so-so. A cab ride later, we were fast asleep on blessedly thick mattresses.
Fushimi Inari. [http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=fushimi+inari&btnG=Search] There was only one destination for the next day: the shrine of the thousand torii. Fushimi Inari is a shrine to the god of the harvest, and its priests have a centuries-old tradition of using torii gates to create winding pathways through the forest on the way to worship at the altar. I’d seen a couple pictures, and read about it in the Let’s Go, but that didn’t really prepare me for the place itself. We knew we were going in the right direction from the moment we arrived at the train station, since one side of the platform was packed with people. We got on with the mob, and left with the mob, only to find ourselves part of a mob hundreds of times larger at the shrine itself. The place was alive with humanity, mostly couples and families out to ring in the new year and pick up a fresh set of charms for the coming months. A long avenue separated the train station from the first great entry gate, and it was lined with vendors selling all kinds of odd festival foods. Giant squid on a stick, long thin whitefish on a stick, octopus balls, vegetable omelettes, candied fruit, long thick hot-dogs on a stick, sweet bean cakes, yam fries, and a few others that I can’t recall just now. Beyond the entryway, we passed an altar where sake and fruit were stacked ten feet high. It’s common to see food and sake left as an offering, but here the people had left a veritable mountain of tasty treats for the gods to consume. Great ropes stretched down from the eaves, attached to gongs, and waves of people would stream up the hill to toss coins and ring as loud as they could, for good luck and other blessings. Further up the hill, the torii began. Large and small, old and new, each one represented a gift to the temple from various aristocratic and wealthy families over the past centuries. I’d thought that the path would be somewhat brief—a thousand torii don’t really take up that much space, and I figured the number was probably exaggerated. Well, the number was certainly inaccurate, but only because there must have been ten thousand gates on that hill. The path wound up and down, around and across, occasionally meeting up with other paths but always offering an option to climb further towards the peak. There were shrines along the way, presumably to various kami, often adorned with tiny wooden torii along with candles and aprons that had been placed there for the holiday. At one junction, a hundred or so candles were burning on a huge rack housed in a building that hung out over a pond. We each made a donation and added our own small candles. When we finally got to the top, there was no particular climax to the journey, just an especially old collection of shrines where we could see the sunset over Kyoto. It was a wonderful sight. Climbing down the trail was eerie in the twilight, but we found our way back to the main avenue and grabbed a dinner of fish & squid on a stick. I’ll never forget that place.
Biking around town. Anja had been hankering to rent bikes at some point on the trip, and the day after walking through the thousands of gates seemed like an opportune time. Our ryokan was connected with a sister setup just a few blocks away where bikes could be had for cheap, so we saddled up and went exploring. Anja took off on her own, while Mom and I found our way over to Toji Temple. This was the home to Japan’s tallest pagoda, a national icon with five massive stories, alongside two ancient temple buildings that house a stunning collection of gilt Buddhist statues. Toji was created by the emperor as a center for the study of esoteric Buddhism, so the place has a long history of housing national religious treasures. One particularly interesting work featured the “twelve celestial generals” arrayed in a ring around the base of a lotus flower that supported Buddha, each rendered in exquisite detail. There was also an antiques market being held on the grounds, where we took a browse around and I found a nice old Japanese painting on a scroll. The shopkeeper spoke precisely zero English, so we negotiated the price using a calculator and hand gestures. I have no idea of the thing’s actual value or age, but I do know that she claims to have sold it to me at half off. Finished with the temple, we took our time riding across town to the Gion district, the famous pleasure district where you can still spend time with geishas and their apprentices (for a hefty fee). We saw no geishas—they don’t show their faces on the street these days—but we did mingle with the tight-packed crowds and wandered through a number of shops on the small winding streets. One shop housed an array of craftwork from distinguished local artists, and Mom found a uniquely designed saké set made entirely from bamboo. Tired of shopping, we looked for a tea shop that served Japanese sweets. When a half hour’s searching left us with the knowledge that the only place combining those two qualities was packed, we settled for a more normal cafe and settled down for a snack of milk tea, custard and ‘hot cake.’ Or so the menu said—what arrived was actually flan and a pair of pancakes with syrup. (Flan is quite the popular thing here, and it’s not uncommon to find pancakes sold in plastic wrap at the grocery store as snacks to be eaten cold and without toppings.) A long dark bike ride later, we met up with Anja and swapped stories of the day over dinner. That night at the ryokan we watched Nausicaa, a Studio Ghibli film along the lines of Princess Mononoke, in the company of a couple English college students. These two guys had started learning iaedo, the Japanese martial art of katana swordfighting, which has the somewhat disturbing goal of training a person to kill so efficiently with a blade that they can keep it up all day long. Their stated reason for coming to Japan was for a concert—they’d missed out on seeing their favorite band on tour back in England, and since the next destination was Japan, they figured they might as well go. Not that they’d managed to actually get tickets, of course, since the website wasn’t working properly and the guys on the phone at the ticket office spoke only enough English to read a few stock phrases off a sheet of paper. So here they were, hoping that the show wasn’t sold out, and taking advantage of the opportunity to see the area around Kyoto, pick up a bit of iaedo gear for the team back home and do a little training with their teacher’s teacher. We got along famously.
The following day, the five of us grouped up to go out sight-seeing and shopping. First stop was the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a small Buddhist temple that just happens to be covered head to toe in gold leaf, sits at the edge of a peaceful little pond and has got to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It’s got to be the best advertising ever for meditation—“Work on becoming enlightened, and you get to chill with us at this really excellent temple.” I’d sign up in a minute. We split up after that, since the British boys wanted to go sword-shopping and Mom and Anja wanted to go kimono-shopping. (You get exactly one guess as to which group I decided to spend my afternoon with.) The sword shops turned out to be closed—it was still too close to New Year’s—but we got to see a good bit of the city and eventually made our way over to Heian Jingu. This shrine was marked by a torii that must be the most massive in the entire country. It might not have been sitting out in the water like the one at Itsukushima Jinja, but it managed to stretch all the way across a four-lane road, standing tall enough to comfortably fit the body of a 747 in the middle. It was dizzying to look straight up at the thing: with the clouds moving ever so slowly in the background, I got the distinct impression that the gate was falling over on top of me. We visited the shrine itself, where another mob of Japanese were out to pay homage and pray for good luck in the coming year. Many of the women were in kimonos, looking stunning. After taking an extended wander around Gion to see a bit more of what the pleasure district had to offer, we met up with Anja and Mom at a tiny little restaurant on a tiny little street across the river in Ginza, amidst a district whose layout could easily have dated from the 1700s or earlier. They’d found some great kimono jackets for themselves and a friend, so we passed a pleasant evening and went back to the ryokan. The next morning, we saw a few last sights around Kyoto, and hopped on the JR to make our way to Ise in the afternoon.
Ise. Once we’d spent the night at the ryokan in Ise, we woke up to a large Japanese breakfast and set off for Ise Jingu. We’ve been to see all kinds of shrines in the past weeks, but this was the Shinto equivalent of visiting the Vatican. It’s a shrine to Amaterasu, the symbol of the nation and the god of the harvest (if I recall), the holiest of all Shinto shrines in the world. Even with the New Years holiday over, there were throngs of Japanese visitors, young and old. We saw only two gaijin. The entryway leads to a wide gravel path that winds its way through the forest, taking you through stands of redwood surrounded by fern groves, and at the end is a carefully constructed set of thatched buildings with gold leaf details on the roof beams. The inner sanctum can only be viewed by the Imperial family, so the visitors pay homage at one of the outer buildings and content themselves by getting close to one of several replicas that come later on the path. In the area just in front of the gates, groups of distinguished guests walk in solemn file to stand in front of the shrine’s gates where a priest carries out a special ceremony. Nearby, there’s a wide square clearing—the site where the shrine will be reconstructed in 2013, according to an age-old tradition that it must be rebuilt in a new place every 20 years. (The current set of buildings were put up in 1993, at the cost of about USD$400 million. The government claims it pays this fee “to keep alive ancient techniques of carpentry.”) I found it to be a very moving place, a wonderful way to meditate on natural beauty.
Toba. Near Ise is a town called Toba, the place where pearls were first cultured, which remains a central location for the world production of pearls. It sits on a beautiful coastline area, in a bay dotted with tiny islands whose sides plunge directly into the blue waters with only the occasional beach to break up the otherwise continuous carpet of forest. We’d been yearning to spend some time away from the city where we could see some of Japan’s natural features, and this was the perfect place for it. The weather was perfect—clear and crisp. Our lodging was at a posh modern ryokan that sat just above the coastline on top of an onsen (hot spring) that was used to fill the communal baths. This place was spectacular. We were attended to by a whole retinue of staff, who brought us traditional bitter ma’cha green tea in the lobby and refused to let us raise a finger to help them with our bags. Our specific caretaker was a charming girl, Sayuri, who had the amazing ability to stop by our room exactly when she was needed and never when she was not. The view out our window was of the bay, filled with myriad platforms for oyster-farming, the very same place where they hauled up the oysters that we ate later in the evening. Dinner was some of the most delicious food I’ve ever eaten—seriously—and included lobster-tail sashimi, a tasty dish I never knew existed. Another part of the meal was “top shell” sashimi, the meat of a large sea snail. It took every ounce of my jaw strength just to bit through it. (Sometimes, I think the Japanese fascination with chewiness just goes too far.) We all took full advantage of the hot spring water. Bathing is traditionally a communal affair, but it was only in Toba that there were actually a significant number of other people at the baths. (The other ryokans were a lot smaller, and their baths more spare and functional.) On top of a hot tub the size of a pool, they provided a sauna and an outdoor hot tub composed of great granite boulders. I’ve never been much one for taking long baths, but this place convinced me. It was so calming, so peaceful and at the same time such an intense physical experience—I could easily spend an hour at their baths every day. The following day, we went into town, a pleasant little spot where we found a local cafe that served delicious food and took a tour of the pearl museum. On the way, we stopped in a pearl shop and picked up a few wonderful strings of pearls at very low prices—not what we expected at the center of premium pearl production! One of the things we found on the island was a demonstration of traditional pearl diving. The procedure: jump off the boat, dive for an oyster, bring it up, repeat three times and get back in the boat. The gear: thin white cotton clothes, a glass facemask, a big wooden bucket and a rope. No wet suit. No oxygen tanks. No flippers. No lights. Now, you tell me: in Japan, who would be doing such a thing? Probably big, athletic young men, right? Nope—this is women’s territory. If Japanese feminists haven’t made those divers into their poster children, then they’re missing a big opportunity. The museum itself was very interesting, giving all the details on the process of culturing pearls and a solid slice of the related parts of world history, wrapping up with an exhibit of pearls through the ages that was very impressive. The shops attached to the museum were of course selling some of the world’s most expensive pearls, including one single pearl that was priced at about $350,000. That right there gave us fodder for an extended discussion about fashion, status and why people spend such ridiculous amounts of money on visual appearance that has very little to do with aesthetics. We found out why our pearls had been so cheap: the pearl market prizes particular colors and perfect spherical shapes, while the ones we had bought were beautiful for their organic appearance that came from ‘blemishes’ and ‘irregularities.’ I think we got a far better deal.
posted by Noah Flower @ 1:39 AM
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