When I'm in a new city, I strongly prefer walking to taking the subway or even the bus. I feel like you get a much better sense of the city when pounding the pavement. While Tom and I wandered around Kyoto during our days there, and also in the evenings after getting back from our day trips, I snapped pictures of the houses that caught my eye. Call it scouting for homes for when we move here. Kidding, but seriously. Kyoto is magical.
Today, we started our day at the beautiful Miho Museum, a breathtaking building in Shiga Prefecture, designed by I.M Pei (the same architect behind the Pyramid entrance at the Louvre and the National Gallery East Building in DC). The Miho holds a variety of Asian and European art, with a particular emphasis on those countries and regions involved in the Silk Road. As such, the building itself (the only part I could photograph, unfortunately) is a modern-day Shangri-La with a magical tunnel through a mountain leading to the picturesque museum building itself. So great.
After touring the collections and buying a few souvenirs (museum gift shops are the best!), we headed into Shigaraki, one of the major pottery towns in Japan. It was absolutely amazing to be surrounded (literally!) by so many makers. We walked through several stores that I'm fairly sure had more hand-built pottery in a single shop than most American towns have. And such variety of surfaces from rough wood-fired to meticulous enamels and painted ware. Also, a lot of Tanuki statues, Japanese Raccoon-Dogs, which Shiga is famous for and which are said to bring luck to the owner. We also toured through the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park and met some of the really friendly local and international residents who were loading up a woodkiln, but were happy to take a few minutes to say hello and show us their work and the grounds. Refreshing to be surrounded by makers and my art form again! After we returned to Kyoto (a much longer train ride than I'd expected), we stopped for dinner at Shishin, a self-proclaimed Samurai Cafe, only about two blocks from our Airbnb. We had a yummy dinner, Japanese style for the first time: sitting crosslegged on the floor on tatami mats and thin cushions. Midway through our meal, we were joined by a Japanese man (we both forgot his name unfortunately) who had studied in England for the past few years and was really friendly and interesting to talk to. All in all, Japanese Food Culture 201 went much more smoothly than 101 had! As I mentioned in my previous post, today's itinerary was flexible, and when a couple of Americans we met on the bus said that they'd really enjoyed Arashiyama earlier in the week, we decided to take a trip there. It was a really cool experience. After a short but steep 20 minute hike up the side of a mountain, we found ourselves literally surrounded by a troop of Japanese macaques. There's a sanctuary up on the mountain where the monkeys can run free - no fences for them of any kind that we could tell - and instead, the people are put in cages (it's where it's allowed to feed the monkeys, probably to keep them from surrounding the tourists a la the Nara deer). After finishing up with them, we strolled around Arashiyama - including over the famous Togetsukyo Bridge (originally built sometime between 800-1200 AD, rebuilt around 1900) and walked down another famous bamboo street; that's a street lined with bamboo, not made of it. All in all, a pleasant closing to a good day.
Tonight, we ate dinner in one of the oldest restaurants in the world. Our Airbnb host, Sean, recommended the restaurant - obligatory plug because his wife's family owns the place, but it was definitely high on our list after we learned that the restaurant has been around since the 1460s. Honke Owariya features mainly Soba and Udon noodles, the former made with buckwheat flour and the latter made with only wheat. Tom ordered their traditional Kake soba (Plain buckwheat noodles (soba) original "Owariya" soup.), but I branched out to order the Tanuki (Kake Soba, topped with deepfried tofu and long onions, in a thick soup with ginger). We also shared some yummy and beautiful tempura, and washed it all down with green tea, sake, and beer. Good comfort food - and the seal of approval of the Emperor. I'd go again!
Our second day in Kyoto was much more focused as we only did three attractions: Ryoanji, a zen temple, first thing in the morning; a formal tea ceremony at a local cultural center in the late morning, and Fushimi Inari-taisha, a sprawling temple complex with an approximately 2.5 mile hike up the side of Mount Inari. We also had one more pit stop at a temple we thought we hadn't yet visited, but when we reached the top of the (long, crowded) hill where the temple sits, realized it was Kyomizu-Dera, which we'd added to our list yesterday - oops! All was not lost though, as we had a yummy beef bun for lunch. And that was only halfway through an extremely wonderful day. Ryoan-ji TempleRyoan-ji is a zen temple and very different from the others we've seen in Kyoto so far. Zen simplicity is known far and wide, and the temple was much more simple and unadorned. Its main public feature is a rock garden that is considered one of the best examples of the practice in the world. There was also some lovely calligraphy, and a walk around a lake filled with lilies and lotus. Cha-dō: The Way of TeaThere's not a whole lot to say about the tea ceremony; it's really one of those things that just needs to be experienced. I'll caption the photos with some of the ideas shared, but the whole ceremony is about being present and focusing intensely on the action unfolding and the ritual. It was really lovely and our hostess was gracious in explaining the meaning and guiding us through the ceremony. Brief Pit StopThe first photo was taken at almost the exact moment we realized, hey, we've been here before. But in order to keep the detour from being a complete debacle, we ate some tasty steamed beef buns (the ones on the right in the second photo). Yummy! Fushimi Inari-taisha ShrineFushimi Inari is an amazing complex filled with Torii gates - which are symbols in Shintoism of the demarcation between sacred and profane. One of the symbols of the complex is the fox, or kitsune, who is seen as a messenger. The Torii throughout the complex, brilliant vermillion (orange-red) in color, have been donated by various local and international businesses, and they line the trails up to the mountain peak. They are blank on one side (the ascent) and include the name or a message from the local business on the other (the descent) in Japanese and very rarely English characters. We sweated through our t-shirts, so the number of "selfies" and portraits dropped dramatically after the first half mile or so. After we made it to the peak, we decended back to the main viewpoint station, and had the most delicious ice cream cones there ever were EVER! Or so it seemed - we were pretty sweaty. Then as we were finishing the final leg of the descent a rainstorm came through , so the camera had to go in the bag.
Warning: This post is broken into several galleries. Shinsen'en While we were waiting for Nijo Castle to open, we stumbled into our first shrine of the day. It had a really lovely garden, and the Koi chased as around, begging for food. Murin-an Not technically a shrine, this beautiful strolling garden took both Tom and my breath away. Thanks to our friend Noriko for recommending this lovely spot, just a hop, skip, and jump from Nanzenji. We wouldn't have stopped without her recommendation, but we're both glad we did! Okazaki Shrine This one would be Anya's nightmare. We stumbled on this shrine walking to the bus for Kinkaku-ji. It's a shrine to a rabbit deity, and is supposed to bless women with an easy childbirth. Freaky albino rabbits everywhere! Hirano Shrine The final shrine of the day was one devoted to Cherry Blossoms, which unfortunately don't bloom in August. We googled some pictures after the fact, and can see why this is a very popular shrine at certain times of the year. Mostly, the cicadas stick out at this one for us. I don't remember the songs being quite so loud when the broods were active on the East Coast last year... Warning: This post is broken into several galleries.Nijō CastleAs mentioned in my previous post, Nijō Castle was our first tourist spot of the day and is a World Heritage Site in Kyoto. It's a castle of the Shogun from the 1600s. The grounds were beautiful, even though we couldn't take photos inside. SanjusangendoSanjusangendo was the longest temple we visited today, and yet another we couldn't take photos inside of. In the interior, there were 30 wooden statues of various Buddhist deities that were "protected" by 1000 other identical figures. It was pretty amazing to see, especially since everything was carved, not cast, and they were incredibly similar. Kiyomizu-DeraThis was not on our list, but once we were at Sanjusangendo and realized how close they were, we decided to add it on. Unfortunately, it was one of our least favorite of the day. One of the major buildings was under construction, and it was definitely the most "commercialized" of the temples we saw today. Everything had a price and was for sale, it seemed, and there were hordes of people around milling about and getting in the way of pictures. The one bright spot was that the bus stop at the bottom of the hill for the temple was smack dab in the middle of Kyoto's pottery district. We were able to go into a store specializing in Kyoto-made pots, and also see several street stands selling pottery of various makes and ilk. Some really nice pots, some really poorly made pots. But still really cool to see how much support the craft has in this country. After visiting here, we also had a yummy lunch of Udon and rice-dishes. NanzenjiAfter the relative disappointment of Kiyomizu-dera, Nanzenji was one of our most favorite spots today. A beautiful temple/shrine complex with ornately sculpted gardens, that was not too crowded and really beautiful. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves for this one, but I will say it's someplace special. Kinkaku-jiThe final big temple of the day was also one of the most famous. Kinkaku-ji is known for one of it's shrines, the so called Golden Pavilion, which appears to float in a small lake full of immaculately sculpted trees. It's really beautiful and even though we got there only 30 minutes before closing, I didn't feel like we rushed to get through it and still saw everything. It was pretty stunning, and rivaled Nanzenji for the top stop of today.
It was an incredibly productive first day in Kyoto - so much so that I hit my best ever day on my Fitbit: almost 45,000 steps! We saw a lot of big and small temples and shrines, as well as a few other sites, like the Nijō Castle, where we started the day, a former castle of the Shogun from the 1600s and is currently a World Heritage Site. Kyoto is the former seat of the Japanese Imperial government and is home to over 2000 Buddhist and Shinto temples and shrines, which are the major tourist attractions in what has been nicknamed the "City of Ten Thousand Shrines".
I took so many photos, that I'm actually going to split them into several posts, so as to not overwhelm any one entry. This one relates to the miscellaneous things we saw and ate. Tom and I safely arrived in Kyoto earlier this evening after a day of travel from Hong Kong. We flew on the budget airline Peach Airlines, so amenities on board were extremely limited - that said, it was a great experience and we'd recommend Peach if you don't mind forgoing free drinks and snacks in favor of bargain prices. Nevertheless, after arriving in Osaka, taking an hour and a half bus ride to Kyoto, and then a 15-20 minute cab ride, we were getting hangry.
Our Airbnb host had left us a helpful map of local places to eat, and we headed out to try one of them. Funny thing about Japan though, is that few, if any, of the signs are in English. We ended up at a great little Soba Noodles place, and after some initial confusion about how to order our food - what looked like a vending machine at the front door listed the limited menu and took our money - we settled in to a really phenomenal noodle dinner. We had no idea what we ordered, but it was great. Mine was a very straightforward bowl of noodles, pork butt, Japanese tea egg, and various fungi. Though the ingredient's were the same, Tom's dish came in two bowls, and after he confusedly pushed them around in the bowl, the cook looked at him and asked, in English, "You know how to do it?" When Tom indicated he had no clue, the cook responded with a gesture and, "Dip it." I expect we'll have many more of these encounters of simply pointing at something on a menu and hoping for the best. Here's hoping we encounter more helpful staff members. |