Day 12 - Sunday, Oct. 27 - Kyoto

Chef Kunihito

Another copious breakfast blending European and Japanese style dishes.  Then, as my room is being cleaned, I decide to go to the station and buy my train ticket to the airport in Osaka.  I’m glad I did because the line is long; this way no worries tomorrow morning.  On the way back to the hotel, I explore the underground mall a bit more:  many clothes shops and restaurants.  I’m beginning to get the hang of this.
       Then it’s a taxi to Gion Kurashita and my keiseki lunch, suggested by my daughter.  I wish I were hungrier!
       Looking at the map beforehand, I had planned to walk back.  Then I see how far it is by cab... close east-west, but way far to the north.  The driver drops me off in a narrow backstreet and points to a shoji, a paper sliding door with the traditional half-curtain at the top.  But it doesn’t open, and he’s driven off, so...  I look at other sections of the facade..  Nothing.  Then my brain kicks in; I return to the section the driver had pointed to and see an indent.  It’s a sliding door!
       Just inside, a woman in kimono shows me a card with “Sandy” on it and looks at me inquiringly.  I give her a “hai” (pronounced “hi” and meaning yes) and she shows me into a little room with a chef standing behind a counter set with five trays and five chairs.  But I’m the only customer!  The next hour or so will be just me and Chef Kunihito, who serves me:

- sakizuke, an appetizer similar to the French amuse-bouche;
- hassun, the second course:  sushi;
- mukōzuke, a sliced dish of seasonal sashimi;
- takiawase, vegetables served with meat, fish or tofu, all simmered separately before your very eyes;
- futamono, a soup;
- yakimono, a bit of flame-grilled fish;
- su-zakana, a few veggies in vinegar, to cleanse the palate;
- shiizakana, a hot pot;
- gohan, a rice dish with seasonal ingredients;
- kō no mono, seasonal pickled vegetables;
- mizumono, sliced seasonal fruit and a tiny cake.
All of this in tiny portions.  And this is the “short” menu, thank God!  My daughter would have loved it.  I wish she’d been here.
       All washed down with lots and lots of tea, which both chef and I pour, he when he’s there, me when he’s in the kitchen preparing the next course.
       By the end, I’ve gotten Kunihito to laugh out loud with my remnants of college Japanese from many decades ago.  It’s been a delicious lunch - even though thick-cut raw fish is not my thing.
       A taxi is called, and it takes a different route home through this neighborhood with its narrow streets, its old, low buildings, its policemen directing traffic (no women), its pedestrians and bikes... polar opposites from “my” downtown Kyoto world.  The portly driver speaks a smidgen of English, which helps when we arrive back at the hotel and I can’t get my credit card to work because I don’t understand the options in Japanese on the taxi’s pay screen and hit the wrong button.  He ends up coming around to do it himself... and this on a very busy street, risking life and limb.

       Such a sunny afternoon, so I decide to use my coupon to go up in the observation tower at the very top of the building, just in case tomorrow morning is foggy or overcast.  People of all ages are up there, enjoying the view out over Kyoto to the hills beyond.  On the way back down (shades of Montmartre’s Place du Tertre) I see an artist sketching the family who had taken the elevator up with me - young parents with a shy 5-year-old daughter I manage to get to smile.  And then I hear some teeny-bop music and discover “Neo Break” - five Japanese chickey-poos in kitchy blue outfits dancing and singing on the rooftop terrace bar to a group of nothing but boys who, in my opinion, are too old for this kind of thing.  Maybe they’re younger than they look.  I do a bit of the twist to make the bored elevator attendants laugh.
       I go for a walk around a few blocks, trying to find a Japanese mini-flag for my collection but no luck.  I do find a grocery store that sells mini-bouquets, so I buy one for the travel company staff on the third floor who have made my stay here a success, with the tour and the restaurant.  They’re sincerely surprised; no one has ever done that before.
       With that, I return to my room for some rest and a final night’s sleep in Kyoto.

Day 11 - Saturday, Oct. 26 - Kyoto (Part 2)

Ballasted by this delicious meal - surprisingly light yet filling - we reboard the bus, headed for the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine.

       This was the treat at the top of my Kyoto wish list:  an alignment of over 1,000 orange torii gates in a beautiful forest.  The shrine complex was started in the year 816 but the main shrine structure was built in 1499.  (History goes back a long way in the Far East.)  These gates were put up by families to seek favor or thank Inari, the goddess of agriculture (i.e. rice).  On New Year’s Day, the Japanese come here to ask for good fortune for the coming year; today it’s mostly tourists walking under the torii, including many women in kimonos whom our guide says are really Chinese dressed and made up as Japanese (a fad among tourists).

       Passing through a torii is said to purify you.  Although we don’t have time (or energy?) to go to the very top of the hill and back, I’m surely purified of at least the miso soup.

       Up at the shrine level, as down below, are huge statues of foxes.  I’ve never known foxes to be guardians before, but here the fox is the messenger of the goddess Inari.  One fox holds in his mouth the key to the rice storehouse, in the other a rice bowl.

       For some reason, we are chased out of this Shinto temple like the heathens we are, so back down we go, in dribs and drabs.  With me taking photos among the torii, I’m trailing the others.  Then at the foot of the forest, a train crawls through the town, the crossing barriers come down, and I get cut off from the group.  By the time the train passes and I can cross, our group is out of sight.  Luckily I remember the way but I’m the last one back on the bus.  Close call.

Next stop:  the Sanjusangen-do Temple, which is Buddhist.  But the statues are not to Buddha but rather to the goddess of mercy.  There are 1,001 statues of her, all made of cypress, all gilded, but each with a slightly different expression, like China’s terra cotta warriors.  It is quite impressive and has been around since the 12th century.  On the outside of the long temple is where the famous all-day samurai archery contests were held, and a similar archery contest is still held in January.  Boy, I wish I could see that!

Kiyomizu-dera Temple

But it’s back on the bus for the last visit of the day:  the 17th century Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which is also Buddhist.  (There are 1,600 Buddhist and 300 Shinto temples in Kyoto.)  It’s on top of the eastern hill and, similar to Montmartre, it has tourist shops all along the street going up.  The whole hillside, with pine forest and cherry trees, belongs to the priests.  There are many people praying here, Japanese and “Europeans”, doing ablutions, ringing the gong - the most melodious one I’ve heard so far today.  A service is being held in one building; another is being renovated.  The main temple was built without a single nail, only wooden pegs.

       The kicker here is a natural spring, the Otowa, with “pure water that helps your health”.  It can also grant wishes.  It’s all so very picturesque that I decide to risk it.  After each use, the long-handled ladles are slipped back in some kind of wall cavity that glows bluish...  I guess UV light to purify the ladles from the previous contagious drinker.  Still, to limit my chances of catching leprosy - and having wet-wiped my hands while waiting in line - I fill my ladle up under one of the three cascades and pour some in my hand to drink.  It has a good clear chilled taste.  Fingers crossed.

       Then it’s back down through the greenery, past a tea house with “geishas”, past the tourist shops and by bus back to our starting point.  I manage to navigate the underground mall back to the hotel.  And later go to the food courts in the basement for a soba noodle and chicken soup dinner for only 850 yen ($8.50).  It’s been a long, tiring, delicious day.  And I’m ready for bed.

Day 11 - Saturday, Oct. 26 - Kyoto (Part 1)

Nijo-jo Castle

Last night, after tempura, I ventured out to see the route for the tour pick-up today.  A veritable city runs under the train tracks I have to cross.  Restaurants, shops, services...  “Streets” crisscross.  You could get lost down there.  And below all that runs a subway.  Very impressive.
       Another impressive thing is up street-side.  In addition to the regular crosswalks, there are diagonal crosswalks - at least at major intersections.  Very civilized for pedestrians, but all traffic must obviously stop at the same time.
       A Japanese lunch is included in this Kyoto one-day tour.  Breakfast, on the other hand, was not included with the hotel room.  Thank you, Expedia.  Your prices are cheap for a reason.  That and no view.
       Partially thanks to last night’s recon, partially thanks to asking an old subway guard en route, I find the Sunrise Tour Agency in plenty of time and embark on a bus with 34 other people.  One of them is a Japanese gentleman escorting two clients from India for the morning part of the tour.  We sit together on the bus and talk cheerfully.  His son, like my daughter, is an M.D. in the States.
       Our guide, Kashivai, is in her 50's, I’d guess.  She knows her stuff and her English is good - but with a heavy accent and the usual Japanese “l vs r” pronunciation problem.  Unfortunately, her voice is high and doesn’t carry well.  Plus she doesn’t like turning her mic up so I spend the whole day close to her during explanations.
       Off we set into Greater Kyoto, Japan’s seventh largest city at 1.5 million (a figure which will pale compared to the cities of China).

Nijo-jo Castle

First stop:  Nijo-jo Castle, built at the start of the 17th century.  

       Kyoto was Japan’s capital for about a thousand years, and its very name means “capital city”.  (In 1868, the capital moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, meaning “Eastern capital”.)  The first part of the castle is the part that was open to those outside the Chosen Few.  As such, they weren’t necessarily trustworthy.  So aside from bodyguards behind all doors, this outer circle of the castle has cypress floors that creak and squeak, making a sound the guide says sounds like a nightingale.  This was achieved by using long nails hammered only part way in, the top of the nail then bent over and down, forming an arch that allows the board to move a bit... and squeak.  Impossible to sneak up on someone here.  There are also murals of tigers to “intimidate” those waiting to be seen.  Of course the nearest tigers back then were in Korea, so some of these tigers have stripes and spots.

       Further in, closer to the shogun, the floors have no nightingales because only trusted people got this far.  Nonetheless, the men wore robes designed so that swords could not be drawn rapidly.  The samurai were all right-handed too, as being a leftie was not allowed... until the 1960's!

       As for the shogun’s numerous wives - married for political alliances - they retired at age 30, but were not allowed to go home, serving as political hostages.  They also did no needlework, as did European noblewomen; only servants sewed.

Kinkakuji Temple, the Golden Pavilion

Back on the bus and off to our second stop:  Kinkakuji Temple, the Golden Pavilion.

       Built in the mid-14th century, the temple was once the private villa of a powerful shogun.  When the shogun died, the villa became a Zen Buddhist temple.  It’s been burned down twice:  once in the late 15th century during a war, more recently in the mid-20th century by a crazy novice monk.  This resurrection dates from 1955, a close copy of the original.  The paintings inside were saved and restored.  The top two of the three levels are covered in gold leaf.  Spare no expense!

       The setting here is magnificent.  Old trees, a brook and a small waterfall.  And the temple nestled in all that, looking like it’s on an island but it’s really linked to terra firma on one side.  It reminds me of a golden version of the gazebo in the middle of the pond at Fontainebleau, built so the French king could be alone.

The Imperial Palace

The last stop of the morning:  the Imperial Palace, painted (as are many others) a bright “vermilion”, the color of the sun and fire to protect against evil spirits.  After all, this was the former residence of the Emperor of all Japan, when Kyoto was the nation’s capital.  And even after the capital moved to Tokyo in 1869, this palace was sometimes used for the enthronement ceremony of new emperors.  Originally built in the 13th c, it was destroyed by fire many times (eight in all).  We tour several of the buildings, each one a story in itself, all of a similar architecture.

       The palace is framed by vast gardens and is accompanied by a state guesthouse, all held within walls.  The houses of other high-ranking nobles were razed when the capital moved and the gardens are now open to the public.  Just walk through the regal gates and enjoy.  

Then it’s back to Kyoto Station, where some people leave our group, including my three new friends.  The rest of us go to enjoy a Japanese lunch nearby.  Served up on individual platters:  miso soup, three appetizers - tofu (yuck), potato salad (pureed) and eggplant and green beans with ginger - followed by vegetable and shrimp tempura, then fresh pineapple and grapefruit.  And fresh grapefruit for dessert after a Sukiyaki-style chicken hot pot that bubbled away over a timed flame while we ate the “befores".