Day 11 Tuesday October 2 Kyoto
We woke up, walked to Kyoto station, and took the pleasant 2nd
floor passage across the station to the north side, and thence to the express bus
(101) to the golden pavilion (Kinkiju-ji)
by way of Nijo-jo
castle
I recall that Yukio Mishima wrote a book
loosely based on the arson and destruction of this temple in the 1950s (which I
read in my 20s or 30s), by a (probably) schizophrenic acolyte. The temple was rebuilt into better condition
than what it had been, and has been closely watched over ever since. The temple and the surrounding gardens (with
the usual scenery stealing) are breathtaking; words can’t really describe how
beautiful it is. I can only imagine what
it most likely in spring or fall.
Even with hordes of Chinese tourists and Japanese school
children it is still worth an hour of time, which is about how long it takes to
visit the site. There is a lot of crowd
control, funneling visitors along a unidirectional path. Afterwards, we try to figure out which bus to
take back into town (the Kinkajou-ji is in the northwest of the city), and I
end up asking (yay Papago) at a nearby souvenir store for the correct bus (12).
Views of Kinkaju-ji and gardens
Tea house
Scroll inside
We take this bus to Nijo-jo, which was home to the shogunate
palace in Kyoto during the Tokugawa epoch from 1600-1850 (and Mojo Jojo afterwards). The emperor visited once in the early 1600s
at the beginning of Tokugawa rule, and did not come again until the end (or the
beginning of Meiji rule).
We rented excellent audio guides to tour the palace grounds,
which I highly recommend. The palace is
large, with superlative tatami rooms within, with reproductions of the
screens. Unfortunately, no photography
was allowed of the initial tiger rooms, used for visiting underlings, or the
pine tree rooms, used for dignitaries and high-ranking diplomats, or the
seasonal rooms, which were a bit more intimate and used by the shogun and his
close staff. The rooms are quite
interesting in that they are devoid of any furniture, unlike a Baroque European
palace; the only mark of power is a slightly raised platform at one end of the
room, where the shogun or his representative would sit.
Detail of inner wall
Castle gate
Detail
Palace entrance
Phoenix
Palace gardens
The castle grounds also have some nice gardens, the best of
which was closed due to typhoon repair.
After this, Cindy and I had lunch in a nearby randomly
chosen restaurant (tempura for me, tuna sashimi for her)
We looked out to the courtyard during lunch
tempura
sashimi
and then we wandered
over to the Nishiki market,
passing the International Manga Museum
(we only looked in the gift shop, where I saw some really neat Godzilla
underwear, mostly the museum is a large collection of manga, all in Japanese),
and the Kyoto history museum, also mostly Japanese, although Cindy found a nice
Shiba Inu nylon tote bag in their gift
shop.
Random Kyoto scenes
Manga Museum
Museum is in a former school
We passed by this beautiful embroidery store
She is doing embroidery by hand in the back
We walked through the market on our way to our food tour
(which was going to cover the same ground). The market is full of
food-on-a-stick, including grilled octopus stuffed with a quail egg, pickles,
seaweed, spices (we bought some for ourselves and Jasper), dried fish, tea, mochi,
tea-flavored mochi, etc. At the end of the market we found our tour guide,
Pierre, a transplanted alpine Frenchman, and we walked back through, this time
with explanations, and food samplings.
The most unusual was sansho spice, a
native Japanese ‘peppercorn’, similar to Szechuan peppercorn - - not super hot,
but it makes your mouth buzz (in an unpleasant way, I feel).
Nishiki market : fish on a stick
Octopus stuffed with quail egg
Squid on a stick
Squid
Cute fountain
Food-on-a-stick
15000 yen = $150. more expensive than truffles
Meat on a stick.
Afterwards we went to a stand-up bar, where we sampled Chu-high (shochu liquor mixed
with soda and flavoring). I had ginger
and Cindy had some kind of lime citrus; hers was better. While drinking we
sampled some sashimi, seaweed, and a weird cheese
and fish paste
Next we went to a yakitori place where, along with sake, we
had tofu salad, chicken meatballs, chicken croquettes, and rice and seaweed
soup. Full of food, we left Pierre, and
took the subway two stops south to Kyoto station and our hotel.
Day 12 Wednesday
October 3
We woke at a normal time in the morning, and I had my usual
onigiri breakfast (this time seaweed with wasabi), and then walked to a variety
of interesting places east of the Kyoto station. First we went to Sanjusangen-do
temple, known for its hall of 1000 Kannon.
Sadly no photos allowed. There
are also 28 well carved guardian deities – the usual thunder and wind gods on
the ends, but another 26, including the four cardinal directions, gods of
music, and other representations of abstract ideas. Some of the gods were described as having
furious faces, others with placid faces - - they all looked pretty ferocious to
me. This temple was also known many years
past for an annual kyudo
(Japanese archery) exhibition. There are
records of some archers (some as young as 13) shooting over 10,000 arrows
during the course of the festival - - loosing an arrow faster than one every
ten seconds.
Monks
They used this long corridor as the kyudo (archery) range
Next we crossed the street to the Kyoto National
Museum. Only a special exhibit was in
display, in a striking modern structure, on Japanese swords of Kyoto. We walked past a half-dozen smiling young
women attendants on our way into the museum, all who felt compelled to smile,
greet, and bow to the many museum goers.
Wall around National Museum
Beaux Arts buliding
sword
knife
spear
Halberd blade
really long sword
towards downtown
Touken Ranbu
There was a lot of fighting in Kyoto between 1100 and 1600,
so there were a lot of weapon smiths.
The exhibit hall had over 100 swords and other edged implements on
display. However, there was very little
written information. I had an audio
guide that was not much help (and frankly, most swords look pretty similar,
especially as these all had their handles removed and tangs exposed, evolution
in action). The exhibit was mobbed
(Chinese? Japanese?), who were taking their time studying every sword after
sword after sword. I don’t know what
they were looking at; I doubt they were all Iaido-ka. Maybe the written material in Japanese was
more illuminating. Some of the swords
were national Treasures, because they had been owned by famous people, but
really you could not tell the difference between most of them. Cindy and I could not understand why the
crowds were so large, and so slow. The
exhibit would have been much better with fewer swords, and leavened with some
armor (there was none), or other artistic works about sword making, or
sculptures. There were a few interesting scrolls. This was also by far the
most expensive museum we had been to, and I was disappointed.
Next door to the modern building was a Beaux-Arts structure
that was housing a weird small exhibition of a card game / anime called Touken Ranbu that was one
of the sponsors of the sword exhibit.
Apparently all of the characters have some kind of edged weapon.
We walked a few blocks west to the Shosei-en gardens.
This large garden is owned by the Higashi Honganji
temple (our next stop). It is a very
large garden with three separate tea house.
There are some nice views and a spectacular bridge, but I have enjoyed
some other gardens more; perhaps I am getting a bit jaded. This garden felt a little drier and had some
sparse areas.
Heron
Continuing west, we came onto the Higashi Honganji
complex. This houses a huge Founder’s
hall (one of the largest wooden buildings in the world), that had over 800
tatami mats within. It could easily seat
2000 people in a big ceremony. It is
jointly owned by two
separate Buddhist sects, and there is a lot of temple politics going on. Higashi Honganji is a very large Buddhist
group, which has been powerful since the 1600s.
They have offices in the US, and I imagine other countries too.
We backtracked South to the train station, and took a JR
train 5 stops south to Fushimi, which is home to the 2nd largest
sake brewery complex in Japan (Kobe is number 1), and so probably the 2nd
largest in the world, where we went on a sake tasting class / tour.
After we found the class (on the second floor of a large
covered indoor market gallery), our guide, Kotaro, took us a couple blocks away
to the Geikkeikan sake brewery. This isn’t their main brewery, but it is part
of the original brewery, and it is where Geikkeikan produces their boutique
products that win competitions.
Geikkeikan has been brewing in Kyoto for 350 years. The water is very good in Kyoto (many people
told us this while we were in Kyoto).
Sake (really nihon-shu)
is made with special rice that is hard to grow.
The stalks are longer than japonica, so it is more apt to be ruined in a
big storm. Also, the rice is polished before making sake. Eating rice is usually only polishes about
10-15% of the rice down, but sake usually takes off 40-50% of the kernel. The rice goes under a double
fermentation. First it is mixed with
special mold (koji,
which is also used in making soy sauce) to turn the rice starch into sugar,
then it is also mixed with yeast to turn the sugars to alcohol. Sake is graded
on how much the rice is polished, the alcohol level of the finished product
(sometimes water or alcohol are added to the fermented end product to get up or
down to the right percentage), and acidity.
Fresh spring water
Brewery
eating rice on left, sake rice on right
Mash tuns
Noodles with tofu
chicken and green onion
After the tour we went back to our meeting room and sampled
seven different sakes, first without food, then paired. Some were better alone, others really
improved a lot with the right food, most notable an aged sake that we poured
over ice cream. Anyway, now I have an
idea what to look for on a sake bottle label, and we were given little cheat
sheets to help us remember.
We took the train home, walking past a small temple in the
middle of a festival, and had some soba at the Kyoto train station. Cindy had hers with chicken and green onion;
I had it with fried yuba.
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