Days 16-17: Kyoto, Japan

Day 16

We arrived in Japan bright and early at 6 15am. Of the countries we visited, we knew already that Japan would have the least amount of English speaking people and English translated signs. We had booked a shuttle from Osaka airport to Kyoto per our cousins suggestion.

Even though we had hardly slept we started touristing right away, because we couldn't check into the hotel until 3pm. Nate met us at our hotel, we left our bags in the bell closet, and set off walking. We walked along the "Philosopher's path" which took us on the backstreets of Kyoto in a residential area along a river with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines along the way.

Our cousin Nate, who has a professorship at Bard and has a Phd in modern Japanese literature, was a great guide. He taught us some Japanese history. Kyoto was the old capital of Japan until the mid 19th century. The city was planned to mimic the layout of some city in China that was a symbol of power at the time when Kyoto was built in the 6th century (?). Kyoto was the ideal place for a city because it had mountains in the northwest which is the direction bad energy comes from and no mountains in places that makes all the good energy fly around in ways that bring good luck.

The main religions practiced in the history of Japan are Buddhism and Shintoism. Shintoism is more of a practice than a religion, focused on local deities and shrines. Both religions feed into what I would call "superstitions" of Japan but I wish I had a better word. Instead of a God or gods with a personal relationship to the people, the religions focus on actions that bring good or bad luck.

The shrine we stopped at had many statues of rats and foxes. Foxes are spirits who like Sake and sometimes disguise themselves as women to trick local people. Nate said he knew a lot of Japanese people who would never go to a shrine at night because they're afraid of spirits and ghosts.

The practice of Shintoism and Buddhism are similar in Japan so its sometimes difficult to tell which place of worship belongs to which and people of both religions may worship in the same place, kind of like Hinduism and Buddhism in Cambodia. Shrines are free because they are owned publicly; temples charge a few and are owned by the monks.

We visited a temple afterwards that also had a grave yard. The morning itself was gray and wet, so the stone graves look nice in a calm yet eerie way. Lawns of moss stood out against the grey. There were also planted cedar trees adding more green and some reddish brown.

The next temple we visited was the Silver Pavilion. The pavilion, which is just one of a few buildings in the temple complex is no longer silver,but the gardens are as beautiful as ever- Nathan said theres a small army of gardners who keep it in top shape. They have the traditional Japanese zen garden look with ponds, twisted pines, stone paths curving around mossy boulders and trees, and even some sand paintings. Nate told us how the gardens are carefully designed to be a representation of Nature in its "Platonic" form and maintained to offer varied picture-like views designed to balance nature with architecture from stopping places around the path. For example, from one bridge you can see how the curve of a branch has been trained by gardeners to match the curve of the pavilion roof, while another spot is ideal for seeing the pavilion straight on framed by the mountains.

We left via the main street that leads to the entrance to the temple. It was lined with little shops selling sweets, pickles, and some souvenirs like slippers and fans. It was very crowded with tourists, almost all Asian. Apparently most of them were domestic Japanese or actually Chinese. Visiting temples is very important in order to obtain what Nate calls "buddha points." Just a block or two off the main street the streets were practically deserted. It sounds like there are basically prescribed tourist activities and anything else isn't really done. There isn't as much of the idea of exploring a place. It's all about the Buddha points.

We found a lovely udon noodle shop where we sat on tatami mats on the floor to eat lunch. This was our first meal in Japan. Amelia and I were worried about being the rude Americans who don't know the Japanese customs since everything seemed so formal and we were glad to have Nate with us.

After lunch we took the bus to one of the furthest temples along the eastern mountains of Kyoto. This temple was actually on the side of the mountain so it looked out on all of Kyoto, to the western mountains. This also meant that there were many steps, at the top of which were two massive wooden statues of demons, at least 15 feet tall. Unfortunately they were enclosed in mesh cages and not well lit so they were hard to see.

Next we walked along the most traditional streets of kyoto, in search of a sweet shop. We found a traditional sweet shop. Almost everything was green tea flavored with accents of vanilla and sweet red bean. Many also included weird gelatinous substances from mochi to flavorless jello blocks. The restaurant was in the traditional style so we sat on tatami mats again. There was a carp pond outside with huge prize winning carp- we saw about a half dozen huge trophies for their fish.

After all our touristing and lack of sleep, we were exhausted. I was also feeling sick from the side effects of Imodium like dry mouth and nausea (See previous email and sorry if TMI). It was after check in time so we could finally go to our room. We walked in ready to pass out and realized we had no beds! Our room was traditional Japanese style, so our sleeping mats were folded up in the closet. We put the mats on the floor and tried to nap. I had some success. Amelia had none. We did get to relax though and showered before going to meet Nate for dinner.

As it turned out we had serendipitously planned our  two nights and a morning trip during the two nights and morning long summer festival in Kyoto. Or maybe they had the festival for us this year and the past few hundred years. Up to the interpretation of the reader.

We had seen a lot of men and women in summer kimonos, more common around festival times and at temples. It was pretty neat to see.

Before dinner we took part in the traditional Japanese activity of public drinking, which is totally legal. We stopped at a convenience store and got canned mix drinks. Amelia had a particularly good Japanese vodka and grapefruit thing. We then went to one of Nate's favorite restaurants to get fried soba noodles with egg on top and an egg pancake with mochi and onions inside. The place is a hole in the wall and delicious, both of which you can always expect from a Nate recommendation.

After dinner we went to the festival. The festival took place in downtown Kyoto. They had blocked off a large portion of the city to cars so the hordes of people could mill around and people could set up booths. There were booths set up for food and games. Amelia got fried mochi with a kind of yakitori sauce. We had a couple more dranks from stands along the way including sake for Amelia and Nate. We watched Nate play a traditional Japanese game of catching fish with a paper net. Some of the other people playing were really good but Nate didn't catch any. We looked at some of the floats which were set up on the street and are used in a parade on the last day. In the larger floats, there were people in traditional festival outfits playing "festival" music which was not on the traditional Western scale, so it sounded dissonant to me. A lot of wooden flutes and bells, a little droning.

They closed down the festival at 10 30. The Japanese people all evacuated the street immediately, completely unlike what would happen with a thousand tipsy Americans. We got a pretty hilarious video of Nate talking about the guys with blinking vests ushering the people off the street.

- Ilana with help from Amelia

Day 17

For our second day in Japan we decided to take a hike to some hot springs in the mountains in Kyoto. We stopped at a convenience store first to pick up breakfast. The store people in Japan have a habit of talking in Japanese even though we know they know we don't understand. I asked Nate to translate and he told us it was something like, "Hi, welcome to 7 11. You have purchased two rice balls and a tea. It cost 450 yen. You have given me 500 yen. Your change is 50 yen. Do you need a bag? No you don't need a bag. Are you sure, ok, sure. Ok. Thank you for visiting 7 11, have a nice day, come back soon." All without a response from either of us. 

The beginning of the hike was just along the road next to a stream. There were many fancy restaurants along the way that had built platforms across the stream so the stream actually flowed underneath you as you ate. We stopped at a temple and bought a paper fortune for ourselves. It was a water fortune, so first the paper looked blank, but once it got wet in the fountain the writing appeared. Nate told us that it was basically the second to worst fortune: take extra care of your health, success will not come in business, love will come late if it comes at all, etc. Great. Supposedly fortunes from temples that are harder to visit are usually better... Maybe because you get more buddha points the harder it is to reach the temple. I guess we're just not hard core enough. We tied our wet fortune to an array of horizontal dowls, as you do with unwanted fortunes, and continued on our hike.

Off the main road finally, we started up the side of a ridge. The whole area that we hikes through for about an hour was part of one temple complex, so as we hiked we saw the occasional stone with writing carved into it or a fountain. There were also some more modern looking sculptures, very geometric but sill organic-looking. At the top there were many temple buildings and a nice view of the valley on the other side, where we would find the hot springs.

These springs had been turned into traditional Japanese baths, and of course the waters have healing powers. Men and women bathe separately so we had to part with Nate, very concerned again with our ignorance of the customs. Luckily they had a few signs in English informing us of the proper way to do things. For example, always sit on the provided stool while you shower. Surprisingly comfortable! I may adopt such a stool for my own daily cleansing :) The baths themselves were very peaceful and serene. The small pool was in a courtyard surrounded by pines and other trees, above which you could see the tops of the mountains around the valley. For most of the time we were the only people there, so who knows if we did it right.

Lunch was on tatami mats again, which is apparently not as common as our small sample would suggest. I had the traditional Kyoto boiled soft tofu and Amelia got udon with tempura. Unsurprisingly, putting tempura in soup eliminates most of its crunchy charm, but it was tasty nonetheless. Ilana and Nate enjoyed their tofu.

On the way back to Kyoto, Nate got a call from his friend who was visiting saying he had arrived. We met Nate's friend Bryan, a fellow ramen blogger who also had a column in a Japanese Playboy type magazine sold in convenience stores. We walked around a covered promenade and bought my mom tea.

We went to an amazing small plates dinner. We had miso eggplant, sesame lotus, eggplant with fried fish, sashimi and mackerel, a Kyoto specialty. Amelia, Nate and Bryan had some nice sake too. Afterwards we walked around the festival again with a couple brewskies.