Kyoto, Japan

This past weekend we took our long-awaited trip to Kyoto! Kyoto, generally considered to be the chunks of meat in the heady cultural stew that is Japan, was the nation's capital for a spell back in the, I'll say, 700s-ish. It was the home of the emperor until 1869, but he chills in Tokyo now. Anyway, it's where the good stuff is, if you like amazing beautiful things, or Geishas, or both.

First we had a 1-day Mid-Year conference for JETs held in Gifu City. It was a day of workshops that made you want to gouge your eyes out, speeches that inspired homicidal thoughts, and some very non-happy campers. I don't know what it is, but for some reason when you stuff 150 of us together into a room, we just sit around and complain about teaching in Japanese schools. Now, it certainly is difficult to teach here; the system for teaching English is full of problems; but hey, they pay us a boatload of money to come here and basically be ourselves for a year, so I'm not too inclined to complain! I'm quite happy other than when I'm forced to sit down and pore over my teaching experience; I prefer to just take it as it comes and not over-think it. But, like I said, something about sticking us all together makes us champion whiners. Probably because the line between annoying traits and endearing quirks is so fine, we just start out trading stories about our jobs which then eventually mutate into full-fledged bitching. Like, "Hey, do your students sleep through class? Mine too! Those lazy bastards!" Anyway, I suffered through the conference, and just about kicked my heels in joy when it was over: We were off to Kyoto!



We hopped on the not-so-early 10:00 train the next day and clanked along the local tracks for a couple hours until we reached Kyoto (not those fancy Bullet Trains you've heard so much about...those bad boys are expensive!). The station seemed rather smallish and very confusing, but then we turned a corner and it was like walking through a broom closet to find a cathedral. The place all of a sudden opened up into an absolutely cavernous space, with futuristic tubes connecting the upper floors to each other, and with a way-cool 10-floor escalator going, it seemed, into the sky. It turns out that the station is rather new, and is a crazy gigantic department store/station/massive restaurant area. The department store is 10 stories tall, and it's built right into the side of the train station. Not what I was expecting for a city famous for 1000-year old temples, but hey.



The city was at first glance, like pretty much all Japanese cities, rather ugly. It was an endless expanse of concrete and blocky buildings. But hiding in there somewhere was 2,000 years worth of history and untold numbers of treasures just waitin for us to discover them. But at the time, we were a little fooled by the drab first impression.

After visiting a very busy and very under-contruction temple near the station, we took a walk through some rather uglyish streets to Sanjusangendo temple. There were two things about this place I really dug. The first was that most of it was painted this funky bright orange:
This was special because it was so darn unusual. The Japanese love the look of weathered, beat-up wood, and most temples look, and are, quite old. This one was like, Screw That, I am going to be bright orange. Bravo, Sanjusangendo! They broke the mold when they made you. The most amazing thing about this temple is the 1,001 carved wooden sculptures contained in its main hall, at over 330 feet long, the longest wooden building in Japan. Each sculpture has a different face, and it is said that if you look at enough of them you can recognize the faces of friends. It was true. They seemed so similar, but after a while a face would just jump out at you. It was weird. It was easily one of the most awe-inspiring sights I've ever seen. If you're ever in Japan, I insist you go here. Here is a photo of the 1,001 statues, all of Kannon, otherwise known as the Goddess of Mercy:

For dinner that night, we went to a Korean restaurant. I'd never had Korean food before, but Hong watches their movies all the time and seemed almost quasi-knowledgable about Korean culture. The menu had no pictures and was in Japanese, so we couldn't read it. Now, it's worth noting that I usually make fun of Hong for having such terrible Japanese, but somehow she managed to order us a full Korean dinner pretty quickly. What showed up was truly delicious: a Korean beef dish called bulgogi, with about 6 plates of sides, including delicious kimchee, a type of pickled cabbage. Trust me, it's a lot better than it sounds.



The next morning, we got a good early start and walked down the road to Toji Temple. The temple grounds were truly peaceful in the early morning light, and we almost had the place to ourselves for a while, before more tourists and worshippers began to trickle in.
Inside one of the temples was a small exhibit of artworks by a local guy. They were absolutely beautiful, and the little old lady who was attending to it was very kind indeed, and spoke a bit of English. She was very interested in where we were from, and seemed quite happy that we were looking at the pictures. I would have thought that in such an international city, foreign tourists wouldn't be a big deal, but she was ridiculously welcoming just the same. Wherever you are, ma'am, thanks for the nice morning.

Here is the tallest pagoda in Japan, at Toji Temple. It is 186 feet tall:
























Next was Kiyomizudera temple, one of the most famous temples in Kyoto, which has (I think) thousands. It is tucked away in the eastern hills of the city, and its waters, if drank, are said to confer good luck and healing (sharing the cups is a little gross, though) The place was at the top of a long hill, and it was HOPPING. The serenity and peacefulness of the first temple were not to be found; this was more like Disneyland, but crowded. Most of the temple was built directly into the hillside, but the main building was constructed on these way-cool stilts. There were a hell of a lot of people there, so I hope those monks knew what they were doing 400 years ago.





While we were there, some Geisha decided to show up, which made quite a stir. I don’t know for sure if they were ‘real’ Geisha, as there are lots of places in Kyoto that will completely transform a Japanese girl into a “Geisha” for 3 hours of make-believe, but it was more fun to assume they were. They were at the temple to be photographed, and in addition to the photographer with them, they had at least 20 tourists snapping photos of them at all times. I decided to take the moral high ground and leave them in peace, but Hong has the tenacious spirit of the Asian Market Lady running through her blood, so she went right up and snapped away without shame. I must admit, it’s a great picture.


The next stop on our magical mystery tour was Genkokuji, also known as the Silver Pavilion. There is another, more famous “Golden Pavilion” on the other side of town, but being non-conformists, we decided silver is better. We weren’t the only ones with this sentiment.
This place, too, was packed. That didn’t stop it from being pretty darned awesome, though. It was a Zen temple, so it had tons of carefully raked sand patterns, just like in the movies, but it also had a whole landscaped hillside covered in dozens of types of beautiful mosses. These temple gardens take moss to a whole new plateau of attention. Moss is the carpet of Japanese gardens; it fills in the blanks and ties all the elements together in a most appealing way. At Genkokuji, they even have an exhibit of good mosses (“VIP Mosses”) and bad mosses, I guess so you can tell which ones are meant to be there and which ones are the dreaded invaders. You never expect this kind of humor at a temple, but apparently they can be very funny places:

The hillside had a sort of fantastical look about it that I really liked:
























Later that night, we met up with our friends Leanne and Maren, and headed to Kyoto Station for some refreshment. We dined on beignets from none other than Café du Monde, the famous New Orleans landmark! How did a coffee shop from New Orleans end up with a branch in a Japanese train station? You tell me. Either way, they were pretty darned good, and I was very, very surprised. I’m happy to say, I made beignet fans out of all three ladies.


Our next and final stop was Chion-in, the headquarters temple of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism. This sect has like 6 million believers and about 6,000 temples, so I assume that Chion-in is a pretty important place. They had a pretty awesome garden, but to be quite honest, by this point we were all a little templed out. Apparently the threshold for appreciating temples is five. After that, the magic begins to fade a little bit, which is a terrible feeling, because you know they are beautiful but just can’t interest yourself so much.



As we headed to the train platform for our long ride home, dusk was creeping in on the city and long shadows pierced the golden light of late afternoon. It had been a good weekend, and I felt like I had just bathed in the richness of the country’s heritage. It is a heritage worth seeing; the visitors in Kyoto were from all over the world. I think the best part, though, was visiting these places alongside thousands of Japanese visitors and knowing that this trip was as special to them as it was to me. In a world that is changing more rapidly everyday, by visiting the sites of their culture’s greatest treasures, they were securing their moorings to their own past, just as I was discovering a past I hadn’t ever really considered. For I have to admit, I was beginning to get a little tired of hearing about the “richness” of Japanese culture, but after my trip to Kyoto, I plan to shut my mouth. That city is a treasure.