Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Day 3: Arashiyma and Sangano

Martin woke up at 530 to a note from Ryoko saying that we had fallen asleep with the door open and without eating dinner, so she had bought sushi and some sandwiches for us in case we woke up hungry.

Moved by her hospitality, we ate breakfast with her and watched TV, at which point she warned us about the upcoming typhoon. As we watched the TV, one of us had to take one for the team and eat an extremely suspect ham sandwich while the other one of us got to eat delicious salmon sushi. After our quick breakfast and storm warning from Ryoko, we decideed to head back to the trusty breakfast buffet because Martin was feeling a little under the weather and was in need of soup.

After our third meal there, we took the subway to Arashiyama, a town in Northwest Kyoto famous for its bamboo groves. This meant that we were taking the Kyoto subway for the first time, and were impressed to find it extremely clean. We are so accustomed to the faint smell of urine, suspicious stains, and trash everywhere in New York that we found it very surprising.



Once in Arashiyama, we paused to admire the scenery from the Togetsukyo Bridge, also known as the moon crossing bridge. We were expecting to see local fishermen out on the river, but we either arrived too late or the morning's rains had deterred them. The view from the bridge was very impressive, with fog hanging low around mountains of a deep green with trees that looked like broccoli (in my opinion, anyways).

The main tourist street of Arashiyama is filled with overpriced souvenirs and young men asking if you want to ride in their rickshaws, so we decided to immediately make our way to the bamboo trail. Before heading into the bamboo forest, we bought some sweets that we had read about on blogs. I really liked my three sticky rice ball treat, but Martin didn't like his similarly sticky, hash brown looking thing.


We looked for a place to throw the sticks and paper out after we had finished eating, but were again reminded that there are no garbage bins in all of Japan. We asked Ryoko what she does about this later, and she said that she either carries the garbage with her back home, or she secretly and quickly throws it away at trash cans outside of convenience stores even though the stores don't like it when you do that.

Having finished our sweets, we went into the bamboo forest, which was fairly crowded and not so impressive after the majesty of Fushimi Inari the day before.

More fun were the several shops we stopped at along the way that sold items made of bamboo and other local Japanese specialities--like washi, handmade paper. We paused in one store where a man makes little animals and mobiles out of cocoons he finds. We also spent considerable time in another store run by an elderly woman, where we bought many gifts for friends and family.

The walk out of the forest and through the historically preserved town area was beautiful; a little village nestled in the mountains. The only nuisance were the thousands of tiny bugs desperately attacking us and clinging to our clothing, but the views kept us from complaining too much.

After a short walk through historically preserved streets we arrived at Adashino Nenbutsuji Temple, at the top of a short, mossy hill. The temple was founded in the early 9th century when the famous monk Kobo Diaishi placed stone statues for the souls of the dead here. Today, there are thousands of statues on the grounds of the temple. Once a year, candles are placed on the heads of the statues at night, giving the appearance of floating candles in the dark. It felt a little weird to be taking pictures in a cemetary but I'd really never seen anything like it before in my life.

Adashino Nenbutsuji

We continued down the path and the number of tourists around us started to wane until it was just us, walking down what started to look like a dirt path, being increasingly eaten alive by mosquitos. Martin wasn't sure we were heading in the right direction but this time it was me that insisted we keep going--I had read about Otagi Nenbutsuji Temple and wanted desperately to see it.

Finally, we arrived at the temple and paid the entry fee at the bottom of the hill. The temple is famous for its 1200 stone statues of raken, followers of Buddhism, each with a different expression and pose. The sheer number of these raken was astounding, and we were by ourselves in this place that seemed like it was out of a movie. Again, the contrast of green moss on grey stone created an eerie, mystical effect for those of us not born in the Pacific Northwest and therefore unaccustomed to such things.



After walking all day we couldn't imagine having to retrace our steps back to the Main Street in Arashiyama, so we took our first cab in Japan. The interior was decked out in what looked like white doilies, what Martin said made him think of what he would imagine an Indian cab might look like.

Back in the main part of Arashiyama we decided to try the tofu restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet book, our most expensive meal to date but easily our most enjoyable one. We elected to sit on tatami mats rather than at Western-style tables, and were seated right by windows overlooking a peaceful garden--perfect for resting after all of our walking. Martin ordered hot tofu and I ordered cold tofu (and ended up eating most of his). We ate almost everything except for a bowl of tiny dead fish which I couldn't even look at. The meal was finished off with delicious light-as-air tofu dessert with a drop of raspberry jam.



After some milk-flavored ice cream from a street vendor, we took the subway back to Kyoto's city center to explore Gion, a neighborhood famous for its shops. As soon as we emerged from the subway we saw three girls all dressed up in costumes and I had to get a picture with them.

Which one of these is not like the others?

At this point I started to completely lose my energy because of the humidity, so Martin was basically dragging me through the back streets behind Gion as he searched for something he had saved on his phone. I was so tired and in such a bad mood that I didn't even ask him where we were going, and was elated to find what must be the most whimsical shrine in all of Kyoto (I know that is a superignorant Western thing to say). The shrine is about four feet high and looks kind of like a mini wooly mammoth from afar, the wool of the mammoth made up of papers upon which people write their intentions. Once you write down your intention, you take the paper with you and crawl through the hole in the center of the mammoth, crawl back the other way, and then glue your intention to the stone. Martin didn't want to do it, but I did--finding it very difficult given the fact that I am six feet tall and not under five feet like most of the women comfortably crawling through the narrow hole.


After wandering in Gion for a while, mostly underwhelmed by the experience, we decided to get our guidebook out and look up Pontocho, another area supposedly worth seeing for its shopping. The only problem was, we couldn't find our guidebook...or the blue and white bag filled with carefully chosen presents for family and friends. At this point I basically threw a temper tantrum and Martin had to calm me down before we went down to the subway, hoping someone had possibly turned it in. Martin said he had some hope that we might find it again, because the Japanese have a reputation for being very honest. To their credit, the Japanese station agent we talked to made every effort to locate the bag, calling all the different stations and asking if they had seen it. When she apologized for not being able to find it, it was a real apology, not the kind of throwaway apologies we use back home.

In a horrible mood, we returned back to our apartment to have a tempura dinner with Ryoko and her husband. Ryoko basically cooked the entire time because tempura takes forever to make, but she happily chatted with us as we ate before it got cold. We used this opportunity to ask about Tokyo because they lived there prior to Kyoto, and got the names of several shops and restaurants to use later. We also learned about what Japanese weddings are like. In order to attend a wedding, guests must pay a certain amount of money, ranging from 300, 500, or even 700 dollars, depending on age and social status. There is no communal dancing but instead a kind of talent show, in which certain guests go up and put on an act for the other guests, who sit and clap for them. We decided Western weddings are a lot more fun. They agreed, and we thanked them for the tempura dinner. 

No comments:

Post a Comment