Making the most of it

A few weeks ago, JTB brought to us a proposal to sponsor a trip in exchange for being included on a travel article (exchanging favors, eh??). When they originally contacted the company they gave me a choice of pretty much anywhere in the country (within reason), but flipping through their catalog it was just a lot of trips to temples and other touristy spots where you can dress up like ninja or samurai and meander about town. I eventually chose two locations, Takayama in Gifu (because I had never been there, a uni friend lives in the center of town and, well, it looks pretty nice, right?) and Kyoto, only because they had new “Winter Special Tours” beginning in December.

I’m not a big fan of Kyoto; it’s an ancient city that may have at one time been beautiful and pretty neat, but now is just crawling with tourists. And, as anyone who’s been in Japan for a reasonable amount of time could tell you, when you see a few temples and shrines, you’ve essentially seen them all. Kyoto does have some more unique sights (like the wicked statues inside Sanjusangendo) but I can’t really say I ever found it worth all that money and time waiting in line to see things like the famous Kinkakuji or Kiyomizu. And what is there to do in Kyoto besides inch around temples and stalk maiko in Gion? Not a whole lot, as I found out when I visited some uni friends here a few years ago. We spent most of the weekend either drinking or playing games at Round One. Thrilling! So needless to say I was absolutely delighted when JTB got back to me with the OK for a two day trip to… Kyoto!! Whee!!

The first day, my “free” day, was spent wandering around thinking about what the heck the focus of this article was going to be. The next day was supposed to be a tour of old shops around town (part of their Winter Special Tours), so what could I do to fit something in with that? I walked and walked, snapping photos of shopping streets, people munching on free samples (apparently the Japanese national past-time while on vacation), willow-lined canals, and massage parlors and soap lands in the back streets.

I was hungry and tired; the original plan was to save room in my tummy for trying out Kyoto sweets and do some kind of article about that, but walking around town I couldn’t really find anything that tickled my fancy. A friend had recommended Tsujiri, some kind of famous tea maker that started a cafe and then made their big break on some TV show, now famous more for their ice cream sundaes than their green tea. A row of tourists, Kyoto Walker magazines in hand and eager to stuff their faces with ice cream, lined up neatly in front of the store. Not willing to stand in line, one of the staff advised I come back after 6pm. I continued wandering, eventually eating a hot dog from Tully’s, and essentially did nothing all day!! Evening brought me back to Tsujiri for their famous parfait, which was pretty big but not spectacular. For ¥1000 I would expect something with a little more bang, as well as better service from the staff.

Starbucks in Gion, very classy!

Wandered around Gion for a while, did a bit of shopping, considered heading to a bar but instead bought a can of chu-hi and oden on the way back to the hotel and crashed. Do I know how to live it up or what?!

The next day I awoke bring and early from my (one chu-hi) drunken stuper to high-tail it over to my absolute favorite place in Kyoto: Nanzen-ji. The temple grounds are pushed back against the mountains in a kind of out-of-the-way area, with gigantic Japanese-style buildings complimented by a great Meiji-era brick aquaduct covered in vines, and the place has an absolutely magical atmosphere. It’s normally a pretty quiet area, somewhat off the tourist path, although the place becomes a madhouse when the leaves change color in autumn and hundreds of people cram themselves into the area to shoot pictures of colorful trees with their crappy keitai cameras. The idea was to get there before dawn and get some photos of the temple and the nearby Philosopher’s Path just as the sun was rising. I was a bit late but still managed to shoot a few good ones of the locals out for their morning stroll, as well as Nanzen-ji being hit by the first rays of sun coming over the mountains.

After that it was back to the hotel, quick shower, then down to meet my tour guide for the day. We traveled around all morning and afternoon to the old shops that will be featured in JTB’s tour, meeting the owners and managers and working out how things will run. For a lot of these shops, JTB will bring the first foreigners they’ve ever really had, and some of them seemed quite a bit nervous about it. One young man, the next in line to take over the almost-ancient Heihachi Chaya, nervously brought out a bowl of mugimeshi, or barley mixed with rice, and tororo, a slimy stringy concotion made of finely grated potatoes. This was apparently the tea house’s specialty, a dish they had been serving to travelers for over 400 years, and something they felt quite aprehensive about serving to foreigners (imagine pouring a soup of grated ocras onto a bowl of rice and you’ve got something similar to the consistency of the dish), thus his plans to test it on me. Unfortunately, I love the stuff, and devoured the entire bowl as he and the tour guide watched me make a mess of scooping the slippery goo into my mouth.

I’d go more into the tour, but the article itself has plenty of info and will be published at the beginning of next month, so I’ll abstain. A funny story from the trip however:

We had about two hours to waste between one shop and the next, so the tour guide insisted we should go check out this temple further up into the mountains. The taxi driver obliged, and brought us up to a temple complex known as Sanzen-in. To get in, they were charging a whopping ¥700, for what I couldn’t fathom because typically inside a temple you just walk around, look at the garden, say hello to god then head back out. So we kept walking and ended up at Hosen-in, which cost ¥800 to get inside!!! We had come all that way, and they were offering tea and a snack, however, so we figured, why not?

The temple itself is famous for its garden and tree shaped like Mt. Fuji, and as we walked about my highly-knowledgeable guide spurt off a ton of info about the most random rocks, trees, fish and fountains. To become a licensed guide in Japan, candidates have to memorize an enormous amount of information and then be tested about it, and she was quite the encyclopedia about Kyoto.

After our tour, we went into a large tatami room to get our tea and sweets, and as we were lounging with about 30 other people enjoying the view of the garden and surrounding mountains, one of the temple employees came out with a long pole, followed by a group of about five people. She began jabbing the ceiling with the pole, and suddenly my guide snapped to attention and said excitedly while looking upward, “That’s right, I almost forgot! This is a blood ceiling!!”

A blood what? She prompted me to check out the little pamplet we had received, and sure enough there was a story about the chitenjo, or blood ceiling. A nice explanation can be found at this blog, but unfortunately I can’t find any really good photos. All of a sudden our nice, relaxing tea break had taken quite a macabre turn as she led me around the room, almost trampling over several other people, looking for handprints, footprints, faceprints and armor prints, supposedly all left over from a bloody mass suicide. Some of them looked a bit contrived, but the entire thing was really weird and I recommend anyone visiting minor temples in Kyoto to take some time and check out the ceiling, because Hosen-in isn’t the only one!!

After our run-through of the tour was finished, we rushed to a private tea ceremony lesson, very quick but quite educational, and then had a chat with one of the monks running the temple. He was quite an interesting character, complaining that some young Japanese guys, tired of their NEET lifestyle, will try to join a temple looking for some free food while faking any kind of a spiritual commitment. Apparently some temples in the area have also had problems falling into financial debt with the yakuza; sounds like even in the country’s spiritual capital times are tough!

Looking back on things this was probably one of the better trips I’ve had to Kyoto. If it wasn’t for all the tourists it might actually be a nice place to live, but I was once again happy when the Shinkansen slipped smoothly into Shinagawa station–that is until I was jammed in with the rest of the commuting sardines on the Keihin Tohoku Line. No place like home, eh?