kiyomizu

more pics here…

We’re back in Tokyo for the final run, a bit tired, hemmoraging credit
on the verge of complete blood loss, and missing our friends and
family and cats and the comforts of home. Still having a great time
but it will be good to return Sunday.

After the last report we headed south on the shinkansen bullet train
to Kyoto. The train was indeed extremely fast and surprisingly gentle,
coursing through the countryside mile by mile like a big steel
electric eel. We arrived in the afternoon heat and humidity ferried by
taxi to our ryokan, a traditional japanese inn. As is often the case,
the pictures on their website were a bit shinier than reality but we
settled into a very spare and peaceful room. They call these
traditional style homes machiya, or “bedrooms of eels”, due to their
slender and lengthy form based around the arrangement of standard 3×6
tatami mats. Shoes are never worn on the mats, chairs have no legs and
all seating is on the floor, doors are replaced by sliding rice paper
screens, and beds are futons brought out after dinner (though the hard
core sleep directly on the mats). In our room, the toilet and shower
were much like what you might find in your average RV but the public
(gender-segregated) bath house and onsen in the basement included the
seated shower arrangement common to such spas.

Kyoto itself is somewhat uninspiring on the large view but it’s glory
lies in the details found wandering along street level. Many of the
homes and buildings show the traditional style of architecture begun
during the Tokugawa shogunate back in the 1600′s, though it should be
noted that most of the current structures, including the temples, have
been rebuilt since then due to fires – an unfortunate but frequent
consequence of packing all-wood structures into very tight quarters
across the city. (As an aside, the history of Japan’s primary city
centers, such as Kyoto and Tokyo, has been in large part defined by
regular and devasting conflagrations and disasters occuring almost
every hundred years or so.) Furthermore, and most interestingly, there
are temples and shrines everywhere, acknowledging the deep and
abinding Shinto Buddhist roots that still permeate the Japanese
culture. People of all ages regularly make pilgrimages to the shrines
seeking blessings and heavenly oversight for their endeavors. In
Japan, spirituality is a very practical and present affair.

We padded around the streets daily, our legs and feet still aching
from Tokyo, to visit the Imperial Garden (nice and huge but much of it
shut off to the public); the Nijo Castle (absolutely lovely though we
were caught under a “smoking shelter” packed in with the puffing
locals trying to avoid a sizeable downpour, which was actually kind of
cool); the Kiyomizu temple complex (beautiful and stunning and flooded
with beaming visitors praying and snapping photos – in a good way, it
was more like an amusement park than a church, yet the depth of
history and contemplative devotion was entirely tangible); and the
Tenryu-ji temple and garden (lovely and large, excellent architecture
with a fantastic bamboo forest – but the best part was the
mountain-top monkey preserve!). We enjoyed a wonderful and tasty
traditional kanseiki meal at Kinmata; ate at a tiny sobu noodle house
that’s been in business since 1710 (!) and apparently used to serve
the Tokugawa samurai; had dinner at an awesome yakitori house (various
meats on little skewers); and generally tried our best to acquire
whatever food we could in this town of very little english.

I should note that we’d been marvelling at the insane pitch of insects
buzzing up in the trees in both Kyoto and Tokyo. It got me feeling
that at any second a huge swarm of alien insectile robots might
descend upon the populace, seize control of the rice, eel, and
hairspray supplies and bring this country to it’s knees. My fears were
somewhat confirmed when I found a few hulking carcasses of the local
fawna, far larger than I had presumed from their electric cacophany
buzzing around us at all times. These things were massive, and spiny,
and scary, and I’d be seriously freaked out if one landed on me. I now
understand why so many japanese b-movies feature giant bugs.

After 5 nights in Kyoto (the last three in a well-apportioned Hyatt
whose interior was almost certainly modelled after the David Best
temples at Burning Man) we hopped the shinkansen up to Atami, then
transferred to a funky commuter train with sideways view seats that
wound down the coast of the Izu peninsula to the small (but supposedly
up-and-coming) beach town of Shimoda. Our hotel (again the gap between
web presence and reality) was Reno chic circa 1964 but the view was
excellent, right on the water. I had hoped to score some surf at this
beach noted for it’s clean water and consistent break. Although
beautiful and enjoyable, the surf was minimal, the beaches were laden
with washed up trash (Japanese are only recently discovering that
beaches are more than just where fishermen ply their trade), we had
one day of sun and two of rain (with a couple of hardy fools trying to
surf the small, choppy, and inconsistent break below the hotel
balcony), and we faced ongoing challenges acquiring food and
transport. If Kyoto was friendly and hospitable with little to no
English, Shimoda was all of the above except for friendly and
hospitable. They showed little interest in serving us or attempting to
manage our lack of japanese and my brief attempt to enquire about
renting a surfboard from the local surf shop was met by a gruff and
surly shopkeeper with little interest in my desire to give him money.
After 3 nights we were ready to get back to the polite and
cosmopolitan buzz of Tokyo.

And so here we are again, plodding around the metropolis, a bit weary,
moving more slowly, facing the brutal reality of our mounting debts
with 4 more days of food and lodging ahead, but still determined to
see more of the nooks and crannys and ridiculously huge canyons of
light (Shinjuku – Oh. My. God.) in this impossibly vast and dense
city.