Day 11 Japan
I've got a couple of nights in Kyoto. This place is tourist central in Japan so hopefully it'll be good.
Since there are over 1800 sites here I'm planning to hit a couple of the main temples then a couple of non-temple sites then just a bit of aimless wandering.
I bought a 2 day transport pass which will hopefully let me go on everything I need to. I don't have huge faith in it though.
So today's plan is:
1. Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji temple
2. Zen Garden at Ryōan-ji temple
3. Tenryu-ji Temple And Hojo Garden
4. Bamboo Forest
5. Festival
I got a public bus out to the Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji Temple. The main draw card is the pavilion covered in gold leaf. The pavilion sits on the edge of a small lake and it's fairly spectacular. For a change when it comes to gold in Asia it didn't feel gaudy. I'm glad I arrived early in the morning as even then the number of tourists there was verging on annoying.
You can't go in the pavilion and there's really not much to do here once you've had a look at it and walked around the lake. As ever there is the racket of selling blessings and a tea house for people to have a break after all their selfies.
Then I caught the bus down to the Ryōan-ji temple where they have a famous zen garden. The temple and its grounds are very nice so I spent a bit of time wandering around here. I do love the Japanese style of building. All that dark wood, sliding doors, high ceilings and painted screens. But the main draw card of this place is the garden. It's really beautiful and the minimalism of it really appeals to me. If I ever have a place with some land I can see myself having something like this in place of grass.
They certainly try very hard to keep the whole place pristine. There were probably half a dozen older ladies around the place sweeping the rock paths and picking up any leaves that drop anywhere. Amazing that with all the advancements in cleaning technology they still use brooms made of a bunch of sticks tied together.
Next stop was Arashiyama where both the bamboo forest and the Tenryu-Ji temple are. This is the first point at which my tourist pass failed me.
One would think that if you go to a station and purchase a 2 day tourist public transport pass that one would in fact be able to use all the public transports with said pass. Not in Japan. Since everything is privatised apparently these things only work on service from certain companies. So google maps tells me to walk down a hill through a rather pleasant neighbourhood and catch a tram to my next stop. Cool.
But the tram isn't covered by the transport pass. So I have to fumble around and pay the tram ticket. I have to get 2 trams to get to the place I'm going so this ends up costing me about a quarter of the tourist pass. Good times.
I end up at the Arashiyama station which was actually pretty cool. Small station but they had a bar and some food vendors there and it looked like a pretty popular place.
I started at the Tenryu-Ji temple and walked through the grounds of that for a bit. The price for the actual temple was pretty high and given the number of temples I've been seeing I decided to skip it and just go for the garden. The zen garden was beautiful. It was an actual garden this time not another rock garden. It was set on a lake and there were trails around the lake you could walk around. Very peaceful.
The main reason for buying a temple ticket seemed to be that you could sit on the temple balcony overlooking the garden to get a really good selfie. And possibly meditate over the garden which I guess is it's real purpose ;). #cynic
Pass through the garden and you end up at the bamboo forest which (for a change) didn't attract a cost to enter! Doing this tourist thing for a long time just feels like a constant action of throwing entry fees at people over and over.
The bamboo forest was a lot smaller than I expected. It wasn't too crowded surprisingly but still very difficult to get a photo without anyone in it. As I've previously said there are plenty of better images on the internet anyway. I wandered around the area for about an hour and found a couple of small temples and smaller bamboo forest areas and it was really nice.
A pretty relaxing morning in the end. 2 zen gardens, some forest, a couple of temples and not too many tourists.
I felt like a beer now though. I was going to get something at the Arashiyama station since it looked pretty cool but it was so busy that I went elsewhere. The Kyoto Brewing Company is about a 20 minute walk from the hostel so I decided to go there.
It was a lot like craft breweries back home and was a nice little operation. They had a small tap room where you can see the brewing facilities, a bunch of outdoor seating with people having a good time and a food truck outside. The weather was awesome so I had a few beers there and just watched the locals. As is usually the case with these places as well there were a bunch of expats there. Some Americans and Aussies were at various tables. The beer itself was pretty good. I think I had either a saison or Hefeweizen, a dunkel maybe, a pale and a stout. They were brewing more European styles which was good.
I was feeling a bit tipsy and it was still too early to eat so I slowly wandered back to the hostel. I caught a bus in the wrong direction, wandered past a couple of nice looking temples and just generally got lost in a nice city. Found my way back eventually and sat down for a bit to relax.
I'd found a small article in a tourist mag that talked about a harvest festival of some kind which was happening tonight and tomorrow night. Tonight's activities were basically a party with a dance while tomorrow was some more ritual stuff. They would have young kids doing sumo wrestling, people carrying a shrine around and then some ritual dance. I'm usually pretty uncomfortable attending services or whatever at a temple since I'm not actually a practicing member of that religion. It feels like I'm intruding. So given that I decided to go to the dance tonight figuring it would be a bit more fun.
And it was! I got off the bus and walked across a bridge to get to the temple. There were a shitload of paper lanterns around to lead the way to the temple. There was a big market leading up to the temple with a bunch of food and various stalls.
I tried a few different things (cow's tongue was probably the most interesting) and looked at everything. It was absolutely packed. There were a couple of stalls that had live fish and live turtles for kids to catch and (I assume) take home. Maybe they would be ritually sacrificed to Buddha. No idea but it looked like the kids were having fun catching them.
Into the temple proper and it looked fantastic. Heaps of lanterns and lights everywhere. People everywhere lining up to pray to Buddha, get beers and dance! There was an area that had a raised platform in the middle with a band and a couple of old guys "singing". Closer to chanting than singing I would say so I wonder if they were monks from the temple. The guys singing had really different timbres to their voices and it made for a really interesting contrast when they switched.
The dancing was a formal dance I suppose with everyone doing the same steps. They basically danced in a big circle around the band in the middle sort of like a wagon wheel. Probably room for a couple of hundred people dancing at a time. There were a bunch of people dressed in yakutas but most were in regular clothes. The dancers were all ages and skill levels.
Some of them were really into it and you could tell they were really enjoying themselves while others seemed to just be dancing because it was expected. Some were really graceful and you could tell they had been doing it for years. Others were shuffling through the steps but had no real sense of rhythm. And a few of the younger people were extremely precise in their movements ... it felt more like they were performing for the crowd than actually dancing for the joy of it. It was a really interesting mix and I often found my eye being drawn back to an older couple who had clearly been doing this for a long time and really threw themselves into it.
Surprisingly not too many tourists around which I thought was great. I was surprised that none of the tourists got up to have a go at the dance but I can understand why. It was clearly a local thing and I wouldn't have wanted to ruin it or insult anyone by jumping in and creating an obstacle. I also couldn't quite get the hang of the steps ;]
When I got back the woman at the hostel seemed surprised I'd gone. I kind of expected the hostel to let people know it was on but I guess not. Understandable since it really did seem like a local thing and not an event they wanted ruined by throngs of westerners with their cameras.
It was a fun night.
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