Japan day 7

Day 7, August 17, 2010

We started off the day at Sanjusangendo, having been told it is one of the best things to see in Kyoto. It is famous for the 1000 arms of the Buddha, so going in I was expecting literally a thousand arms. We had also been told that there are 1000 faces, and that people try and find a face that looks like their own amongst them all. So, I expected a Buddha image with a 1000 faces on it. What we found though was simply REMARKABLE. We entered this temple, and we couldn’t really get a scope of it from the outside (I wasn’t even sure it was where we were supposed to be as it was labeled “Worship”). We take off our shoes and go in, and we are greeted by literally 1000 almost life-size, 900 year-old, hand-carved statues. There were 500 on either side of a 3.3 meter tall hand carved Buddha statue. Each of the 1001 Buddhas have 42 hands, each holding a tiny symbol. They are all slightly different, but at first I thought they were all bronze casted statues, it was really hard to imagine 1000 nearly identical statues being hand carved. The scope was simply amazing, and the fact that they survived for so long is, as I said before, remarkable. There were no pictures allowed, but perhaps I’ll find some on the internet elsewhere.

Unfortunately there was very little air circulation within the temple, so it was sweltering hot (I think today was the hottest day yet of the trip and its been pretty hot). We decided to take it easy and made our way to the Kyoto station to purchase our return bullet train tickets to Tokyo. Our plan for tomorrow? Get back to Tokyo and head to Tokyo Disneyland! We’re very excited, they have an adult oriented park called Tokyo Disney Sea. We’ll see how it is!

Anyways, after getting our tickets we headed over to the Kyoto Manga Museum, which is part massive Japanese comic book library, part elementary school museum (its in a 100+ year Japanese elementary school), part art exhibit, and some typical museum fare thrown in. It was pretty neat; I particularly enjoyed the exhibit that explained manga and its history, I hadn’t realized it had been so important to Japanese culture and for so long (it has been enjoyed by youth and adults for over a century in Japan).

We then made our way back to Miho’s house for dinner, where her dad prepared a kind of “Japanese pizza”. Its sort of like Korean “pajeon”, a fried batter dish filled with vegetables and seafood. This dish also was mixed with soba noodles and a couple strips of bacon for good measure. Top it off with a hearty/sweet/spicy sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed powder, and fish flakes and your good to go! It was really good!

It was sort of an easy day (hey, it was hot!), but a really nice finish to our time in Kyoto. We’ve had a real blast hanging out with Miho and we’re just super lucky it worked out (one that she happens to live here, two that she took such good care of us, and three that the festival happened to be happening while we were here). We could easily stay a few more days and still have many a thing to do, but alas, our hotel is already booked back in Tokyo and Miho is actually leaving for Zambia in a few days. Well, good night and see you back in Tokyo!

Japan Day 6 Kyoto

Day 6, August 16

Today we woke up a bit later due to the previous night’s exploits. We eventually made it out of the house and decided to check out the closest things to Miho’s house. The first stop was this café at top of a little mountain that you have to hike up to get to it. (and by hike we mean, stairs and an incline) Totally worth the "hike", the buildings all along the way and the paths were just beautiful, and the view from the café was just amazing. After coffee we went to a free art museum down the hill that is run through Miho’s church (her religion is called Reimei). Very nice, very old stuff. They had a tea room that had a circular window that perfectlly framed the mountain that was going to have the fires on it. So you could perfectly see the character and it was set up so you couldn't see any of the city. It was beautiful.

Later we made our way to my favorite site so far, the Ginkaju-ji temple, a UNESCO world heritage site. While a little small compared to some of the other things we’ve seen so far, the grounds are IMMACULATELY maintained (this despite the throngs of visitors, it is one of the most visited temples in Japan), including some amazing sand works and zen designs that are probably redone every day. The garden was just incredible.

After the temple we strolled a little bit down the way and decided to check out another garden, the one that belonged to a famous Japanese artist by the name of Hakusasanso Hashimoto. Another beautiful site, it was worth the 6 dollar entry fee to just escape the madness of the previous attraction in terms of number of people.

At the end of the day we finally played a little pachinko. It’s like a cross between a slot machine and a pinball machine. We lost and very quickly!

At around 7PM we met back up with Miho and finally met her father (he had been on a trip to a nearby mountain to do some nature photography). A very nice man! He was very appreciative that we had taken in Miho when she was travelling in America and didn’t have a place to stay. Anyways, after our meeting, we walked a few minutes to Miho’s family church where they were having a small party. And by family church, I really mean family church, she had a whole bunch of family there, and we got to meet a whole lot of friends too. It was really nice and we had some food and chatted for a bit. The reason for the party was part of the Obon festival , which actually isn’t observed by her church (her religion is relatively new and I’m not sure how big it is), but they still gathered to view the main attraction. What is the main attraction you ask? Well, some background. Many Japanese Buddhists believe that in mid-august spirits from the spirit realm can return to Earth for a few days and chill out with their family and friends. So families and temples light special fires so that the spirits can find their way. At the end of the festival, Kyoto lights these huge symbols on the sides of nearby mountains so that the spirits can find their way back to the spirit-realm. Its like a, “It was nice, but see you next year” type of thing.

It was really neat and we managed to take a few photos; you can see the fires, but not really the mountain that its on. After that we joined some of the congregation at a nearby park to light off some sparklers which was fun. A really neat experience!

Japan Day 5 Kyoto!

Day 5, August 15^th

OK, I’m writing this a day after the fact so perhaps my details won’t be that great, but I’ll give it a shot. I also want to get to today’s events too so I’ll be briefer than I have been. So Day 5 was a temple day and we really packed in a number of great ones in a short period of time. Kyoto is just unbelievably packed with shrines, temples, monuments, gardens – it’s kind of unbelievable that there can be so many in such a small geographic area!

The day started off with a quick tour of Miho’s neighborhood, and she pointed out 3 things to do just around her street, one of them being a UNESCO world heritage sight. We then hopped a train and went to Miho’s work area, which also happens to be near 2 other UNESCO world heritage sights (she works at one of the shops in the neighborhood, typical touristy fair stuff, although in Japanese fashion I’d say even the touristy vendors are pretty swanky). The first temple we visited was called Kiyo-mizu and apparently Miho had never actually visited, so she came with us right before she had to be at work. We went up to the first building and paid 100 yen to enter, thinking we would just walk inside. But instead, we followed stairs down into a basement and quickly realized that it was a 100 percent pitch black maze that you had to hang onto a railing the whole time in order to get through. This is funny because we were watching a TV show the night before about haunted houses in Japan. Anyways, a few minutes in we come across a brightly illumintated prayer wheel that we spun and made a wish on. OH! And we happen to be in Kyoto during an important festival (Obon) during which all prayers and wishes are worth 1000X! This day only, get your prayers here, HUUGE SALE, all wishes MUST GO! Sorry, that’s kind of how I interpreted it when she told us that!

OK, so after the dungeon (okokok, the “dungeon” was supposed to symbolize the womb of the Buddha and it was pitch black to help us get rid of all of our attachments before we made our wish), we moved on to the temple (extremely ancient and beautiful, check out the pictures, followed by a near by shrine called the Jinsho love shrine-Home of the Love Stone! This place was a trip, kind of like an ancient Buddhist theme park. It was all about charms and finding love and there were lots of little shrines. There are two rocks in the middle, and if you close your eyes and make it safely to the opposite stone, you’ll find your true love. I missed big time, but then again I’m all set in that department 

We then mozied onto a walking tour provided by the lovely folks at Lonely Planet, enjoying the wonderful architecture of the stores and tea shops. Really, really, really beautiful buildings in this city, it’s a little overwhelming. We made our way to a giant Buddha statue and memorial for all the soldiers of WWII followed by a nice little park where we saw some cats chilling out (we missed cats, they get no respect in Korea, they’re pop icons here). We finished our temples for the day at Yasaka shrine, which I think is close in color to Harley Davidson orange, very cool.

After that, we found our way to the main river, which we later found out used to be lined with the severed heads of folks who weren’t so popular with the crowd who likes to sever people’s heads. Miho told us that people automatically sit along the river at the same intervals apart from one another as the severed heads used to be. Sure enough folks were almost perfectly spaced apart.

From there we met up with Miho and her friend, Now (not sure the spelling, but that’s about right on the pronunciation). He is a little older than Miho and makes custom painted t-shirts (beautiful by the way). He is a lot of fun and knows Miho through a band they used to be in together! We ended up at an Okinawa style restaurant (delicious!) and drank many a beer. We were soon joined by two more friends and continued consuming a delicious Japanese brew called Yebisu. We had a fantastic time with this little group and Miho is really good at translating! I had expected Japanese folks to be more conservative, but these guys were a rockin’ good party group and we just had an absolute blast. We did a second round after that and took a taxi home to finish up the evenin’. One of the friends, named Kazoo-uh (spelling I have noooo idea), was a real hoot and started off by teaching me a completely made up custom called “Spinning kompai”, where you spin your cup when you do the customary “Kompai” (cheers). Anyways, really fun group, really great night!