TEMPLES AND SHRINES: KYOTO

 Trip Date: September 6, 2018

My sloth in catching up on these posts is getting worse.  I think nearly two years post-event is a record.  "Yesterday" was a rather sobering outing to Hiroshima; today should be a bit more upbeat.  Kyoto is loaded with shrines and temples, and we will hardly scratch the surface.  

Each morning of a bus tour day, Yoshiko would post her hand-drawn maps in the bus to "orient" us to where we were.  They were always amusing, sometimes helpful.  The big maps at the venue ranged from cryptic to excellent, as was this one for the Golden Temple. 

Kinkaku (the Golden Pavilion) is a shariden, a Buddist hall containing relics of Buddha.  It is part of a Zen Buddhist temple that is formally named Rokuon-ji.  The gardens and buildings are said to represent the Pure Land of Buddha in this world.  He could do a lot worse.  The place is beautiful, and is a World Cultural Heritage site.

These photos are a triumph of rudeness over civility.  The place was jam packed with tourists, mostly Japanese, and it took a bit of shouldering to get any shot without a lot of bodies in it.  The upper two levels are covered with gold foil on lacquer, and a phoenix stands on the peak.  The pond is the center of the gardens, and the rocks were donated by provincial lords of the various periods.  No one is allowed inside other than the monks.

As we were walking around, a teacher with a handful of students in tow asked if we had a minute to answer a few questions for their English homework assignment.  Sure!  Each one asked basic questions in turn (where from, why here, where else have we visited, etc.).  Every one took notes furiously.  Their eyes were like saucers when Loni started rattling off all the countries we have visited.  Cute.

Next up was the Nijo-jo Castle, completed in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who unified Japan after a long period of civil war.  His Shogunate (1603-1867) was one of peace and prosperity.  He announced his appointment as Shogun by the Emperor to the feudal lords at the Nijo-jo castle.  In 1867, it also was the site of the announcement of the return of power to the Emperor, ushering in the Meiji Period.  No photos were allowed of the interior, so this exterior shot will have to suffice.  Loni getting her shot at the right.

 

Our tour was a shoes-off affair, to protect the tatami mats.  Lots of painted screens, decorated ceilings, wide corridors, gardens all around.  Much more extensive and elaborate than the samurai house we saw.  As we exited there was, natch, a store with various stuff to buy.  Only one caught my eye -- a green matchi beer, considered a local delicacy.  Had to try it.  Meh.

Refreshed by the bog brew, we moved on to Fushimi Inari Taisha in southern Kyoto, the most important of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari, 233 meters high. Foxes are thought to be Inari's messengers, thus the many fox statues across the shrine grounds. The shrine has ancient origins, predating the capital's move to Kyoto in 794.

 The building in the lower right is the main entrance pavilion, and the upper right shows the beginnings of one of the torii trails.  Here's a shot I snatched from the web:

None of the trails was ever this uncrowded.  They were absolutely choking with tourists, mostly Japanese.  This same scene is in the lower left, below.  Curious as to why this entrance is guarded by unpainted toris.

While it was fairly spectacular to see thousands of these things in seemingly endless tunnels, the heat, humidity, and crush of humanity eventually made it an "I gotta get out of here" moment.  Time for a relax and a fan.  One of the fox statues is on guard.

This trio, out for the day in costume (rented by the day), were happy to be photographed.  the whole point of dressing up was to be seen, right?  Then it was back to our hotel, the Westin Miyako, which was very nice and located amidst a lot of green areas.  Chuck posing by one of the sculptures at the entrance.
 

Loni in the outer lobby area, and the local English rag with updates on the typhoon.  The locat Kansai International airport closure was very bad news for many of our group who had reservations on flights home originating there.  It was under a foot of water, being built on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka Bay, reachable only be a single bridge (or boat).  Unfortunately, the bridge got smacked by the freighter that broke loose, and was sufficiently damaged to require closing.  A couple thousand souls were trapped at the airport.  Our group members started desperately trying to rebook their flights home from aTokyo airport.  Collette was able to help those who had booked through them, but the rest were on their own.  Ack!  To make things worse, they still had to get from Kyoto to Tokyo.  Some braved the bullet train on their own (a transfer somewhere was required), others were transported by Collette via bus, a nine hour journey leaving at 6am. Double Ack!  We are going out of the older, domestic Osaka airport on dry land, to connect with our flight home from Tokyo's Narita.

We ate dinner at the hotel's "gourmet buffet" which, at 4500 Yen (about $40) per wasn't cheap, but it was all you can eat and really quite good.  We had sushi, salad, soup, veggies, meats (beef, duck, mutton, chicken, salmon) and lots of dessert options, of which I made a comprehensive survey.  We rolled back to room 222, fully sated and thankful we didn't have to deal with trying to make reservations home.  One of our party was exhausted and in tears in the restaurant, and words of comfort were all we could offer.  

Our last day was on our own until the farewell group dinner that evening.  We chose to stay within walking distance of the hotel as there was plenty to see close by.  Virtually next door was the Nanzenji Temple, whose grounds are located at the base of Kyoto's forested Higashiyama mountains.  It is one of the most important Zen temples in all of Japan and is the head temple of one of the schools within the Rinzai sect of Japanese Zen Buddhism.  This is the Sanmon entrance gate, which dates from 1628.

 Trio of stiffs on pathway to gate.

 

One of the shrines inside.

After the temples, we made our way over to the Murim An private gardens.  Would that I could recreate this place in my back yard.  Don't think it would survive in drought-ridden SoCal.  This was peaceful bliss epitomized.  

Serenity now, as Mr. Costanza would say.

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

September 5, 2018  Busy day today.  Ono-san preached all day yesterday how we couldn't be late for the Shinkansen ("new trunk line") bullet train to Hiroshima.  Japan runs on time!  Well, almost always.  She ordered 6am wakeup calls for everyone.  Fine by us, but I suspect a few groans among the group.  Real omelets at breakfast, so all was good.  We all milled about the lobby at 7:30, glancing at the news.  3,000 people stranded at the now- underwater Osaka airport, and will have to be rescued by boat as the bridge was clobbered by the vessel Houn (!) Maru. Short trip on the bus to the station.

Where we did more milling about trying to decipher the signage.  Fortunately, the images rolled over to English every so often.  That's us, the Nozomi 3 at 8:27 which, as shown, is DELAYED (!) by 5 minutes.  Gasp.  We later were told that the typhoon felled a huge tree across the tracks somewhere.  I think the actual delay was about 15 minutes in the end.  They allowed 90 seconds for the offloading passengers to exit and for us to get on.  Scramble time!  We had assigned seats, so once on it was no sweat.  The trip down was smooth and, of course, fast.  Loni had no complaint about pressure in the tunnels, which was a problem on the French TGV that we took years ago. The station at Hiroshima was quite nice with a lot of reasonable restaurants to choose from.  We'll eat there on the return trip tonight.

Our first stop of the day will be by ferry to Miyajima ("Shrine") Island with its iconic torii gate sitting on the tidal flats and the Itsukushima Shrine which, if the tides are right (they weren't), seems to float on water, which is its main claim to fame.

That's the torii gate with the water just lapping at its base.  The ants are people.  The Shrine lies directy behind it on the left, high and dry.  After disembarking, we walked through the tourist shopping area of the town (natch) to get to the Shrine at the far end.  We checked out possible lunch stops along the way.  A big deal here are the "wild" deer that are allowed to roam freely.  A little too freely, as one tried to snatch something from Chuck.  Back in the day, they were quite sacred and the penalty for injuring one was beheading.  Yikes!  Lots of folks walked out to see the torii gate up close and personal at low tide.

Once we got to the Shrine it was pleasant but not spectacular.  We just got unlucky with the tide, and it was not so magical sitting on a mud flat.  It consists of a series of buildings connected by covered walkways.  It was started in 1168 by Taira no Kiyomori, allegedly the most powerful man in Japan during the end of the Heian period, to be used as a family shrine.  I wonder how much of the original remains?

Some of the interior rooms were quite nice, especially the one with the big drum.

Ready to eat, we returned to the shopping street on our own and sussed out a likely candidate.  Again, thank goodness for pictures of the food or we'd be lost.  From this humble spot Loni had asparagus wrapped with bacon and I got octopus and spring onion (both in wraps).  A couple of Asahi "Dry Zero's" (non-alcoholic) and we were good to go.  I really liked the Asahi's and wish they would export them to the U.S.  I've looked, but no go.

We dallied among the shops but found nothing we liked other than stuff for $500 and up.  Nope.  Back to the ferry and the 8 minute ride across the bay to the mainland.  One last shot of the damp torii.  [Note:  as I type this, I read that the torii was covered in scaffolding and tarps beginning in 2019 for maintenance; glad we got there before that happened.]

It took another hour on the bus to get to the Hiroshima Peace Park.  We started at the museum, which was only half open due to renovations.  That was plenty.  As you can imagine, the images and artifacts and first-hand accounts are truly harrowing.

  If only every world so-called "leader" could be forced to spend a couple of days here contemplating the realities of war, we just maybe could avoid getting into more of them.  We can hope.  The overall tone of the museum was of peace and forgiveness, and there was no avoidance of Japan's own role in that sorry history.  I felt much less self-conscious here than I did when I was in the Navy and visited the Nagasaki peace park.  Of course, that was 1969 and not so many American tourists then.

Outside, here's the main plaza, viewing through the memorial arch at the "atomic dome" in the background, the only building to remain standing near ground zero.

Chuck and Alice took a breather to contemplate the Dome.

Let's hope the kids take away more than memories of a pleasant day outside.

We were scheduled for the 19:17 train back to Kyoto, with three stops.  We had time to eat at the station, which had a huge 3-story food court.  We had enough trouble choosing among the offerings on floor one.  We were fascinated by the open-kitchen floor show at one place that seemed to be making some sort of exotic fritata with a lot of theatricality.

  The thing was called an Okonomoyaki, or something like that.  An egg pancake filled with chopped cabbage and your choice of additionals.  I chose squid, but ended up with shrimp (no complaint), and Loni chose spring onions.  It's topped with some brown sauce and finished with a fried egg.  Trust me, it tasted great.  The hardest part was trying to figure out how to order from the machine posted out front.  We were saved by a local eager to practice her English. Chuck wandered off in search of a McDonald's, but no joy, so he got a hamburger at some stand.  Too bad for him.

The trip back was uneventful save for the gang of school kids who mob-boarded along with us.  They quieted down, though, and we dozed most of the way back, getting to the hotel quite late.  A good day!