Kyoto part VII (last one - I swear!)

Monday (continued)

I don't know if the day got colder then, or if we realized how cold it was because of the snow. We were after a tea shop recommended in our book. After walking past the place marked on our map a couple times, I went into a shop selling chopsticks and pottery to ask directions. I repeated the name of the tea shop - along with the word matcha - to the ancient lady behind the counter. She grabbed a cane and hobbled out to the street to point at a nondescript store front with neither English signage nor plastic food. I gave her a thank-you in Japanese (about the only thing I can say in Japanese other than names of food items). The tea shop was in an tiny old building, everything made of wood from floor to ceiling. Inside it was cosy and warm, with a space heater humming away in one corner. We both ordered matcha, which came with two sweets made of rice and adzuki beans, and took our time sipping the rich green tea as our hands and toes warmed up.

Tuesday

It was even colder, with the weather report calling for rain. Despite the large number of shrines, temples, and gardens we hadn't seen yet, there was no way we were doing anything out of doors in that weather. So we planned a trip to some sake breweries. This was meant to be easy, requiring very little time out of doors. However, or map led us astray. First up was Gekkeikan brewery, but we ended up at their central brewery, which is not open to the public. I am pleased to report, I was able to make out from the Japanese characters that we were in Gekkeikan territory of some kind, and I walked into their offices asking for the location of the sake museum (their tourist facilities, where we might learn about sake and also taste some). After waiting patiently while the staff discussed the matter at length, someone showed up who could speak a little English. He gave us a map, and better instructions. We thanked him profusely and headed out. That's when the snow started coming down in earnest, and we started to realise we had been unwise to leave the hostel without umbrellas. We had just started down the street, when a lady hurried up to us and asked us to wait here: someone would drive us to the sake museum! We were very thankful for the ride. The museum was interesting, and the sake was tasty. We bought a bottle of sake and a bottle of plum wine as well.



Loren with large sake fermentation tank at Gekkeikan Sake Museum

A short venture in the snow found us at stop number two: Kizakura Kappa Country, a sake and beer brewery. We got a very tasty lunch at their restaurant, and a flight of three little glasses of beer to taste. We guessed them as a lager, an Irish red style, and a hefewizen style. They were all tasty, and unsurprisingly we both liked the hefewizen best. They had a museum as well, though it was smaller and we were glad we'd seen Gekkeikan's first as this one had no English signs. In addition, however, they had a little museum dedicated to the kappa, a mythical creature, that apparently is know for being sneaky, and looks something like an anthropomorphic cross between a frog and a turtle.



Loren slurping noodles at Kizakura's restaurant



Somewhat lewd kappa sculpture at Kizakura's kappa museum

After that we called it a day. The weather was miserable; we bought a cheap umbrella at a corner store and headed home.

Wednesday.

It was my turn to be sick. Spent most of the day on the couch in the lounge drinking tea and reading my book. Loren did some wandering around the city without me.

Thursday.

Last day. I was feeling a little better, we mostly just got ourselves packed and headed to the airport around mid-day.

Kyoto part VI

Sunday.
Loren didn't make Day Three. That was not a surprise; it is only for the top 8 players. He made 80-somethingth out of nearly 400, which is not bad for his first time playing at this level. We didn't do much this day, as Loren was not feeling well. We started out to check out a shrine in Southern Higashiyama, but by the time we got there Loren was feeling sick. We stopped in a very tasty soba restaurant on our way back to the hostel. Loren ordered a dish with 'thick broth' which neither of us much liked. It was like a typical broth that someone had then added a lot of corn starch or other thickener to, it was sickeningly thick and made the soba sticky so that it was hard to pry out of the bowl with chopsticks. We did nothing much the rest of the day. I enjoyed another bath in the hostel's luxurious tub.


Yaska-Jinja shrine in Southern Higashiyama (Gion district)

Monday.
Yesterday Loren was feeling better. We picked a walking self-tour recommended by our guide book. It took us through some temples in Southern Higashiyama. At the first temple, the book recommended a strange side-attraction in the temple grounds, it was hard to find as there were no English signs. We were determined though as the book said it was 'one of the strangest attractions in Kyoto.' Inside a small temple, you pay a small fee and follow stairs down into darkness. Your left hand had hold of the railing; it is a series of large wooden orbs, like prayer beads, leading your way. It leads into the kind of complete darkness I have only experienced deep in the lava tubes of Hawaii. You turn right and left, your feet tentatively sliding along the slight unevenness of the age-worn rock slabs of the floor. Then you round a corner, and there hovering in front of you is a very large circular stone, somewhat flat on top. It has a Japanese symbol carved into the top. Though I can see one slender hand placed on the stone, It appears disembodied; the lighting is illuminating the stone and nothing else. The hand of the person in front of me disappears into the darkness, and it's my turn. Holding the large wood beads with my left hand, I place my right on the stone and move it around the edge as I was directed to before descending. Slowly, silently, the stone begins to rotate under my hand, as if it were floating on something.

We followed a narrow street lined with restaurants, and shops of all kinds - selling sweets, Japanese fans, and so on. We noticed a few large raindrops starting to fall here and there. We stopped at a stand selling fresh steamed buns. Loren got one with beef inside, I got one with sweet bean paste and green tea mochi.

We walked to another shrine, it had a huge statue of Buddha sitting on top of it. Loren didn't feel like going in, so I left him to wander the grounds outside. I paid my 100 yen (that's about two Kiwi dollars) at the gate. The lady lit a fat stick of incense, handed it too me, and conveyed through gesture that I was to place it in the large incense burner in front of the shrine. Turns out the whole shrine was some sort of memorial for the unknown soldiers who died in World War Two. I strolled past a peaceful pond toward the shrine steps. The place was basically empty; I ventured up the steps alone, clutching my purple stick of incense, watching the smoke curl into the chill air. In the incense burner someone had made a swirling pattern in what looked like years of ash; I sunk my stick down into the ash in the company of several others. Just then the rain started up again, and as I looked up, I had the sudden realisation that it was not rain. I was experiencing a snow flurry! It melted the moment it hit the earth, but I opened my gloved hand and caught a snowflake. It had been snow all along.


Ryozen Kwanon


Incense burner at Ryozen Kwanon

Kyoto part V

3rd March

Saturday.

Loren made it to Day Two. After a leisurely morning I took the train to the tournament site to see the artists and such. The best was this table of craftsmen who made sort of 3-dimensional versions of magic cards by taking like 10 of the same cards, and doing intricate cut-outs of the features on them. I then walked to a nearby temple. I got seriously lost getting there, the sort of lost you can only get if you can't read any of the street signs. Finally found my way back to a point I could distinguish on the map using (I swear!) the position of the sun and the time of day.


3-D Magic cards

It was all worth it because the temple (or shrine?) was really lovely. It featured inari (meaning fox, not sushi) statues, and an uncountable quantity of reddish-orange gates. These simple wooden gates were set one behind the other continuously for long stretches of pathways. It was an amazing experience to walk into the brilliant orange tunnels that the gates created. These temples are not relics; they are ancient and yet they are full of life and activity. The religion is very much alive, and interactive in a way I am not accustomed to. The many shrines on the property are visited by Japanese followers, which ring a bell, toss a coin into collection boxes, and make a wish or prayer. This is just one of the activities I observed. (there were no English signs, so I did a lot of observing). Another set of activities involved paying a small fee to write your wish/prayer on a piece of paper, a strip of wood, or other objects, which are then hung up together in the appropriate location. There were also various methods for receiving a pre-written fortune. And these are just the bits that were somewhat comprehensible to me!


Inari fox statue


Shrine Gates

I followed one path that lead through a well tended bamboo forest. I have not seen bamboo this large aside from one memorable garden on the Big Island. Eventually there was a side-path with a lot of what looked like little shrines all crowded together. Some looked well tended, others old somewhat fallen to neglect. It wasn't til I'd gotten to the second wandering path featuring similar 'shrines' that it dawned on me that I was really looking at graves. I have never seen so strange a grave-yard!



Hand print on giant bamboo


Grave at Fushimi-Inari


Another strange grave at Fushimi-Inari



Spider web on grave stones

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Kyoto part IV

27th February

3:15 pm

The weather is crap so I've only made one major trip out today, and I keep checking to see how Loren's doing. Info on the tournament is being added to Magic The Gathering's site as it happens. Loren's at 34th place if anyone cares to know. Only one lost match so far, and he's still in the top 50. Three more matches to go.

Friday

I walked Loren to the station, but didn't feel like making the treck out there with him. It was early, I was sleepy, and aside from the featured artist table there wouldn't be much for me to do. Magic doesn't make a very good spectator sport. I did a lot of nothing much in the morning, waiting for the day to warp up a bit. Then I made the trip into downtown Kyoto on the subway. I wasn't feeling very good. When I resized that I'd hardly had a vegetable since we got here - mostly just noodles, meat and fish - I figured that probably wasn't helping. The only thing along my route that sounded veggie-friendly was a French restaurant and the guide book promised the staff could speak English. I had a nicoise salad, which made me feel a lot better.

I could smell the tea shop before I saw it. Suddenly the smell of green tea was in the air - the place itself looked ancient, everything well-worn wood. Everything was in Japanese; I was relieved when one of the staff offered me a brochure in English, set out a tray of tea samples to smell, and gestured to a chair. I decided on a mid-range matcha and a roasted bancha.

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I didn't take any photos that day. So I'm using this photo of the teas I bought. Bancha is a category of least-refined everyday teas. The type I bought is called hojicha which is a roasted green tea, light brown in colour. It was common to get complimentary tea instead of water at restaurants in Japan, usually a bancha. Matcha on the other hand is a very special type of Japanese tea. It is usually described as "powdered green tea." This means it's actually green tea leaves ground to a fine powder. Traditionally, you add a small scoop of the powder to a bowl with hot water in it, then use a special matcha whisk to suspend the powder in the water, making the tea a bit frothy. You then drink the whole thing down, consuming the powdered tea leaf with the tea. It has a rich, distinctive taste that is unlike other types of green tea. This is what is used in the famous "Japanese tea ceremony." In the photo, the matcha is the little tin that I haven't yet taken the fancy washi paper wrapping off of.

And I'll toss one more random photo in here, since today's entry is light on photos (don't worry, the next one will more than make up for it).


Toilet with sink built in - sink water runs when toilet is flushed, and drains into the toilet bowl. Only one of the strange toilet designs we saw in Japan.

Kyoto part III

27th February

7:05 am - sleepy morning update.

Woke up early this morning, my neck bothering me. As it does when I'm in a hotel bed; though I bring my travel mattress pad with me it is not the same as my memory foam haven of a bed back home. Loren is sleeping but soon the alarm will wake him so he can get up and take the subway to day one of the tournament. Day one is for everyone; the top 50 make it to day two,* and the top 8 make it to day three. Day one starts with hundreds - and it feels like half of them are staying at our hostel, even at 7am there are six magic players in the lounge talking strategy and sorting cards. This is Loren's first tournament on this level, still I hope he makes top 50 which would mean he walked away with some amount of prize money.** Ok, on to the travel log:

* editor's note: it was actually top 1/2 makes it to day two.
** It was actually top 64 players get cash prizes. You'd think I wasn't paying attention and maybe that's true.

Thursday.

We had breakfast at a bakery serving both French-style pastries and Japanese-style steam buns. I had a plum blossom steam bun with sweet bean paste. We did a tour around the massive Kyoto station complex. It's a weird sort of modern architectural style; when I get home and the the photos up, you'll see what I mean. Loren spent the middle part of the day playing and watching Magic games; preparation for the event. Apparently there is a somewhat famous Brazilian player staying at our hostel. I took the subway to down town to do some shopping which I knew Loren wouldn't be much into. I started by walking down one of the covered open-air markets, taking my time looking at exotic sweets and incense shops, pottery shops, chopstick shops, etc. In one sweet shop, there was a glass-walled kitchen where you could see them making something. It smelled like cinnamon buns in there; it turned out the were making a sort of crunchy, thin cinnamon cookie. I bought a small box of them, they were really good. Later I read in my guidebook that they are some sort of Kyoto speciality and are actually made of mochi.


Looking down from the 11th story at a series of escalators and granite stairs.

My destination was a Japanese paper merchant, I spent some time looking at elaborately-designed paper, and all manor of things made of paper. I bought some small colourful origami paper there. I then walked to Southern Higashiyama just across the river. I was headed to a tea and sweets shop. This was in the Gion area - traditional theatres. This area was just full of every type of sweet shop! By the time I found my destination, It was getting close to time to head back, and was unsure how log it would take if I ordered matcha. So I bought a box of tea sweets and then walked back along the river - the Kamo-gawa. I saw cranes in the shallow, broad river, and a hawk or falcon hunting for fish above the water.

Late afternoon, and I was back at the hostel. Needed a break from all the walking, so I read my book some in the lounge and then we headed to an area just South of the city to the place where the Magic tournament will be; Loren needed to register. We didn't have a good map of this area, and got a bit lost, wandering through a residential neighbourhood with some ancient-looking houses and some houses that were new but done in the traditional style (austere wooded construction, elaborate tiled roofing, manicured lawn with a stone lantern in it). It surprised us that here, in a still somewhat urban area, there were sizable plots full of rows of vegetables, interspersed with the houses.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant because Loren insisted Italian pasta was the best thing to eat before a big tournament. It was actually very good, and we were amused to see the Japanese diners around us eating their pasta dishes family style, and slurping the noodles just as they would with a bowl of ramen.


The ubiquitous plastic food in restaurant windows. Even Italian restaurants. Note the fried egg on the pizza on the right.


Today the weather is bad, rainy and only meant to get to about 8 degrees Celsius. I am determined to head out there at some point and find some Japanese tea. My destination is a place down town which both serves tea and sells packages of it.

Kyoto part II

25th February

Wednesday.

The rain cleared up by mid-morning and we braved a trip out in much nicer weather than yesterday's. We went to a supermarket for some basics like cereal and milk, and had to walk down every aisle fascinated by the weird and mysterious items for sale.


Adzuki bean paste kit-kats. They were pretty good.

Then we went to another temple that is in Kyoto Station area (the neighbourhood we are staying in). It was very nice, the number massive wood beams used to construct these huge buildings is truly amazing. Unfortunately this one was also partially closed due to renovation. It had a temple gate that is designated a national treasure or some such - it is a very large wooden gate with intricately carved and painted details depicting kirin and fu dogs. Then went to a sento (bath house).

This was a real treat, and figuring out what to do when there was not a scrap of English to be found was an interesting if disorienting experience. There were all manor of hot and warm spa pools, and a sauna with a television in it! My favourite was a spa pool with some kind of mineralised water in it. It was pleasantly just warmer than body temperature, and the minerals made lots of very tiny bubbles, the water felt very soft and lovely. Loren encountered an electric pool (the men and women were in separate areas). Apparently it was a pool with a very mild electrical current in it, causing a sort of tingly feeling. There were no places to hang towels, everyone was just carrying around a tiny towel that they rent to you that is no bigger than a tea towel. This towel is used to wash yourself when you come in, and at least attempt to cover yourself if you're feeling modest.

Then we walked to downtown and had dinner at a nice sushi restaurant. After that, we walked down this street that our guidebook said was very pleasant at night. It is the narrowest street I have seen yet in Kyoto and suitable only for foot traffic. But it is truly very lovely at night due to the colourful lanterns hung outside beautiful old wooden store fronts, most of them restaurants. This area apparently has some of the fanciest and most exclusive eating establishments in Kyoto; it it easy to see why as they are built right to the edge of a large river that runs through town.


Pontocho: a beautiful street at night



Second shot of Pontocho

After we finished our walk through this area, we crossed the river and found a nice pathway that was set above the river but below the level of the street, and had a nice invigorating walk all the way back down to Kyoto Station area and then back to the hostel.

I am typing this in the lounge once again, and the place is truly packed. Most of the Magic players have hit town at this point, both dinning tables and one coffee table are full of Magic players and Loren is right in the middle of it of course. I came up here for a tea and a relaxing read of my book, but the noise level at the moment is not very conducive to this.


Magic players in the lounge of our hostel



Our very cozy sleeping quarters.

Well I'd better get going. Probably I'll be back on here again tomorrow.