Kyoto Special – Page 17 – goinggaijin.com

Weekend!

The last three days were very busy, I was on my feet – literally – for more than eight hours each day… When I came home last night I was so tired, I went to bed at around ten, hence the delay in my report, but here it is, finally:

Wednesday night was the last evening of the yoiyama for the Saki matsuri parade. Just like last year, from 6 pm the streets of the inner city where the floats had been built were closed for traffic, and were turned into a huge pedestrian area. It was very crowded; when I looked from Yasaka shrine over Shijo street, it was filled with people, the heads of the Japanese turning the space into a black mass. It had been a very hot day and it was a lovely night, but because it was so crowded, the feeling was more hectic and much less relaxed than last year.

I had fun though, trying out new street food: pancakes made from takoyaki batter, rolled up and then topped with all sorts of condiments. I had one with mayo, parsley, dried fish flakes, and ketchup, thus each bite tasted differently. Altogether, there were at least four different types. For safety reasons I did not try the one with the fried egg on top: although seemingly delicious, the yolk still looked rather runny… Also, I have to admit that I succumbed to shopping and bought a tengui, a traditional, thin Japanese towel, that was sold at the stand of the boat-float, which always comes last in the parade. I bought this one because I really liked the phoenix on it, what do you think:

The biggest novelty – and one that my inner treehugger is especially happy about – were the ECO-stations placed at exits and large crossings of the pedestrian area. When I bought the pancake, I received it in a little dish made from very sturdy plastic and I already thought it was a shame to throw it away after single use. Only then did I discover the ECO-stations, where one could return these dishes to have them washed and reused directly. What a wonderful idea! I hope they’ll keep it up and they can be seen at many matsuri to come!

Thursday started very early and ended very late… A friend of mine came up from Kobe and because we wanted a decent spot on a corner to watch the parade, we met at 8 am – and were still about 30 minutes late for the perfect spot, which was reached by the parade only at 9:30… My friend was amazed by the big fuss that was made to turn the naginata hoko around the corner. However, she was not quite as patient as I had been the year before, and so we gave up our front row spot after about an hour of watching, and we walked along Shijo dori towards the other floats of the parade. I showed her my favourite one (topped with the praying mantis), and she was especially excited about the boat-shaped Ofune hoko, traditionally ending the parade, because it looks so different from all the others.

We then had sushi for lunch, and when we left the restaurant at 12:30, we could still see the last floats leaving Kawaramachi street. We then went through Gion to my favourite temple where we relaxed a little before she went to the station where she had booked a tea-ceremony, and I headed back home.

After a nap that felt hardly longer than 10 minutes, I was up and about again to go to my soroban class – it was the big exam day, remember! We conducted it almost like we do a normal class; first a short mental calculation warmup, then the test. It went well, no big surprises, although I was a bit nervous. I could leave right after the test was over as I was so tired, it must have shown. I think at that time my sensei already knew whether I had passed or not, but he said I would get the result only next Tuesday. You are thus still allowed to keep your fingers crossed!

Yesterday, on Friday, I went to a friend’s place at 10:30. She had an invitation for the opening of the summer exhibition at MIHO Museum and had invited me to come along. Miho museum is about a 90 minutes drive from Kyoto, situated in the middle of mountains. it is a privately owned museum, founded by and named after what was at that time the richest woman of Japan. The special exhibition centres around two large tapestries (probably two metres by one), depicting a Kwannon – the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy – and a sitting, pensive Buddha. The tapestries were hand-woven for the museum after two old images, and you can see the original paintings as well as statues and other related objects of art.

The permanent exhibition is exquisite, albeit small. They have a beautiful little statue of Horus, made from silver, gold, and lapis lazuli, that apparently was once the main deity of an Egyptian temple. There was also a standing Buddha statue, some 2.5 metres high I guess, upper body leaning forward just a little bit. It gave me the impression of a father stooping down a little to his children. I really enjoyed the trip although it took much longer than I had expected. The museum is certainly worth a visit, even though it is a bit far from Kyoto.

Now, those were my last three days. Today I had planned a rest day; from Monday on there will be the second yoiyama before the Ato matsuri parade. It should be much more quiet though, but I hope the friend with whom I will watch it will like it too.

Matsuri!

I have just returned from the last evening of yoiyama where I – and approximately 10.000 other people – went to the city to have a look at all the floats that will be presented in the big Saki matsuri parade tomorrow. I went around through the city for about 6 hours and I am very tired right now…

Tomorrow, I will meet a friend to go and see the parade, and I’ll have to get up quite early for this one, hence, I will not write much more tonight.

You will get a big summary of this year’s Saki matsuri and preceding yoiyama on Friday. Good night!

Prayers

It is mid July – and that means that for a whole month Kyoto is in the grips of Gion Matsuri! Even with the Grand Parade having been split into two parades, the Saki parade on the 17th and the Ato parade on the 24th, I would still say that the main event – the Saki matsuri – is happening this week.

In fact, today is the first day of yoi-yama, the three days, or rather, evenings, that lead up to the Saki matsuri on the 17th. I was not planning to go to town tonight, mainly because I am not sure whether there will be the large pedestrian zone during all three nights, or only for the last one. Also, there have been short but heavy rain showers in the afternoon and also now in the evening, and I am still hoping for better weather.

I did go to Yasaka (or Gion) shrine in the late afternoon though, because I know that the food stalls there are open already and I wanted to have something nice for dinner. It turned out that I came at the right time: Just when I arrived, there was a long row of people waiting at the entrance to Yasaka shrine. It turned out that those were the members of the Naginata-hoko group (the one float that will lead the Saki matsuri parade on Thursday) and that they, together with the chigo (the most important boy during Gion matsuri, he will perform a number of rites throughout this month and will ride on the Naginata-hoko) went to Gion shrine to pay their respects to the Gods – meaning that they would go to each and every shrine in the precincts to offer a short prayer. I am not entirely sure, but I would guess that the other groups from the other yama and hoko floats will be doing the same in the next two days.

Of course, this would not be Japan if there would be no big group picture, and I also got a few of my own… In the back you can see the three mikoshi that will be moved from the shrine to the Otabisho on Thursday evening, which is the main event of Gion matsuri, from a religious point of view.

Steam

I had a great day last Saturday. Friends of mine from Kobe came over and together we went to the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum close to Kyoto station.

It’s absolutely brilliant – I love steam locomotives! The museum was opened in 1972 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Japanese railways – the first railway connection ran between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872. It consists of the old Nijo station building, a beautiful wooden construction that has been moved to this place from its original spot, a fan-shaped locomotive house with a turntable at the centre point that houses almost all of the engines, and a large outdoor space containing a few more exhibits and a short rail track. The museum houses about 20 old steam locomotives, and about half of them are still operational. One of those is used to pull a small train along the one kilometre long rail track mentioned above three times a day, probably one of the major attractions of the museum.

The non-working locomotives can be entered, they are in a rather good shape, and I took many pictures of their in- and outside. I grew up in a town with a large railway station, my grandfather worked in the shunting area there, and although I am too young to have lived in the steam age, my grandfather took me on railtrips all through Austria, and I always loved – and probably always will love – trains. Often, we like to think our own era as the pinnacle of technology, but I am always amazed at the sheer ingenuity that went into machines such a long time ago already. The engines are huge, and there are some spare parts that can be viewed – a single piston is as large as a leg of mine…

Of course, there is always something I take out of a museum. In this case it is the following: Operating a steam engine for a single kilometre requires 100 litres of water and 40 kilograms of coal, copious reserves of both of which are stored in the tender behind the locomotive. Older models get the coal into the furnace by an auger, a spiral conveyor (this is still used in larger ovens for wood chips), but in the early years, this had to be done by hand. This shoveling is obviously a very precise operation – there were specific shovel training devices for goal training… A pity we could not try that one out…

Anyway, we all had a great day in the museum which we concluded with Korean food before my friends went back to Kobe. I also received two large stacks of books as present – and reading them has essentially been everything that I did for the rest of the weekend…

Reminiscences

Last week I was very busy. First of all, my soroban lessons started in earnest, we did three classes last week. Right now we are reviewing what I have learnt before, it is going okay, but I still make many mistakes. And that’s although I am not worried about speed at this point…

The big thing was the conference last week at Kyoto University, in my “old” field, so to speak. I went there several times, mainly because colleagues from my last university were attending the conference and they had asked me to do some sightseeing with them. We had lunch together on Monday, and I spent Tuesday afternoon showing them my personal highlights of Kyoto. Those are not that small or unknown places – certainly not for the Japanese – but I don’t think they would make the Top 10 of must-sees in Kyoto. My friends seemed to be very happy about that. On Friday, three of us went out the whole day; I have mentioned that. We went to the Silver Pavillion and the Philosopher’s path, and because of a problem with my watch, we were almost too late for lunch, which was my personal highlight of the day:

We had kaiseki for lunch, Japanese haute cuisine, which is especially renowned in Kyoto. There is a small ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn not far from my place, usually those serve kaiseki, and I had made a reservation the day before. Although only three people, we had our own room with a view onto their perfectly kept Japanese garden. On each of our places (we were sitting on a table, and not on the floor; I was a bit disappointed, but my friends were rather glad about it), lay an old poem, handwritten by the “lady of the house” onto beautiful Japanese handmade paper. Japanese calligraphy is hard to read, even for Japanese, but, as a special extra, there was a small slip with an English translation glued to the back of each poem. Our menu consisted of seven courses, and although you cannot choose what you would like to have – when you make the reservation you state the price only – we were extremely pleased with the food: There was lots of fish and seafood, many vegetables, all in season and from local sources, all cooked to absolute perfection, each bite marvellous. We were served by a woman in Kimono who only spoke Japanese, naturally, and in between the courses we admired the garden and the details and decorations of the room.

After lunch we took a train down to Fushimi Inari shrine, where we… well, let’s be honest, we ran up the hill and through all the torii. This was the main thing my friends wanted to see that day, and it was the most exhausting part of the day; my German friends with their long legs obviously had less of a problem with it than I did. Anyway, it was very nice, and while catching my breath very now and then I could even take a few pictures, chiefly of the red torii, but also some of the many cats that are living around the shrine. Finally, dinner took place in downtown Kyoto, at a simple running sushi place, but nevertheless delicious.

The conference was nice, although I only went to one of the talks. There were a large number of old friends and colleagues, one of whom I hadn’t seen since I did my PhD; students, postdocs, and professors from the various universities I have worked at and with before, my PhD advisor… It was very nice to see them all again and catch up with people. Never before had I had the feeling that so many people were so happy to see me. 😉

What I found most interesting though, is that although I enjoyed going there and meeting all these people, not for a single moment did I feel regret about having left academia. There was nothing pulling me back, nothing at all to trigger regret or to make me reconsider my decision. I guess, it was a good one after all.

Children’s Day

Today is the last of the golden week holidays (not counting the one tomorrow that serves as a stand-in for the “missed” Greenery Day yesterday). It is based on a very old traditional holiday, tango-no-sekku that focuses on boys, but, with gender equality and all that, it is now officially called kodomo-no-hi or children’s day.

Many houses with children or boys put up banners that look like carp, called koi-no-bori, and each carp is supposed to represent one boy (child) of the family, and the two largest ones the parents. The (golden) koi is considered a most energetic fish, and flying those banners is more or less a wish for the boys in the household to be healthy and energetic.

Another tradition on this day is to display dolls of samurai in full armour, including miniature helmets, swords and other weapons, war drums… Again, it is meant as a wish for the boys to be strong and healthy, and it is a tradition going back to samurai families only. Special sweets can not be missing, and you can eat kashiwa mochi (red-bean filled rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves) for example.

For me, this day is special too: I came to Japan exactly a year ago. I treated myself to a visit of a traditional machiya, a special type of merchant’s houses, with several courtyards and storage houses, a tea room and Noh stage… The guided tour I took was conducted by a young girl from Poland, interestingly, and instead of the 45 minutes or so it was supposed to take, we spent about two hours in the house as I was the only guest at that time – sometimes it is nice to get out in the rain…

What is my conclusion after one year in Japan? Things have not quite turned out as I had envisioned – everything goes much slower than I had expected – but nevertheless, it’s time to celebrate: I have taken considerable time to search for myself (although I’m not sure I have found me yet) and what I want to do with my life. I have also developed a much more relaxed attitude towards things, although sometimes it feels close to not caring about stuff anymore, which I find scary. All in all I could say that I am feeling more centred somehow, more resting within myself (and now that I write this I wonder if an excentric person is the opposite) and I do not regret my step at all. It was a good decision.

Hunting

I went down to Kamogawa today. It is lined with cherry trees, they are in full bloom now, and I wanted to do my own little hanami. Hence, I bought, quite traditionally, O-nigiri, and also, quite modern, some cream-filled waffles. I sat down on a good spot to enjoy the view and started eating.

When I had arrived at dessert and just contemplated the second bite, all of a sudden and literally out of the blue, something came from the right, snatched the waffle out of my hand and disappeared again. Within a single blink of my eyes, my fingers were smeared with cream, but empty, and it took another blink for my mind to even form the question “What…??” It happened that quickly, I didn’t even see the eagle.Only when I looked around and saw two of them fighting for their “prey” did I realize what had just happened. I could feel the talons, but I don’t have a single scratch, so craftyly did he pick the little sweet from my hand. They are indeed amazing animals.

On a hunting related note: A UN court has recently ruled that the Japanese must give up whaling. Despite the international moratorium they so far used the “science” loophole to keep it up, and that although everybody knew the truth – whalemeat could openly be bought in many places. Now, however, Japan has agreed to abide by the court’s ruling, which I find quite astonishing to be honest. A good day for the whales!

Edit: A falconer I know has pointed out that the birds in question are not eagles, but kites, most likely Black Kites. Thanks for the info! Obviously I don’t know much about birds – but the fact that it was not an eagle who stole my desert does not in the least diminish my fascination with the animals…

Water

It seems that all the cold air is going to Europe at the moment – the weather here is unusually warm for this time of the year. Last Saturday, we had a high of almost 15 degrees, and this afternoon was warm and sunny as well.

So, I went out and did what I have wanted to do for quite a while already: I walked along a (part of) the Lake Biwa – Kyoto canal. Near the Kyoto International Community House, there is a small museum dedicated to the water works of Kyoto. From there you can stroll up the hill along one of the water ways until you can see two huge red pipelines coming out of the mountain. This is a nice and quiet spot with a little park and a statue (possibly of the head engineer?) and now that there are no leaves, you have a nice view over Kyoto.

Anyway, I find the canal itself very interesting. It was started in the Meiji era as a way to halt the decline of Kyoto after the court moved to Tokyo. The canal – now there are three of them – connects Kyoto with Lake Biwa in the North and provides drinking water for Kyoto. In former days, the water was also used to generate power: At some point, Kyoto even had a tramway driven with the electricity from the Lake Biwa canal. Unfortunately, the tramway does not exist any longer, but one of the cars is exhibited in Heian shrine garden (why there I have no idea though – I can’t read the sign…). I will explore Kyoto’s waterways further – my interest is certainly piqued…

Kinkaku-ji

The Golden Pavillion Temple Kinkaku-ji is the most striking of all the famous sights in Kyoto and should be on the very top of your must-see list when coming here. The Golden Pavillion is the main building of a zen temple – officially known as Rokuon-ji, Deer Garden temple – in Northern Kyoto and it is golden indeed: The two top floors of the three story building which stands in a large lake with several islands are covered in gold leaf on laquer and a golden phoenix crowns the centre of the roof. If you look closely you may notice that each floor is representative of a different architectural style: The ground floor is typical of the Heian period style palace buildings called shinden, the first floor is a guilded version of the bukke style of samurai residences, and the top floor – covered in gold leaf in- and outside – is built in the style of a Chinese zen hall. The pavillion houses Buddha statues and similar relics, but it is not open to the public.

The pavillion and the garden date back to the late 14th century, when the third shogun of the Muramachi period, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, bought the property from another statesman and built his own villa there. After his death, according to his wishes, the whole estate was turned into a Buddhist temple. The golden pavillion is the only “original” structure left from that period; I use the quotes because the building has burnt down and been restored several times in its history, the last time it was destroyed by arson in 1950 and rebuilt five years later. Below are the old abbot’s quarters, with beautiful screen paintings – but it’s not open to the public either.

The large garden surrounding Kinkaku-ji is truly original though, and considered an especially fine example of garden design from the Muromachi period. The garden was meant to represent the pure land of Buddha in this world. The pavillion lies in a pond with ten small islands, and on a clear day the impression of the golden building is heightened by its reflection in the water.

The one-way path leads you along the pond to the back of the pavillion and from there into the garden, where a number of little springs can be seen and several places where people throw coins for luck. The second floor of the garden on top of the hill contains another little pond called Anmintaku that allegedly never dries up, and the Sekkatei, an Edo-period tea house that has been specifically built to enjoy the view on Kinkaku-ji during the afternoon – the best hours to view it.

Ring

Towards the end of the year, people all over the world like to reminiscence about the year that has passed. Of the Year is an important phrase in this time, and it is added to words like employee, woman, man, person, word, book, movie,… So, let me, without any further ado, present to you the Kanji of the Year 2013:

It means ring or wheel and is pronounced as rin or wa, depending on the context. The main reason this character was chosen was that this year, Tokyo has won the bid for the Summer Olympic Games in 2020, something the Japanese are extremely proud of.

Interestingly, choosing a Kanji of the Year is not something invented 1000 years ago! The first such event dates back only to 1995, yes, that’s not even 20 years; this ceremony must feel like the baby amongst all the others celebrated in Japan… 😉 However, it is a very nice ceremony sponsored and organised by the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society, a private organisation that encourages the use and knowledge of Kanji. People are invited to send in their choice for the Kanji of the Year, and the one with the most votes (this year 9,518 out of 170,290 votes) is then announced, that is, written on a large white board, by the head priest of Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto each year on Kanji Day, December 12. I went there with a friend to see the ceremony, and it was virtually impossible. At 11:30, the best spots were already taken by journalists, and the not so good spots were guarded by a private security company that told people to move on… We finally secured a place on a viewing platform a little further away and waited in the cold until the ceremony began at 2 pm. Once again, everything was over very quickly. The head priest came, and quickly wrote down the kanji with a brush as thick as my arm (see the first photo above). After a short wait so all journalists could take their pictures, the board was brought into the temple where a small ceremony was conducted. Afterwards, the board was taken out again to take more pictures with the head priest and other celebrities (this was the time for me to sneak up and take my close ups) and then, after maybe half an hour, even before all the journalists had left, everything was taken away and cleaned up again. The whole event was broadcast live on TV; there were even two TVs set up at the temple so people could watch the ceremony at least second hand, and my friend, a distinguished but not unapproachable looking foreigner, was interviewed twice and asked for his opinion on the choice.

I enjoyed being there, despite the long wait and my frozen toes afterwards. I’m not sure if I’d want to come again next year as I hate being cold, but having my own photos of the event is certainly a nice thing.