Tea for Two

figurines placed by parents who have lost children
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After a night of karaoke and Chu-Hai - fizzy, fruit flavoured alcohol - Jas and I decided to take it easy and avoid the crowds of Kyoto. We went instead to do more temple touring which meant more trekking up steep hills. Our first stop was Hase-dera, leading to the main structure, there is a set of 399 steps, 4 is an unlucky number, so the steps are one short of 400. Hase was possibly the least crowded public place I visited through out my whole trip to Japan, for this reason it was one of my favourite spots. That could just be because it was the only place that held up to my pre-conceived expectations of temples being places of serenity and calm, where as every other temple we visited was a cacophony of school kids on excursion. The silence of Hase dera also made the fact that it is a shrine for deceased children more poignant, it was one of the only places where there weren't children running around everywhere.

399 steps
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A short train ride later we were at our second temple for the day Miwa Jinje, where we were meeting with Soei - one of the barmen from Jas' local, who also happened to be the master of tea ceremonies at Miwa. He showed us into a small room and had us wait a few minutes before returning in his ceremonial garb. He soon had several other women waiting on us and taught us the intricacies of the tea ceremony - way to feel like royalty! Until we were instructed to slurp our green tea that is. I didn't have a problem but for Jas, 20 years of manners drilled into her at the dinner table could not be overcome, "slurp Jasmine, slurp, you're being rude," the torment. The traditional green tea itself tastes rather like liquified grass. We grabbed a much tastier treat later from a vendor; sweet potato wedges that had been roasted in what looked like an ancient portable pot bellied oven and then covered in sugar, mmm.

"slurp Jasmine, slurp, you're being rude"

suitably sombre Soei
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Soei later took us on a tour around the temple, showing us the proper way to cleanse your hands and mouth at a fountain and tried to convince us that the trap we saw in a small pasture was for bears (as opppsed to rabbits). The day we were there was also the date of the Shichi Go San festival, when children aged 3, 5 and 7 get dressed to the nines and their parents celebrate their growth.

That eveing we had Soei and another of Jasmine's bar friends Marcel around to her apartment for dinner. We decided to try to cook them an Australian meal, much harder than it sounds, generally throwing a slice of beetroot into anything will make it 'Australian' - what's this? A bigmac? throw a piece of beetroot in and it's a McOz burger. Vegetarian pizza? not for long, a few cubes of beetroot and thats an Aussie pizza, etc. Without beetroot readily available we settled on two chicken dishes, one with mango, the other with canned peaches. The chicken worked a treat, the boys wrestled, a good night was had by all. Tomorrow Hiroshima.