Around every corner, Japan

After 12 days in Japan, we had accumulated enough stuff to ship home a box of various souvenirs, gifts, and clothes.  After thinking about it for about 30 seconds, we went with the cheaper option (7400 yen) and hoped our package would arrive in “one to two month” the post office worker said.   We then caught the bus to Kyoto station, in anticipation of the world famous Johnny Hillwalker tour.

While Kristin and Kelly went inside the station to book shinkansen tickets for the next day, Cory waited for the guide.  When he saw an older, apparently well-to-do American couple (for the female half, age Nancy Pelosi by a few years, then give her a lobotomy) joining the group, Cory got a strong whiff of annoying. Sometimes, first impressions are dead-on.

'Could you say the name of that temple again?'

Today, the Johnny Hillwalker tour would be led by Ted (short for something or other).  He did go to the same high school as Johnny and he didn‘t disappoint. We started at Kyoto station, across from the Kyoto tower, built in the 1960s, as a way to rival the building projects when Tokyo hosted the Olympics.  Destroyed on screen by Godzilla, whose director didn’t care for the tower.  It is meant to look like a candle, or a rocket, or a lighthouse (the tile roofs of Kyoto looked like waves on the ocean), depending on who is telling the story.

Our first real stop was Higashi Honen-ji, the headquarters of the Judo Shin-Shu (True Pure Land) sect of Buddhism.  Ted explained  that in Japan there is “always mixed situation.”  Shinto torii gates and bells in Buddhist temple complexes, and following Italian tradition, coins tossed into fountains at Shinto shrines.  The tour group watched a ceremony, celebrating the birth of the sect’s founder. The ceremony began with music, then chanting, but quite different from what we experienced in Koya. The main temple structure has been under construction since 2005 and will be unveiled in July.  The services were temporarily being held in this structure that housed a large statue of Buddha.  The service was packed to the rim and televisions were provided for the followers.

After exiting the temple, sadly, the annoying couple we’d lost at the entrance found the group, explaining that the wife couldn’t get her shoes off. Seriously?  What kind of person comes to Japan, much less Kyoto, and isn’t ready to take her shoes off at like every other stop? Then, a minute later, after telling anyone who would listen about the shoes and how they were left behind then waited and waited, the husband whipped out a micro cassette recorder -- reporter-style -- and pushed it toward the guide’s face. “Could you say the name of the temple again?” he asked. The woman explained they’d forget otherwise. As if the name wasn’t on the map the guide had given us less than an hour ago.

We then walked over to the “industrial” part of town.   Serious division of labor here, except people live where they work and the store fronts are very small.  We learned why yesterday.  Taxes are based on the width of the front of the home, so the houses are built to be narrow and deep, often with a garden inside. Each store specializes in producing a specific part of some finished product, like jewelry, fans, boxes, and shrines.

We watched rosaries constructed by hand through a shop window and later visited a fan factory.  The couple working in the back were blowing air to split the paper into the diamond shape you see on the finished product.  That’s right, one by one, something like two dozen folds in the fan paper, preparing them for their final construction with bamboo or lacquered frames.  Kristin just had to buy one.

We later stopped at a Shinto shrine for students.  Ted explained the shrine is very busy during examinations.  Later, we visited another Buddhist temple with a Shinto shrine embedded inside. This one had a sizable cemetery in the back, where we learned about how Japanese honor ancestors.

Ted then led us into the seedy part of town.  He explained there are five major geisha districts left, with  Gion being the most prestigious, plus one dying district one. This one was historically serving dual purposes as providing both traditional geisha entertainment and prostitution.  The area was lined with several tea houses, where the geisha entertiain guests.

Later we met the manager of the pottery factory nearby and his family visiting a local cherry blossom tree in bloom.  We then walked over a public library with a huge satellite image of Kyoto, where Ted gave us more background on the geisha.  First, only non-Kyotoites (and perhaps only gaijin) use the word geisha.  The terms maiko (apprentices) and geiko are really more appropriate.

Outside, we walked by the headquarters of a powerful Japanese crime syndicate, the Yakuza. Before walking by, Ted warned against taking photos, as the building (very obvious indeed on a traditional street) and fancy cars are watched by surveillance cameras.  Across the street, we stood outside of  the original headquarters of Nintendo.  Nintendo got its start making playing cards, popular with the crime syndicate.  The affiliation between the card game and gangs is so strong that when Ted announced that he wanted to play the game as a boy, he was scolded by his father for saying the name of it.

On the way to the Toyokuni shrine, we stopped for a piece of sesame rice wrapped in fried tofu, then a cup of tea and a sweet cookie.  The annoying couple whipped out a laminated piece of paper, written in Chinese, mind you, that explained she couldn’t have soy. The husband then asked if the sesame seeds inside the rice were the tofu. We were mortified.  There were Australians, Germans, even a Goth-y Canadian on the tour -- why did the jackasses have to be Americans?

At the shrine, dedicated to business and commerce, we saw a huge bell, rung by slamming  a large piece of timber into the side.  As with Fushimi Inari (also popular among businesses), there were several torii gates leading up to the shrine with the names of businesses painted on the back. We then walked along some pottery making factories that looked like houses from the outside and ended the tour near Kiyomuzi temple.

We ascended along the main street with shops, leading up to the temple.  The streets and the temple were packed full of gaijin and Japanese tourists, coming out to see the expansive views of Kyoto and sakura surrounding the temple.  When at the top of the temple, we couldn’t believe how far we had walked.  Kyoto Tower seemed so small from here.

This being our last night at Gion Hatanaka, they decided to stuff us full.  We started with the requisite pickled dish and sashimi, then we moved on to the shabu shabu.  In a large pot, you add vegetables (leeks, cabbage, mushroom, some noodles, etc.) to a boiling copper pot.  Then, you add thinly sliced cuts of beef and tofu to into the mix. Once cooked, you remove the meat plus some vegetables into dipping sauces (soy with ground daikon radish and baby green onions, or sesame sauce, in our case.)  Did we mention that we did all of this with chopsticks?  We all had difficulty, but Kelly seemed the most expert, especially with getting those slimy noodle out.  Don’t even get us started on the first round of tofu that was disintegrated in the pot.  We were stuffed after eating the meat and veggies.

When Hiromi showed up with tempura and asked us if we prefer rice or noodles, we were speechless.  “This is just ridiculous,” came out of Kelly’s mouth more than once.  The noodles were cooked in the copper pot and dipped in the sauces with the tempura. Fearful about whether or not we could handle any more, our hostess showed up with a huge mango over ice carved into small rectangles, still on the skin.  It was accompanied by some fruit we couldn’t identify, but that we agreed must be the best fruit ever created.

We thought about heading back over to Nijo Castle for the illumination, but we couldn’t move after finishing dinner.