Kyoto

  Kyoto, Japan
Thursday, July 5, 2007

Kyoto, Japan.  It's been over a month since Lyndsay and I left this place, but it still stands out in our minds as vividly as if we had only been there yesterday.
     Before we could even think about backpacking across southeast Asia, we had to find a home for our belongings for a month and a half.  There was no way we would be able to carry the 200 plus pounds of clothes and souvenirs we had accumulated during our year of teaching.  Luckily our friends Ian and Melissa volunteered their laundry room as storage while we were out having fun.  It took two fully loaded taxis to move our bags and even though Lyndsay and I were physically exhausted before we even left our adoptive home town, there was no way we were going to allow our legs to let us down so early in the trip. 
     The train ride to Seoul, and the flight to Osaka passed by like a dream.  Lyndsay and I were finally in Japan!  Lyndsay had taken several years of Japanese lessons in high school. A year in Korea, only about 200km from Japan, had so far seen no utility in all that learning.  Finally she could show off her stuff.  We needed to catch a train from Osaka to Kyoto, where we would be spending the next three nights.  Lyndsay proudly walked up to the counter of the train ticket kiosk, readied herself for a nice little conversation in Japanese, and before she could get a word out was met with a "Where would you like to go today?"  I was disappointed, but Lyndsay, being more diplomatic than myself, kept up her cheerful little smile, and when our tickets were ready, she managed to force an 'arigato gosaimasu' into the otherwise perfectly conjugated English conversation.
     Lyndsay did get to speak Japanese here and there during our stay, but to generalize, the Japanese are irritatingly fluent in English.
     Just as the sun was setting we arrived at our ryokan (a larger, Japanese version of what we would call a bed and breakfast).  We were greeted by an elderly woman who couldn't have been less than eighty years old.  She jerked our bags from my hands as I protested and nimbly climbed a steep staircase which led to our suite.  She gave us our key, told us the times for breakfast (in perfect English, of course) and let us unwind in peace.  
     We had a twelve tatami suite, very large by Japanese standards, with a private bathroom, and two walls of windows, one side overlooking a private zen garden, the other a small mountain stream.  I had no idea there were places in Japan so peaceful.  I always thought the country was concrete and asphalt coast-to-coast.  I was dead wrong.
     The next morning we awoke bright and early, we had fallen asleep almost immediately after our host had left us with the key, and the rising sun was an excellent alarm clock.  In the dining area there were about a dozen American summer exchange students, and us.  As their instructor dictated their days' schedule, Lyndsay proudly translated for me.  This helped us both choose some places to visit, and also choose times to go, or rather to not go.  It's not that I have something against american high school students, it's more like high school students in general.  The boys were dressed like clowns, scrawnier than Ichabod Crane, wearing clothes that would be baggy on Shaquille O'neal.  And the girls were either wearing enough makeup to paint the Sistine Chapel, or just enough cothes to cover up the parts that are illegal to have exposed in Japan.  Point is, kids are ridiculous, and I didn't want to hear the work 'like' on this vacation, unless it was for the purpose of simile.

06: Kinkakuji

    During our meal, the owner asked us where we would be travelling,  Lyndsay had decided on Kinkakuji (golden pavillion).  We asked how long it would take to walk, but our friend would hear nothing of it, and as soon as we had paid she hurried us out to her van and drove us. Along the way, Lyndsay finally managed to put her Japanese to good use.  The two struck up a pleasant conversation, and it was obvious that our host was impressed with Lyndsay's skill.
     As we got out of the van we walked up a long driveway lined with massive conifers and a lush ground cover of bright green moss.  It wasn't long before we were mobbed by perky Japanese school kids in matching uniforms, all eager to practice their English, and happily snapping photos of us while saluting the camera with the standard peace gesture that every asian under 30 is seen making in a picture.
     During the times we weren't staring down the lens of someone's Nikon, we were staring through the viewfinders of our own cameras.  Kinkakuji is an old aristocrats home.  At some point, for oppulences sake, he decided to have the entire two storey building covered in gold.  The building is surrounded by a reflecting pool with perfectly placed gnarly, sculpted conifers here and there.  At some point, and for some mysterious reason (perhaps bankrupted by a love for things covered in gold), the family ran out of money, and it was converted into a Buddhist monastery.  It now has a small staff of caretakers and monks, but is predominantly a Japanese heritage site.

10: More Chatty Students

     Once we left Kinkakuji, we walked to Ryoanji, another temple, but this one wasn't covered in any precious metals.  Instead its greatest attraction is a sand garden.

37: Lyn

Featuring seven stones, and painstakingly raked sand, it is symbollically representative of a tigress helping her cubs across a mountain stream.  To me it lookd like a really neat sandbox, but Lyndsay said I couldn't play in it, so we took some photos instead.  There was way more to Ryoanji than just a fancy sand pit, on the grounds we found many zen gardens, a skink, and a shrine housing some very old looking buddhas, all wearing bright red bibs.

29: Ryoanji

  There wasn't any lobster to be seen, but perhaps they'd already finished their dinner.
     After Ryoanji, we took a taxi to Ginkakuji (silver pavillion).  Made by the same people who made Kinkakuji, the biggest difference is the lack of shiny wall coverings.  Apparently the family ran out of money before they could coat the building in silver.  Lyndsay and I were leaving before I finally asked her where the bloody silver pavillion was.  She sighed and gave me the look that says "you're an idiot, but cute enough that I'll let you get away with it this time" and told me I'd been taking pictures of it for the past hour.

63: Ginkakuji

  Even though the silver pavillion lacked justification for its name, there were redeeming qualities.  This location had an even cooler sand pit!  Again I wasn't allowed to play in it, but I didn't mind.  This sand garden was overrun with wasps, all digging little egg chambers, or stealing other individuals holes and kicking out the old owners eggs in favour of their own.
     After we'd seen enough of the absence of silver, we walked down the philosophers walk, a famous walking trail that follows a carp filled creek through an older part of Kyoto.  The whole path is lined with quiet little shops and past temples whose names we never learned.  
     At the far end of the path, and a short taxi ride away, is Gion, home of Geisha. 

97: Maiko

We wandered the streets, snapping photos of unsuspecting geisha, maiko (geisha trainees), geisha wannabes, and modern geisha.  The modern geisha were the hardest to identify, but simply put are escorts who dress very well.  The wannabes were the most entertaining.  Many people go to Gion and buy or rent a geisha costume and wander the streets to get attention.  At one point I was busily following and photographing one bulky geisha who was having a terrible time with her shoes until Lyndsay nudged me in the ribs and told me it was a man.  As the sun went down the action slowed to a crawl.  The giesha were all busily involved in fancy dinner parties, the maiko were maiko-ing it up somewhere, and Lyndsay and I were tired, so we called it a night.