Kyoto Shrines

We arrived in Kyoto yesterday after travelling over on the Shinkansen (bullet train). These trains are very comfortable and we made sure we picked up a customary Shinkansen bento box from the station. We got very excited when we thought we saw Mount Fuji but considering the low hanging clouds we were probably getting over excited about some bog standard workaday mountain, you know?

Additional notes from Grace: THE LEG ROOM. There was lots. And no football hooligans/ignorant business men talking loudly on phones.

Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan and still retains many historic buildings, as well as a vast number of sites of cultural significance. Among them are thousands of shrines and temples. We hired bikes from a total superstar in our apartment block and set off to see them ALL. (Grace – He was so happy to find out we were English, and seemed to overflow with excitement…)

Bikes were a very wise choice as it was boiling and we had miles to go. The first place we went to was Kitano Tenman Gu-a Shinto shrine dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane who was the first actual person in Japanese history to be enshirned as a deity. He is known, amongst many other things, as being ‘god of academics’ because he was a very talented poet. This means that many students come to pray here for help with their exams. The place was full of plums drying out in the sun. Apparently Sugawara no Michizane was into plum blossom in a big way when he was alive and every year in the spring there is a plum blossom festival. It would be nice to think that people would celebrate my favourite fruit, the humble tangerine every year after I die, but I suppose I will have to write some absolutely banging poems first. I think I would prefer just to eat a bag of tangerines.

 

Grace wistfully examines the votive tablets

We then thought we would mix it up and check out a load of Zen Buddhist Temples over at Daitoku Ji. There were lots of temples all in one complex. They all featured gardens that were done out in various styles associated with Zen Buddhism. The gardeners were working very hard to comb the pine trees or to cultivate the moss. It was an all-round very relaxing experience. It is free to walk around the complex and take in some of the gardens but it costs to go into the temples, to see the full gardens and to experience the tea ceremonies. We didn’t pay because we knew the tea wouldn’t be Yorkshire tea (truth: we were being tight).

The statue is of a Bake-Danuki (Racoon-Dog spirit) who are often portrayed with huge testicles.

 

The final shrine we visited was the Shimogamo Shrine which is dedicated to the veneration of Tamayori-hime and her father Kamo Taketsunomi. Apparently Tamayori-hime was impregnated by an arrow that floated down the river. Grace – Yeah. She was impregnated by an ‘arrow’. That’s what they all say. Not many people know that it is through a widespread program of river cleanups, by voluntary teams of arrow hunters all over Britain, that we have seen the teen pregnancy rate in the U.K fall in recent years.Well done guys. This place has huge torii gates and hundreds of painted lanterns.

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At lunch we stopped by the Imperial Palace park to visit the ponds and gardens. Before riding along the riverbank into the town centre. By this point we had seen loads of non-digital animals and here I will attempt to do some more ‘Zoology’ by describing some of them.We learned that the shaky-loud-bum-fly (See here) is an ascendended form of the hairy-underground-jumper (a bit like how Pikachu evolves from Pichu). They burst from their skins leaving behind a terrifying ghost to haunt the bushes.

The ‘wellhard-frisbee-men’ live in the pond in the imperial gardens

Many of the animals that we encountered on the river found it unethical that we chose to name them and so we asked them their names. The only one who consented to have his name recorded was this guy, who said his friends call him ‘Johnny long-neck’

In town we explored the Nishiki market which was full of many wonderful foods. Including fried sparrows on sticks, tiny octopus lollipops with quails eggs (how did they get there?), and cucumbers pickled in sake lees (the leftovers from the sake brewing process) that Grace said looked like turds. We had some unadventurous tofu, shrimp and lotus leaf dumplings and tempura battered onion and sweet potato.

Then we went out for some traditional ‘home-cooked style’ fare at a place called Ootoya as it pelted it down with rain. The meals were hearty, delicious and cheap!

There has been a sea-change in the world of the rice-ball. Over the last few days I have had none, choosing to move on to rice-ball shaped crackers to handle my addiction. Whilst Grace had one casually ‘just to try it’. The words of a forthcoming rice-ball addict about to embark on the slippery slope to addiction if ever I heard them.

Final note.

Our apartment is much bigger and we have a great view of Kyoto and the surrounding mountains.

Rice ball count: 1 (Grace)

Additional notes by Grace

Kyoto is very different to Tokyo. I would say it is the Oxford to Tokyo’s London. It is more pleasant to walk around the streets as they aren’t as crowded and intense, and it was lovely cycling around the maze of little streets yesterday. There are tons of shrines to explore – you could be here for weeks to see all of them. I think we got a bit ‘shrined out’ yesterday.