Unfortunately with language as a barrier, I wasn't sure if I would be buying orange juice or beer, and while a picture on a carton is worth a thousand words (or Kanji characters), I wasn't confident...much less understanding the yen numbers which aren't always written as I would recognize them. So we boarded our train, found our seat and settled in for what promised to be a fast ride.
Leaving Tokyo is like leaving any big city - factories, train yards, poor housing, and more industrial mish-mash. The whole area from Tokyo to Osaka is a large industrial hub so that while looking for quaint homes and fields of rape seed (as Daddy saw), we saw smoke stacks, factories and cranes. But suddenly....there was Fuji sticking up out of the smog: white capped, huge and as iconic as it could be....just like the advertisement on my bottle of Fuji Water which I sipped as we moved at 180 mph through the landscape. I was hoping for crystal blue skies and white snow, but hey....can't have it all.
Our arrival in Kyoto the capitol of Japan for over 1000 years left us feeling ambivalent. There is little charm inside any city train station with too many signs leading you hither and yon, too many people racing along with anxious faces trying to get to their destination, and all manner of quick-food stops and stalls. Through this somewhat chaotic scene we found our way to our hotel's concierge room (where forwarded luggage can be stored and uniformed concierges provide guidance to the semi-lost guests). We were guided graciously and efficiently to the shuttle bus stop and within minutes were swept up into the hills to our next 'port of call' - the Westin Miyako. This fairly new American-style hotel is in the same location as its predecessor of1928 but is otherwise a totally new structure.
And there was our forwarded luggage - amazing! Our room which looks pretty much like any Holiday Inn or Marriott was a bit of a come down after the Tokyo Station Hotel, but then so was the price. We settled in, found the bar, and that was that.
Monday dawned with bright sunny skies and warm temperatures, an immediate improvement over the previous day, and a sign of good things to come. In the lobby we met Matsui-san, a retired taxi driver and professional guide who would take us under his wing for the next four days in Kyoto. Thanks to a Peacham connection, this lively, be-speckled Japanese man was prepared to help us re-create the boys visit of 1928. I had forwarded the letters to him, explaining the goals of our trip, and he had taken it all to heart and throughout the day would quote descriptions from the original letters as he pointed things out to us in 2014. This level of care and attention gave us both a confidence that we were definitely in the hands of a pro.
Because Kyoto traffic can be quite congested, we three took a taxi to the start of what would be a wonderful day of long walks over hill and dale through wonderful sights. The start of our walk was through the large cemetery written about by the boys which forms the southern approach to the temple Kiyomizu-dera. Over 30,000 stele are built in groupings climbing up this small 'mountain'. We started at the bottom, and moved slowly to the top passing people tending family graves, maintenance workers cutting back weeds and tourists like ourselves gazing in awe. There is no attempt to beautify the area with trees or landscaping. It is simply a densely packed city of the dead made of granite or marble stele as far as the eye could see. We learned that each monument represented a family. On the stone is carved the main family name, and then individual names of the deceased - both their real names and an honorific name they were given at death which describes them. Below the monument are the cremated remains (Over 98% of Japanese are obliged to choose cremation as a space saving measure.) As in America, there were small attempts to beautify a monument with flowers, incense or small decoration, but the overall image was of a sea of gray stone.
At the crest of the hill we came to the entrance of the Kiyomizu Temple, one of the 1600 Buddhist temples in Kyoto. (There are also 400 shinto shrines). It was a sunny day and filled with tourists - mainly Asian. The platform/stage where one stood to look over the city dates to the year 700 and is built from long pieces of wood with cross braces - and no nails. We looked out and learned that the phrase in Japanese to: 'jump off the stage of Kyomizu' is similar to 'taking the plunge' in English. Like many Buddhist temples which we saw in China, there is an inner room where as a believer, one kneels, makes a prayer, and then rings a gong. There are also opportunities to buy one's paper fortune and if you don't like the answer, leave the small paper with the fortune tied to a wooden framework. One can also buy small wooden placards and make a wish. This being the year of the horse, there were many with the iconography of a horse on it. In all cases the temple is making money. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one can understand why. One gets a sense that the whole city is a huge religious shrine with tourists dotting the landscape to appreciate the beauty.
We walked thru the temple complex, wending our way towards the famous three-spouted fountain which leads from an endless water-fall above. It has never run out of water, and people take long handled scoops to get water from each of the three rivulets representing wisdom, longevity and beauty. Matsui San thought it proper that one take from one of the three, but in these times of greed people tried for all three at once. He was more upset by Chinese tourists who were unaware of correct behavior and were using the water to wash themselves rather than drink of the water. (There were other times when he seemed upset by tourists who didn't act correctly by either dropping trash, stamping out a cigarette on the ground and leaving it, or other forms of behavior which just aren't right. He has a sense of decorum which some tourists just aren't understanding.
At one point there was an opportunity for visitors to test their strength.There was a large steel pole which, were you strong enough could be lifted out of its post. The story is that at one point on a very important bridge of Kyoto there stood a very large muscular man who made you lift this pole. If you couldn't, he took your sword. Until one day, having accumulated over 900 swords, a small man approached and successfully lifted the pole. And the curse was broken. (I think I have the story right). Froggy and I tried and failed to lift the pole.
Having walked through lovely high gardens, which Herbert & Walter had mentioned in their letters, we slowly worked our way down through a long shopping street where vendors hoping to capture tourist revenues were selling everything from pickles and pottery to true chatchki. We stopped at a small spot for a cup of coffee and to rest our feet, which had been going up and down stairs and walk ways for over three hours at this point. I am glad we had our guide since almost no signage was in a language other than Japanese, and most of what we saw would have been lost on us had we not had our guide with us. Yes, one could clasp a guidebook and read as one went along, but having someone talking in your ear and pointing out the things to be appreciated made for a far more lasting experience.
We next walked through various streets and alleys which have been designated as special historic sites which means the buildings are true to the old forms of structures typical of Kyoto, and all telephone and power lines are hidden from view so that one can get a sense of what the city must have been like in the 'old' days. This is the place from which "Memoirs of a Geisha" is based, and we were shown the various tea houses, walk-ways and streams that play a part in this novel. It is now a popular tourist attraction to rent a full Geisha outfit - including the wooden geta, and to walk through the town for a few hours feeling like a Geisha. There are other places that will paint you to look like a Geisha,... but as Matsui-san said, there is no hiding the fake from the real. The real Geisha has a beauty and grace that no clunky tourist can begin to mimic. But there were sure a lot of wanna-bees everywhere taking pictures and looking somewhat self-conscious.
Our last serious walking tour was to go through a lovely series of gardens - first up, up, up, and then down, down down. We saw the biggest Buddhist bell weighing 76 tons, and which was called 'Big Daddy' by our guide. It takes 18+ people to force the large clapper to strike the bell, and the head priest would be the leader to attempt this feat. Now it is simply a memory sitting at the top of one of the hills. Everywhere that we walked Matsui-san would point out where the boys had stood, or commented or walked. It truly felt that we were walking in their footsteps, with a few hundred extra tourists along the way, and as I look back at the black and white pictures I realize where they were and what they were trying to capture. The whole of Kyoto when walking amidst the gardens and shrines is a peaceful, unique spot.
We are visiting at the same time of the year in which they were here, and like then, the cherry blossoms are quickly waning but retain a beauty one has to photograph. Wherever there was a tree with blossoms there was someone taking a photograph (including the writer of this blog). While neither Bob or myself are spiritually interested in the sites we were visiting, one couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of the setting and the calm and serenity which was trying to be being captured. One could imagine many monks in days of yore, going through their daily rituals throughout the town. There are still begging monks (wearing big round bamboo 'hats') and young acolytes practicing to be monks, but it is a fading image amidst the hoards of tourists snapping pictures, eating pickles and buying memorabilia. It isn't Disneyland but it is a tourist magnet.
As our legs became weary, and our brains stopped absorbing data, we walked through shopping streets, past the shopping area - Gion - where one had to watch for Geisha, shop keepers, tourists and traffic. At this point we were ready to call it a day, so we hopped in a cab, headed back to the hotel and collapsed with the hotel's full 'high tea', which was so complete it became our evening meal. . A very full first day in Kyoto.
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