Searching for Zen Moments in Kyoto

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Wednesday we left Osaka for Kyoto on the slow train. (At $5 for the thirty-minute local train ride it was way better on our budget than almost $100 for a ten-minute ride on an express.) We spent the rest of the day wandering around our hotel located in the Gion district. We came specifically to see the Gion Matsuri, one of the biggest festivals in Japan.

Last time we were in Kyoto we stayed in a different neighborhood. This time, we are right next to the Yasaka Shrine in Gion at the Hotel Sunline Kyoto Gion Shijyo. It’s the perfect location! Past the hotel there are numerous shrines, old gardens, and beautifully restored villas and buildings as well as all the little stores and restaurants that make up the Gion district. Thumbs up to this hotel.

Thursday we headed to a new destination we’d never seen before: the Bamboo Forest of the Arashiyama district.

After a quick train ride from Kyoto station we got off at the Saga-Arashiyama train station. Following the signs and the crowds we headed to the grove of bamboo. 

It was amazing. We stopped to admire the green oasis and to absorb a rush of serenity from the coolness and sound of the rustling leaves. After this moment of zen, we soldiered on through the bamboo respite and on down the road, entering the heat once again.

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Our next stop was the cottage of the poet Mukai Kyorai from the late 1600s, called Rakushisha. It is a pretty little spot. The cottage has been renovated and one can still see the ancient kitchen facilities complete with a well right inside the room. It is not a kitchen of convenience and it made me want to run home and hug my microwave.

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We picked up a map from the woman at the cottage because there are lots of country roads to wander down and we had a goal in mind of course, and we were going to need help to find it.

Along the path, we ran into lots of little artisan shops, and shops selling gifts and snacks, along with a few restaurants, and of course, vending machines.

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It’s advised to keep an eye out for rickshaws-they can be a blast from the past that could ruin one’s day if they run into you.

As I mentioned, there are lots of shrines along the way, but we didn’t stop at too many because we were headed to the Buddhist shrine Adashino-Nenbutsu-ji. It’s one of the larger ones and is famous for its 8,000 pauper graves. It’s a beautiful place and features its own bamboo grove, and its own brand of serenity.

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After walking around here for a while we decided to head back.

By the time we had made it to the bamboo forest around 2pm or so, there were lots more people around and it was a whole lot hotter.

Returning to the main area of crowds, we decided to stop and check out a bit of the Tenryuji Temple area. We opted just to take a few photos of the outside and then hightailed it back to the JR. I fear we have reached the saturation point of beautiful gardens and shrines (oh no, not another shrine)!

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We may have returned overly heated once again, but the walk was filled with so many beautiful things. It was definitely worth it and we found zen in many shapes and in so many places!

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Finding Brilliant Golds, Blues and Reds in Kyoto

Friday, July 22, 2016

Friday was another hot and intensely bright day—and the perfect day to head to the Golden Pavilion. Kinkaku-ji, officially named Rokuon-ji, is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto. It is also known as the Golden Pavilion and is one of the most popular buildings in Japan. Which makes sense when one sees it—as it is indeed very gold!

The last time we were there in 2010 it was raining. It was also a bit confusing to get to on the bus. There was nothing in English to let us know where we were while on the bus. This time, the Japanese transportation people have made it much easier. We just had to follow the signs at the Kyoto station for the bus going to Kinkaku-ji. They even color-coded the bus routes and added English names! (See examples.)

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We entered through the back of the bus (and paid when exiting). We simply had to listen for the announcement of our destination—in English. The bus reader also shows what the next stop will be— in English! It was so much easier this time around! Yay!

Upon exiting the bus we followed the signs up the small hill and across the street to the entrance and followed the crowd to the entrance gates. There weren’t any apparent signs directing us to the exact entrance, but when in doubt, follow the crowds is my motto, and we found our way easily.

After paying the 400yen, and entering into the shrine area, the park directs everyone to follow the path in one direction—so there really is no getting lost.

The Pavilion was so beautiful and shiny in the bright, hot sunshine! We might have been melting this time around at the Golden Pavilion but the intensity of the sun sure made for bright, blue skies and a pretty intense gold in the pictures!

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We walked past the Pavilion, posed to take some pictures and selfies, walked alongside the pond to get pictures from all sides (of the building and garden, not of us). We then started back with the crowds, stopping at one of the gift shops on property where I picked up a sunglass case covered in pretty Japanese silk, then for an icee at a refreshment stand, then out the gates.

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There are a lot of gift shops in the area but we are shopped out, so we ignored them all and just jumped back on the bus.

Later that evening we wandered around the Gion district. It really is a great part of Kyoto to stay. There are stores for shopping, and bars and restaurants to try, and shrines to add some historic charm.

The main streets of Gion were lit with red lanterns celebrating the Gion Matusuri, which we had come to see. It was pretty and fun to simply wander around.

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And after a day spent in the heat, and tasty food and drinks at Kirin City Bar, we were ready to call it a day.

 

Climbing a National Treasure: Himeji Castle

Monday, July 18, 2016

After recuperating from our long, hot trip to Rabbit Island the day before, we had one more significantly easier day trip from Osaka to do. It was to Himeji Castle.

We took a local train to Himeji from Shin-Osaka for about $16ow and in less than two hours we were there.

Arriving at the station one can see the castle in the distance looking very imposing indeed.

Once exiting the train station, it’s a very easy walk to get to the castle. Either walk up the broad avenue towards the castle, take a bus, a cab if you’re lazy, or do what we did: walk through the covered shopping area that is parallel to the main drag keeping in the shade most of the way. It’s about a twenty-minute walk or so and when it’s 90plus, it’s good to escape the sun for that time.

Exiting the covered walkway, we then had to walk a block or so, cross a busy street, and then follow the crowds to the front of the castle entrance. By the time we arrived at the entrance to the castle we were sweating, and hoped for coolness inside the building.

There are two options available for entrance: either 1000yen (about $10) for the castle only, or for 1400yen (about $14) one can see the gardens to the left of the castle as well. We opted for the garden/castle combo because I had read that the gardens were beautiful and for $4 I wasn’t going to miss them.

Entering the castle entrance, there are some great photo ops for awesome shots but very little shade.

Once entering the structure of the castle itself, everyone must remove their shoes and carry them for the remainder of the visit. And by ‘Visit’ I mean a climb of five or six stories on wooden stairs that get narrower and steeper as one reaches the top.

There is really nothing to see except the view from the windows. There is an app available that one can download and which I believe provides some historical information. We didn’t do that, though. So basically we just followed the crowd up to the top and then followed them back down to the bottom.

Luckily, inside the castle it was cool-ish and there was a lovely breeze that came in through the open windows the higher we went. Thank god.

This is not a place for people suffering from claustrophobia or the inability to climb up six flights of very narrow stairs.

But everyone who gets to the top wins a prize! Not really.

 

But it does provide some beautiful views.

After exiting the castle grounds, we walked along the moat to the left side of the castle and entered the gardens.

 

They were beautiful and offered some respite from the horrible heat and definitely worth a visit.

 

After walking around here, we wandered across the street for a cold beer and then slowly walked back to the station.

We decided to wait an hour or so until it got dark to see the castle lit up before heading back to Osaka.

 

It slowly turned a different color. And then we headed home—fried from the heat.

This was a day trip I suggest anyone in Osaka take.

If You Suffer From Leporiphobia, You Can Disregard This Post

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Leporiphobia is the fear of rabbits. Okunoshima Island is a place to avoid if one suffers from this phobia. It’s a small island located in the Inland Sea of Japan in the city of Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture and is a national park accessible by ferry from the ports of Tadanoumi or Ōmishima. The island’s nickname is Rabbit Island.

The island is very small and is home to over 700 rabbits (we learned from the announcement made by the captain of the ferry boat over the loudspeaker on the approach to the island).

One can access Rabbit Island on a daytrip. We took the train from Shin-Osaka to Mihara (transferring along the way). From Mihara, we took the local Kure Train (we just followed the signs for the Kure at Mihara) to Tadanoumi.  After arriving at the Tadanoumi station, we exited the train station and followed the crowd, heading to the right. At the corner, there was a sign directing us to again turn right to the Tadanoumi Port. It took us about fifteen minutes or so walking to arrive at the port itself.

Once at the port, we got in line to purchase the 300yen ferry tickets (about $3 each way for adults), and also some bunny food, as they don’t sell the food on the island.

We waited quite awhile for the ferry as there were some departures suspended due to boat maintenance. From what we could tell, they weren’t really adhering to any schedule though, so we just stood and waited. At this point, there was nothing else we could do.

The day was really hot and by the time we reached the island it was early afternoon and the bunnies were either really burned out on rabbit snacks or they were just plain worn out because we did not get the exited bunny turnout we had expected. I’ve seen pictures of people covered by rabbits, but we never seemed to get more than four or five bunnies at one time. I guess you just need to sit down on the ground, cover yourself with rabbit snacks, and be patient. If that is your thing.

 

 

I thought the rabbits looked a bit mangy looking upon closer inspection though, and did not want to catch bubonic plague, so I kept a respectful distance and didn’t care that we were ignored by the majority. 

 

It was fun to see so many bunnies everywhere though.

 

We did not come only for the bunnies, however. We also came to see the island’s much darker-themed museum.

A small two-room museum was built in the late 80s to commemorate the island’s historical importance and to teach the ‘meaninglessness of war’ according to its brochure.

In the late 20s the island was used as a secret poisonous gas factory. The island was so secretive that it was left off of many maps of that time period and the few residents of the island and its workers were not even told what they were working on, and suffered much because of the poor conditions.

The museum features examples of the poorly made haz-mat rubber suits the workers wore, as well as pictures of the diseases they suffered from exposure to the gases. While much of the museum pieces are in Japanese only, there are some English translations as well as an English version of the brochure.

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The museum is located across the street from the Visitor’s Center and can be reached either by jumping on the free hotel shuttle bus located at Pier 2 where the ferry stops, and getting off at the Visitor’s Center—or by walking 15-20 minutes or so up the road to the left from this pier (there are two piers on the island about a 15-minutes walk apart) . 

The free hotel bus picks up at the pier, drives past the Visitor’s Center and Musem and stops at the hotel. That is the route. We kept riding past the museum, thinking it was somewhere else. It’s not.

It took about ten minutes to see the museum contents.

Besides the museum, the island has a hotel, a six-hole golf course and a small camping ground. It’s a pretty place and the water looks clear—though I didn’t see anyone swimming.

I’m glad we went to the island since it’s something I’d wanted to see, but after visiting it, I don’t know that I can recommend the time and expense to do it. Unless maybe you really love rabbits. Even mangy looking ones.

But make sure to leave all bunny memories behind.

 

 

It Just Gets Better in the Dark at the Tanabata

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Yesterday was the final day of the three-day Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata and since it’s the biggest in our region of Japan and in its 66th year, we decided to make the hour-and-a-half, approximately $14ow trip out to Hiratsuka to see it.

Being we weren’t really sure what we were going to see, we wanted to make sure it was either the biggest or the oldest or the best of whatever a Tanabata is.

I found this July 4, 2016 description written by Tiffany (so it must be true) on the TokyoCheapo website:

“Tanabata is a celebration of the meeting of two legendary star-crossed lovers, the cowherd Hikoboshi and weaver girl Orihime. It is usually celebrated on July 7th, but different areas or regions have different dates to celebrate it. Generally, festivities, which entail writing wishes on strips of paper and tying them to trees (or bamboo strips), take place between July and August.”

Because there was a limited amount of info provided in English, and from the pictures on the website, we gleaned it was like a street festival for locals. There are music groups (though we didn’t see any), and those big, weird-looking creatures with a person inside to pose for pictures with, sometimes parades (which we also didn’t see), and food booths. This Tanabata according to their website also had dinosaurs, for some reason, which we also didn’t see.

We based our trip on a photo of brightly lit-up things that looked like balloons or floats or something equally big and festive. Nothing like spending your energy, time, and money going out to see something that you weren’t really clear on.

What we DID see once we got there was lots of men and women wearing the traditional kimonos, as well as little kids looking especially adorable.

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There were colorful streamers and paper decorations along and across the main streets all around the northern section from the train station. Just follow the crowd.

So pretty.

And it got even more beautiful in the evening. Seeing these at night made it all worthwhile.

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Though this was our first—and I still am not quite sure what a Tanabata is exactly for—it WAS colorful and it was packed with people like Times Square in the summer.

But unlike Times Square, it was worth the time and expense to see this interesting slice of life in Japan.

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Thursday, July 7, 2016

As our time is winding down in Tokyo we are in a mad dash to see those things that are still on our list of must-sees.

Thursday’s event was a trip to the CupNoodles Museum out in Yokohama. There is also one in Osaka but since I’d never been to Yokohama either, I decided to kill two birds with one Cup of Noodles.

We transferred at Shinjuku for the express train headed for Minatomirai and about 45 minutes later we were there at their very fancy train station/shopping center. Following the signs for Queen’s Square we stopped and asked at the Info desk on the top level where to go. Whipping out a map, the young girl drew it out for us and pointed us out the door into the 90⁺degree (Fahrenheit) day. Ugh.

Exiting the A/C we were thrown into an area that looked very much like Odaiba—fun, family-oriented-theme-park-type stuff. We headed for the huge ferris wheel, and across the bridge next to it. About five minutes or so further down the wide thoroughfare we spied the very uninteresting looking building of the CupNoodles Museum on the other side of the four lanes of roadway. I’m guessing it’s usually much busier than it was on this hot Thursday afternoon because none of the rides were going, the amusement areas were all closed and there were very few cars on all of these big streets.

Anyway, we made a dash for the museum in hopes of finding A/C again.

Admission is 500yen per adult. I think this buys you admittance to see a museum of sorts but we didn’t go to it. I understand it’s mostly in Japanese. Besides we were there for one thing only. The making of our own personal Cup of Noodles! This requires a reservation as it sells out I understand. We were able to score space at the 2pm opening—which meant we had about ten minutes to get upstairs to the 3^rd floor Ramen- and Cup-of-Noodle-making area. There are also Ramen making classes (cost extra and reservations are also required), but we weren’t interested in those.

First there was this unforeseen stop.

Then we headed up to the 3^rd floor. For 300yen, you get a cup out of a vending machine.

Then after a quick explanation, and the handing over of the plastic lid, you are seated at tables and you can decorate them however you desire. The only requirements are no coloring beyond the red line or on the bottom or top of the cup.

It was like kindergarten art time!

Mine featured the words “Eat Me” and a Godzilla blowing fire on Tokyo!

When we were done, we went up to the soup ingredient assembly line. Handing over our cup to the nice lady, she put our cup on the noodle adding machine and allowed us to turn the handle the required 6 times to send it around the wheel and get the noodles dropped into the cup.

Then our cup was passed to the nice, smiling man who took our order for the soup flavor (I chose tomato and The Professor chose original), and then four dried ingredients. Me: green onions, egg, something green-which I think was seaweed, and corn. The Professor: pork bits, shrimp, garlic, and onions. We have one month to eat them if we decide to. The Professor says he’s not planning on eating his, but I’m not decided yet.

After choosing our ingredients, and stopping to let us photograph the ingredients, the nice man passed our cups with the lid now snapped on to the next nice lady, who showed us how she shrinkwrapped our cupofnoodles. After it shot out into the official CupNoodles Receiving Area we were instructed to take the cup to the packing area.

The packing area is where you stick it in a plastic bag thing, blow it up by hand pumping, then tie a lovely red string to it for carrying purposes.

Then voila: we were immediately the proud owners of our very own carefully constructed cupofnoodles that is safely sealed, packed, and ready to go. All for less than $3.00US!!

We made a quick stop outside their restaurant area for this quick photo op.

I then went to the gift shop and bought a soon-to-be magnet of a small Cup of Noodles. For my 100yen, I got an amazing bag covered in words of wisdom and inspiration that cost way more than the 100yen I spent on my goofy souvenir. 

Everything was class and designed to bring joy at this weird little museum, right down to the philosophic words on my gift bag (see full text below). It opens with ‘there is no such things as “too late” in life’ (okay, well the grammar is a bit off, but it’s the message of inspiration I Iiked). It goes on to express how tenacity is the breeding ground for inspiration, how one should develop the habit of thinking up new ideas day and night and to never fall into complacence, and ends with the belief that the origin of all activities of human kind is related to food and that “human beings are noodle beings”.

All of that wisdom, career development, and life-living direction on a simple shopping bag. That was the best 100yen I ever spent. Whoa, mind blown!

Thank you Momofuku Ando (the man himself, who invented this empire) for providing some inexpensive fun in an often dark world. (If this were Disney, we’d have had to fork out a whole lot more money for all this fun! And I wouldn’t have gotten the free life advice either.)

Only in Japan, my friends, only in Japan!