Nikko

The Nikko cedars are said to be over a thousand years old, in fact since the late seventh century. This area is a World Heritage Site. A few degrees cooler than Tokyo, elevated and much more quiet and still, the heritage area captures a completely removed ambience. Nikkō (日光市; "sunlight") is a city nestled in the mountains of Tochigi Prefecture in Japan. Located about 125km north of Tokyo. Nikko is most famous for the mausoleums of the Tokugawa shoguns, which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Nikko has been a sacred place since the 8th century, when a Buddhist hermitage was established here. Today, several shrines and temples are clustered in Nikko amid a magnificent forest of over 13,000 cedar trees. here we saw snake no.3, impertinently sitting on the Toshogu steps as people were walking past oblivious.

Kyoto Botanical Garden & Taisha Inari (Fox) shrine

Kyoto Botanical Garden on Friday 29 June was a humid stroll, only surpassed by the tropical glasshouse, enter a sauna, in which luscious jungle plants, many kinds of bromeliad, orchid, phalaenopsis and others, cacti, grew in regional plantations covering floor to ceiling suspensions. Outdoors, the garden had generous arrays of European plants like roses but also a bamboo garden (a bit small), maples and deciduous indigenous plants, a naturally growing Japanese section, strikingly coloured and varietal hydrangeas and my favourite, the elderly, refined bonzais.

We continued on to Fushimi Inari (fox) Taisha (Fushimi Inari Shrine), a Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari, the god of rice, sake, and prosperity. 'Fushimi' is the location to distinguish it from other Inari shrines. One of Kyoto's oldest (founded in 711 AD) and most revered Shinto shrines, Fushimi Inari serves as the headquarters for all the 40,000 shrines dedicated to Inari across Japan. Originally the god of rice, Inari now governs the modern equivalent: success and prosperity in business. Fushimi Inari Shrine draws thousands of businessmen and tradespeople seeking blessings for their enterprises, especially at the first prayers of the New Year. Fushimi Inari is noted for its 10,000 small torii (shrine gates) that arch over a long path up the hill behind the shrine. It takes about two hours to walk along the whole trail, and there are nice views of Kyoto from the top. Fushimi Inari Taisha is most notorious for these tunnels of red torii gates. Looking downhill, each torii is inscribed with a different message. These are the names of businesses and individuals who donated them, thankful for their prosperity, one of the most iconic visions of Kyoto.

Foxes are said to be the messengers of Inari, and stern bronze foxes (kitsune) can be seen throughout the shrine. Inari's foxes are generally considered helpful, but they have also been said to bewitch people. The keys that some of them hold in their mouths are for the rice granaries.

Subsequently we caught the shinkansen from Kyoto, yummy bento boxes from Isetan food court in hand, to Shinagawa. the food floor was a marvel in itself: marbelised wagyu beef for $31.50/100g, unimaginable varieties, weirdnesses and profundities in the fish department, unidentifiable other sea creatures and a feat of dumplings, skewers, every conceivable kind of sushi and sashimi and then some Japanese icons for traumatising foreign taste-buds, such as konyaku and natto, 27 kinds of seaweed!

Sagano Bamboo forest, lotus ponds and Arashiyama snow monkey park

On Thursday 28 June we caught a local train from Kyoto station to Arashiyama in the Sagano area. As well as being location of the famous Tenryu-ji temple complex and its associated very beautiful gardens, Sagano has a grove of interconnected bamboo.
It was very hot and humid, threatening to rain and overcast, but we wandered to the bamboo forest dodging mosquitoes while Dad admired the passing rickshaws, in which he finally ecured a ride from the bamboo forest down to the bridge crossing the River Oi while mum and I inspected the lotus garden of Tenryu-ji. Once again the monks or other gardeners had dedicated themselves to pruning trees into miniature and tamed formations and the gardens of monk's families (they are allowed to marry) line the path in to the temple itself, each garden a beauty of moss, maples, courtyard stones, pebbles, lanterns, and colourful plants. Last time I visited the lotus garden, it was alive with the bellow of very large frogs 'roaring' but this time it was silent. I am not sure why. The flowers expose their various phases revealing the lovely holey centre of the lotus flowers after petals drop off.

We ate lunch at a traditional soba restaurant that presented everything from buckwheat porridge-like 'appetizer'/filler to noodles in broth and even dessert derived from buckwheat. Soba are traditionally handmade buckwheat noodles, often eaten with Bonito flavoured dipping sauce hot or cold. This restaurant served everything soba - strange glutinous masses, desserts, dipped, dry, hot, cold, into soup, etc. It was rather too filling but delicious and probably even nutritious, overlooking the fast-slowing river with cormorants, cranes and humans fishing expectantly in its waters above the picturesque bridge.On the approach slope to Arashiyama Snow Monkey Park, the trees were trying to survive remarkable steepness, at times almost 75 degrees with giant maples and trees defying gravity to stay there, and a snake that slithered across our path (brown and shiny, almost elegant, if surprising) and falling rocks dislodged by athletic monkeys above. Quite hazardous.

The monkeys are generically called snow monkeys or Japanese Macaques. They are properly Macaque fuscata mainly living broad-leafed forests in Honshu, excluding Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Islands. Their average weight is M 12-15kgs, F 8-13kgs they mate Oct-Dec, have babies Apr-June, bearing one baby at a time after 173 days (precisely: they're Japanese afterall), and one year apart. They live in communities/troops. They are so-called snow monkeys because they happily habit to -10 degrees C. One way they deal with the cold in more Northern parts of Japan is to sit in steaming Onsen (natural spring-fed baths) during winter. It is a steep winding track up to the monkey's feeding hut at the top of the mountain so we were drenched by the time we arrived and appreciative of the ice-cold frozen towels given out and blasting fan! After brief acclimatisation in which tourists are confined to a cage while monkeys run around its outside bantering and screeching for snack of sweet potato or peanuts passed out through the wire grid, we are then allowed out onto the viewing platform overlooking Sagano basin, arun with monkeys playfully grooming one-another, perched in trees, looking for mischief, feeding or waiting. needless to say, whether because of their furriness or their resemblance to small humans and intelligence, they are incorrigibly cute. On our return, we saw fishermen with prosaic flexible (bamboo?) rods standing thigh-deep in the river hunting the seasonal sweet fish along with the cormorants, tamed versions of which were also used to hunt fish by night, attracted by light and chased by trained and skilled birds whose gullet is then squeezed to eliminate the fish instantly ready for human consumption!

Kiyomuzu-yaki, Kiyomizu-dera, tofu

on 29 June we caught a taxi to the South East of Kyoto, into the hills, to visit the pottery village of Kiyomizu-yaki or 'Kyo-maki' for short. The village pottery centre displayed representative works from various artisans whose workshops lined the streets in the vicinity, packed to the ceiling with rows of pots, tea bowls and vessels of all conceivable shapes and designs. Despite the label of Kyo-maki, I found it hard to make out the unifying feature, apart from district/geographical connection, the diversity of styles, glazing techniques, colour, glazing to painting to embossing and so forth seems to cover much ground and even different firing techniques, temperatures and clays.

On our way up the long steep hill climbing to nearby Kiyomizu-dera (Temple), we stopped in to a traditional tofu specialist restaurant. This delicious fare ranged from entree, main course to dessert in hot, cold, salad, savoury and sweet contexts. It was a different branch of the tofu restaurant I had encountered and liked very much on the Matsumae Study Tour so I was delighted that Mum and Dad could experience the same temple food and tasty local produce. Kyoto tofu is said to be a speciality and naturally Kyoto-ites claim that theirs is much nicer than the saltier tofu made in Tokyo! It involved tofu on skewers (barbequed), tofu in hot broth, tofu salad (cold), tofu with miso (fermented soy), tofu dessert with sesame flavour - oishii!

Kiyomizu-dera (Pure Water Temple) was founded in 780 AD and still functions as a temple associated with the Hosso sect of Japanese Buddhism. The present buildings date from 1633. Kiyomizu-dera's architecture has been imitated all over Japan. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The expression "to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu" is the Japanese equivalent of the English expression "to take the plunge." It is notable for its vast veranda, supported by hundreds of wooden pillars, that offers beautiful views of the city.

The Nishijin Textile weaving centre was holding a 'fashion show' of young flawless maidens prancing about gracefully and slowly in voluminous, extravagant kimonos woven, painted or embroidered in the Nishijin style. These were too glamorous for my taste: those sort of one-off, once in a life-time outfits that undoubtedly were worth a fortune. more fascinating were the artisans upstairs working physically hard to manoeuvre the looms through large ancient machinery of weaving, 100+ year old looms and a machine that fed through a punch-card pattern much like an ancient IBM computer or pianola operated by a dainty young lady whose full bodily force was required for the equivalent action to a 'carriage return'. sitting unperturbed in the sale floor, these people demonstrated the same methods that have been used for centuries to produce the ornate kimono fabrics in which Kyoto is the epicentre of the universe and at one time it was the ubiquitous garb. Still, a surprising number of women wear kimonos for daily life, dining, shopping, etc. despite its apparent delicacy.

Next we visited Aizan-kobo natural indigo dyeing in the home of Kenichi Utsuki. He was such a humble, modest, quietly-spoken and knowledgeable man. A true artisan, carrying on the tradition of his family over 3 generations in Kyoto. His family worked with the purely natural dye of the real indigo plant and its fermentation in traditional manner for weeks at a luke warm temperature to achieve the balance of fermentation (like wine making) and numerous dyeings of fabrics to achieve the dark eggplant purple/blue colour that Japan is famous for. In addition to blues, various purples, yellow, pink and green are achieved by varying the process and times and repetitions. Kenichi Utsuki is a true craftsmen and purveyor of antiquities, crafts and arts, appreciator of the carefully crafted Mingei with a collection of ceramics, paintings, objects and artefacts in his traditional Kyoto home that reflect his heritage and life-long commitment to the craft. The home itself is a beautiful centuries-old traditional Kyoto building with cedar/cypress floor timber, tatami and an enclosed courtyard garden. Now his son, Norito, continues the family dyeing tradition using Kyoto natural fabric pigmentation. Many quicker artificial methods have subsequently been invented but Kenichi maintains they don't have comparable longevity, quality or depth of colour. His indigo garments last more than twenty years - a fact I can try to test with the worker's jacket I bought to play shakuhachi in! Indigo has other intriguing characteristics, such as its non-flammability, hence it is used to make firemen's outfits in Japan, a fact he demonstrated by setting alight indigo dyed fabric which, indeed, didn't shrivel, melt or burn like synthetic fabrics. Another attribute is that it's said to deter insects, mosquitoes and serpents while working in the field or paper-eating parasites for important documents of nobility that were historical written on indigo parchment and successfully preserved for over a thousand years without deterioration. So far, I have not found it adequate for deterring snakes or mosquitoes but as he cunningly pointed out, it must be covering the area to work!

Kyoto Heian Shrine + Iris Garden, Philosopher's Walk

Kyoto's Heian Shrine and Iris Garden lies in the central east part of the Kyoto basin. An enormous red torii gate, the largest in Japan, welcomes you to the street leading up to the main gateway of this comparatively modern Shinto Shrine. Built in 1929, it is 24.2 meters high; the top rail is 33.9 meters long.

Heian Jingu (the Shrine itself) was built in 1895 to celebrate the 1100th anniversary of the establishment of Heian-kyo (the old name of Kyoto). The Shinto shrine honors two emperors: Kammu (737-806), who founded Kyoto in 794, and Komei (1831-66), the last emperor to live out his reign in Kyoto before the capital moved to Tokyo. There are three stroll gardens at Heian Jingu, positioned east, west, and north of the shrine itself. They follow the Heian aesthetic of focusing on a large pond, which is a rare feature at a Shinto shrine. The stepping-stone path that crosses the water is made from the pillars of a 16th-century bridge that spanned the Kamo-gawa before an earthquake destroyed it. Typical of gardens constructed during the Meiji Era, it is famous for its weeping cherry trees in spring, its irises and water lilies in summer, and its changing maple leaves in the autumn. Bright red Maple seed propellers in a sea of green stood out alarmingly and vividly striped turtles swam enthusiastically and voraciously in pursuit of the bread-crumbs people dropped off the decorative wooden bridge crossing the large lake/pond. The garden is a proliferation of tortured, trimmed, manicured, tamed, bandaged, bondaged(?), persuasively coiffeured trees, arching boughs and cloud-pruned globular formations, rich with dragonflies, unusual mosses and lively birds. Mum and Dad were particularly stoked by the size and dense foliage of the ginko trees that so exceeded anything they had seen before in Australia and especially our gangly little specimen harking from Wahroonga.

The next day, we followed the Philosopher's Walk (a path leading, in our case, North to South, at the foot of the Eastern Kyoto hills, lining a canal and dotted with temples and shrines for its length, many of them edging up the slopes and into the hillside jungle. The Philosopher's Walk is the name given to a 2km(+)-long path through north-eastern Kyoto, along which a philosophy professor from Kyoto University, Kitaro Nishida, used to frequently walk. All along the canal pathway were rows of vibrant hydrangeas, mostly blue and white with occasional pinks, puces and various tones beside the flowing water filled with giant carp pointed upstream. In spring it would be blossoming with the whites and pinks of the cherry and plum trees also lining its banks. First stop was Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion. Ginkakuji = silver Pavilion (whereas Ginkakuji = gold pavilion). 銀閣寺 (Ginkaku-ji) Constructed by Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa in the late fifteenth century, intended to be covered in silver leaf like the gold leaf covering of Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) but never completed as such. nonetheless it is one of the 5 key Buddhist temples in Kyoto, especially notable for its sand garden pictured here like waves of infinity. The temple features wooded grounds covered with a variety of mosses, and a Japanese garden, supposedly designed by the great landscape artist Soami. The rock and sand garden of Ginkaku-ji is particularly famous, and a pile of sand said to symbolize Mount Fuji has now come to be a part of the garden.

Further on, at Honen-in, we saw a poetry exhibition in the form of calligraphy on suspended scrolls in an annex to the temple in its lush, verdant mossy mosquito-ridden courtyards with raked sand spirals and dripping water from eaves of several-foot-thick straw. Nanzen-in housed the two-storey giant wooden gate and a remarkably eccentric aqueduct. In the temple garden we saw an all-red dragonfly (eyeballs included) and globs of slimy foam that could only have been frog's eggs hanging from various trees over the pond.

We then caught a taxi to the Traditional Craft Museum, Fereiakan that explains the processes behind many art and craft practices of the many elaborate yet habitually used and socially integrated handworks used by the Japanese, such as bamboo products, silk for koto strings, lacquer-ware, ceramic tiles for wealthy homes and temple roofs, paper lamps, woven, painted and embroidered kimono fabrics, arrow-making for archery, shirne building for homes, metal work, and incense, to name a few. On two successive nights in Gion, we ate cheerful kushiage and garlic gyoza (at Senmonten inn). We wandered through the lamp-lit streets of low, long wooden traditional houses in the former pleasure quarter looking for a glimpse of a maiko or geisha and listening for the twang of shamisen and voice. Dad was impressed by the splendid arrays of Phalaenopsis orchids in the flower shops for a meagre $150+ but spectacular nonetheless.