July 5th (Day 9)
More Kyoto and traveling to Nara
Akira and I got up relatively early and left to take pictures and have breakfast. Shamara decided to stay behind and take a bath but there was some miscommunication and she expected us to come back to take her to breakfast instead of just going without her.
The rain killed most of our opportunities for taking pictures so we wandered down to the restaurant for breakfast. The hotel restaurant was ultra fancy and we were dressed as tourists wearing shorts and carrying cameras. We had the breakfast buffet (normally $24 but we had a voucher) and I stuffed myself silly. Akira was in raptures over their coffee and I really liked the tea. They had trays with Western food as well as Japanese. The japanese trays were filled with strange processed cubes of food, entire fish with charred heads, and uncertain vegetables.
Make absolutely sure you do things in the right order!
The famous fabric store
After breakfast we drove to a famous fabric store in Kyoto where they make their own fabric and do fashion shows. We were following the new plan of taking it slower today which was unfortunate because I thought we spent way too much time at this store. There were some interesting looms that used cards containing punched holes to determined the patterns printed on the fabric. As you pumped up and down on the pedals of the loom, hooks near the top of the device would catch on the punched cards and lift different groups of thread. Each group of threads had an associated shuttle with a different color of thread. When the machine lifted the leftmost threads you would pass through the red shuttle, when it raised the middle you would use the black and etc. After using the shuttles, the machine would lift all the threads and you could put down the main weave. The woman working the loom was also putting a golden thread in for each row which gave the fabric a subtle sheen.
Right next to this setup was a man punching out the cardboard cards with the pattern. He was taking an artists painting that had been mapped onto a grid and typing out the pattern of holes using a keyboard and stomping on a pedal. Other women were in the process of setting up other looms and the whole process seemed pretty complicated. They also had models showing how they harvested silk from the worms and spun it into thread.
The woman working the loom gave us some statistics concerning how long it took to produce a piece of fabric from an artists painting and it was some gigantic amount of time. I don't remember the details because the shimmering haze of boredom was beginning to cloud my vision and cotton my ears. The rest of the two level store consisted of really expensive ties, purses, wallets, and $100 t-shirts. They had a kimono fashion show on a stage set up on the lower floor - even this novelty failing to stir my interest.
The crazy complex loom
"Montebori" This piano type machine makes the punch cards (33cm X 4.5cm) by punching holes which translate to instructions on which threads (warps?) to pull up for the pattern. However, there is a grave concern for finding successor of this art and that is the reason for this demonstration. Hiroko Fujiwara (A certified Nishijin-ori master. Nishijin-ori is this type of weaving.) 5 ladies tending to Shamara's purchase
- The cards working their way through the loom (10.4MB)
- Woman setting thread into the loom (27.9MB)
- Working the loom (19.8MB)
Akira was fascinated with the ties and spent a long time talking with a tie salesman. I was done with the store by this time and was standing at the balcony overlooking the lower floor. Shamara mentioned that I looked bored to M and she came up to me and asked me "Are you boring?" I replied "yes."
During the drive away from the fabric store we drove through some relatively rural country surrounded by rice fields. I inadvertently startled the driver when I looked out the window and saw a bird I had never seen before standing by the edge of the road where we were stopped. It was an egret with a orangish feathery cap trailing off to a white body. We pulled away before I could take a picture. Later I looked it up in a bird book and found it was an indian cattle egret. Even though I dropped everything to grab my camera, I wasn't fast enough to get a picture. It was standing in a ditch right next to the car and a picture would have turned out really nice.
Kiyomizudera temple in the forest
The drive away from the fabric store took us towards the foothills with our driver chatting constantly and M nodding off. After parking (and inadvertently splashing another taxi driver when he drove through a puddle - "it's ok", he explained "I know him") we walked up a narrow uphill street lined with shops to a temple built on the side of a cliff. This was my favorite temple area of the trip.
All Japanese girls have to display the peace sign when taking pictures We saw these statues of racoons(?) with giant testicles everywhere.
$880 for a bowl Walking up to Kiyomizudera temple
Fire hydrant A sign on left in red letters says "We have the world's hottest chili pepper"
"Sanneizaka" is the name of this slope. The middle character says "Na". "Saka" means slope.
One side of the main temple was propped up with an elaborate and very very heavy duty lattice of ~206 pillars. Our guide told us seven people had fallen off the balcony in the past and only three survived - some of them were pushed.
Some of the temple buildings were painted their original color (bright orange) and others had been left alone and were brown with age; the color having almost faded away entirely. The whole complex seemed to spring out of the forest and was really pretty. From the balcony you could see another building sticking up through the trees in the distance.
Tour guide
The obi that Hiroko Fujisawa is weaving
Drinking fountain
Supports for the giant temple
Another temple in the distance
'Ema' - You write your wish on one of these and leave it there
Iron shoes worn by an especially strong monk
Cut tongue cafe
Life-lengthening slope (sign says no smoking on temple property) Kame = turtle You can walk underground in complete darkness. It's supposed to be inside Buddha's stomach. You will come to a spot where you see a Sanskrit character that means "stomach" (glowing in the dark or lit up or something). You turn the stone and pray. You proceed and come out and be born again. This says "Kiyomizudera". Kiyo means clear. Mizu is water. Tera is temple.
In the main temple our driver coerced me to go through a ceremony to ring a bell. The large bell was resting upside down on a pillow and had a wooden knocker half wrapped in fabric nearby. The ceremony was to sit on your knees in front of the bell, bow with palms together, strike it with the gong and then bow again. I wanted to wack it harder.
During our visit it started to rain and our host whipped out umbrellas. My camera, which had been having software problems the entire trip was especially bad. It would shut off when I tried to take a picture then fail to turn on again afterwards. I had been reviving it from this broken state by taking the batteries out and waiting several minutes for the electronics to reset. This day however it started crashing over and over again and then stopped working altogether. It was really frustrating to be unable to take pictures of some of the things I saw. After leaving the temple area, we stopped at a corner store to buy more batteries but it didn't help. For a short time I borrowed my sisters camera (a kodak) but it sucked and I settled on just asking A to take pictures of various things. Eventually he just lent me his camera altogether.
While using it we discussed it's features and how much it cost and I decided I would buy one just like it the next time we saw a camera shop. We asked our driver about nearby camera shops in Kyoto but he said there were none nearby (or he couldn't be bothered to drive to one).
At the base of the cliff below the temple was a fountain arranged so water poured from three channels over a small landing into a pool. They said a drinker from one of these fountains would gain intelligence, romance, or longevity depending on which stream they tried. Our group decided I needed romance so I went down to get a drink. The water pours out of stone channels that jut out overhead from the place where you stand. You collected water with long aluminum poles with cups on the end. They were stuck into a UV sterilizer when not in use. The water tasted fine but I haven't noticed any results yet.
From left to right: intelligence, romance, longevity
It wasn't raining continuously - we would typically get a light 5-10min shower after which the humidity would spike and it seemed to get even hotter. We were literally pouring sweat (probably leaving trails on the ground) and entering an air-conditioned building was like heaven.
Wasting time at a vertical mall
After the cliff temple we drove to a large building organized as a vertical mall filled with a variety of shops containing touristy goods. The mall was interesting and we unintentionally ended up spending so much time browsing we missed out on going to see the temple with 1001 golden Buddhas. Although missing out on seeing the army of golden buddhas was a disappointment, they didn't allow picture taking so it was probably just as well. During our time shopping at the store I learned another unwritten rule of Japan. You can't buy display items in a shop. When you've decided to purchase something you find someone working there and point to the item on display. They will then go and find a gift-wrapped box somewhere else.
On the floor with all the artwork was a store worker that was frowning at me as I took photographs of the artwork Ha ha! now I'll reproduce these drawings at home and open a shop nearby to steal business from him!
It spells a character "joy"
The little writing starts "Sucking her breast, from behind."
On a related note, most restaurants have window displays with fake replicas of the food they serve. It was convenient to wander through the food court and see exactly what you could eat at a particular place. There was much discussion concerning who created these models and how they did all the effects. Beers had bubbles and a frothy top, rice was fluffy and you could make out individual grains. We saw fake hot-dogs but they seemed shrunken and a little dehydrated which led me to suspect they either copied an imperfect source or actually plasticized a real sample. These displays were ubiquitous throughout Japan and we wondered if there was a single factory somewhere with an assembly line churning these things out.
10 yen coin temple
We had time to visit one more temple before our drive out to Nara and this one turned out to be famous as the one featured on the 10 yen coin. After visiting the temple in the forest I didn't think this one was particularity interesting or pretty. There were several large school groups visiting when we arrived. I borrowed A's camera several times.
Following the path around the temple led to a small museum. There were signs posted prohibiting photographs. It contained some elaborately carved wooden statues of gods riding clouds (attendants to Buddha) and exited into a souvenir shop where you could buy overpriced postcards of what you'd just seen.
Matcha ice cream
The space above the small lake in front of the temple was aswarm with dragonflies and the surface often surged with coy gulping air or motoring around with their dorsal fins above the surface.
A meeting of two rivers and green tea ice cream
Just outside the temple was a walkway lined with paper lanterns along the conflux of two rivers with the horizon covered in forest. I took lots of pictures of the scenery. There was a cage filled with cormorants used for fishing. The method for fishing with cormorants, as far as I can tell, is to tie strings around their neck so they can't swallow and around their legs to keep them near the boat. You go out at night and hold a pot filled with flaming wood near the surface of the water. The light from the fire attracts fish that are scooped up by the birds. Then it's only necessary to reel the birds in and take the fish from their mouths.
Getting green tea ice-cream Another giant testicled raccoon(?)
Meeting of two rivers
The cormorant cage
It was beginning to get late and after having a green tea ice cream we drove the 20km south to Nara. Along the way we had to pay a $6 toll. Earlier, while driving to Joyful Honda we had to pay a $3 toll. I'm not sure if this is meant to encourage people to use mass transit but it is annoying. Akira told a story about his cousin driving to a lake to go water skiing. The trip was relatively long and by the time he arrived he had paid about $100 in tolls. He had to pay $100 on the way back again.
Kyoto is nestled in a mountainous area and Nara is the same. I would hesitate to call it rural, there were still large cluttered neon shopping areas and an overpopulated downtown. Like Kyoto it was dripping with cultural landmarks.
Our taxi driver "Yasuo Hashimoto" of Hashimoto taxi company. You see his "kin no unko" (golden poop)
It was late when we arrived and we drove directly to the Nara hotel. Where the Kyoto Granvia hotel was all modern structures and lines, the nara hotel was built beside a lake and looks like an ancient castle. Inside it looks like a haunted house. The ceilings are high, the carpet is thick, and the walls are coated with patterned fabric and wainscotting. All the furniture is made from wood and looks antique. I don't even want to know how much M paid for us to stay there. On arrival, they asked if we wanted two rooms or three. I didn't have a problem sharing a room with S and A but when I discovered it was the same price either way I chose to have my own room.
In addition to several bags of tea, there was a hot water in an electric kettle waiting in the rooms. Each guest got three bags of green tea and two other packages of what I first thought was sugar. Akira pointed out it wasn't sugar but said he couldn't explain what it was. I asked him if it was tea and he said no. Finally unable to stand my questions, he opened a package and dumped it into a cup with hot water. It looked like salt or sugar crystals with small green bits coming out of the bag but didn't smell like anything in the cup. I took a sip and was completely surprised by the taste of seaweed filled saltwater.
We arrived at about 7:15 in the evening and while checking into the rooms asked the desk if ther were any camera shops in town. He said there was a big one, it closed at 8:00, and was a 15min walk away. Taking out a map he showed us how to get there. There wasn't much time so we ran out the door in, as it turns out, the completely wrong direction. Fortunately he realized how much of his instructions went over our heads and caught us as we were walking down the driveway. He asked another local going in our direction to accompany us part way. The way took us past a pond with a picturesque bridge, down a narrow alley to a narrow street filled with pedestrians and bikers, past a five story temple tower perched on a hill and lit from beneath by spotlights, past a reflecting lake surrounded by trees, and into the downtown district buzzing with bicycles and pedestrians and filled with confusing branched alleys glittering in neon complexity.
There was a small camera shop on the corner. Surprisingly it had the camera I wanted for a reasonable price ($100 less than the prices I saw in Tokyo) although the memory card and battery were priced 2-3x what I'd expect to pay here in the US. I bought the camera (a lumix FZ7), a 1GB memory card, and an extra battery for a total of 52,400 yen. As I made the purchase I was fervently hoping the menus on the camera were in english.
The batteries had to be charged before I could use the camera so I just plugged it in and went to bed. I woke up at 2am and saw from bed that the charger was done so I unplugged it and put in the other battery. Before going back to sleep, I inserted the charged battery into the camera (I had a hard time getting my sleepy brain to understand how to put it in) and turned it on to make sure it worked. It came up with a warning screen in Japanese. I definitely did not want to deal with it in the middle of the night so I turned it off and had bad dreams about writing down translations of the Japanese used in the menus so I could work my camera.
