Notes from Kyoto

/ Kyoto / is a strange city. On one hand it's about as attractive as Parramatta (or worse, Bondi). On the other hand, the mountains that surround the city & temples found within it are profoundly beautiful. After arriving Sunday afternoon and spending the evening exploring the exceptionally cool rail station (think Melbourne's Federation Square to the power of a hundred) & drinking with a nice little international contingent (A Swede, a Yank, an Irish girl, a Glaswegian and myself), on Monday I set myself to finding the historical side of the city. Waking up late due to the drinks of the night before, myself & Gregor (the Glaswegian who I was out drinking with the night before) started walking east after being told that the action wasn't that far from the hostel. Then about an hour later, we reached it. The eastern side of Kyoto at least is remarkable for just how much there is there, you'll find a temple on nearly every second block. So we saw Gion, were I excitedly thought I saw a geisha, only to find out that it was a bunch of teenage girls who got made up as geisha at one of the local tourist attractions (damn you faux-geisha!).

Then we just kept wandering, passed through a few temples that ranged between interesting and astonishing & then in one of those brilliant travel surprise moments, ended up following a path into the hills on the outskirts of town that apparently has particular spiritual significance to Kyoto locals. So feeling somewhat of an intruder we followed the path into the mountains, surrounded by the forest, completely seperated from the city. There were small shrines along every twenty metres or so during the first half & the second half was punctuated by small graveyards. Altogether very serene, it was (like Nikko) a real pleasure to get that far away from the city. Unfortunately that trek distracted us long enough that we missed out on a couple of notable temples as they were closed by the time we got there. But somehow it didn't matter.

Tuesday was entirely the opposite experience. Whereas Monday the walk was the attraction over the temples, yesterday I felt that the journeys inbetween detracted from the overall experience. I grabbed a bike from the hostel & decided to make my way out to temples on the opposite side of town from each other. First was Fushimi Inari, which is notable for it's paths that lead up the mountains, guided the entire way by thousands of consecutive orange decorative gates less than a yard apart from each other. Whilst it wasn't as picturesque as I'd hoped it'd be after being told about it, it made a pleasant walk. Plus there was a cute gaggle of Japanese pre-school children (what is the plural for Japanese school children?), which was slightly less cool than the chanting Bhudda that Gregor found when he visited Fushimi, but cute nonetheless.

But leaving from Fushimi Inari to get to Nijo Castle (which was in the middle of the city) required riding for about seven kilometres through generally unattractive suburbia, past smelly rivers & crowded roads. Once I'd been around Nijo Castle (it was a cool castle, but no special stories to tell about it), it started raining. Hard. After a brief attempt at riding whilst holding an umbrella (I have no idea how the locals do it), I had two close calls with traffic on side streets & decided I'd much rather make it back to the hostel alive & saturated rather than lie maimed on the side of the road, relatively dry. Which meant a 4km ride through more boring/ugly sidestreets back to the hostel in the rain.

After a shower & change of clothes I decided not to let the weather beat me & hopped a bus up to Kinkakuji. Back in 1950 a monk became so jealous of it's beauty that he burnt it down. Once you've seen it you can understand how the temple and it's gardens aroused so much passion. Upon leaving it I really felt the crush of the city envelope me again, and had to catch another bus back to the hostel, back through the uninteresting streets of the city.

So although the temples & castles I visited that day were all exceptional, I ended up feeling like I spent too much time on smelly streets & not enough in gorgeous temples where I can forget the city. Just made an interesting contrast to the day previous.

Then today (if anyone's still reading) I headed out to Nara, the first capital of Japan. All of Nara's attractions fell in a park just to the east of the city, and once again it felt good to be putting cars & asphalt behind me and get lost amongst the woods. The chief attractions were Todaiji temple (with it's massive bronze Bhudda) & the deer of the park. After a few days in Kyoto & Nikko it is possible to feel a little amibivalent about the prospect of more temples but Todaiji was imposing in it's scale & the Bhudda inside was definately a sight to behold (it's over 15metres tall). The other temples of the park were all pleasant enough (especially Kasuga) but I really just enjoyed the day for being out amongst the trees.

Tomorrow I head out to Hiroshima (two hours on the shinkansen) then head to Osaka where I discovered that someone I knew from highschool is living. Meeting Australian's in Japan isn't that remarkable given that you spend your time in hostels & tourist places, but meeting someone from highschool when your school was a rural backwater, then for them to be someone worth catching up with (when your school was full of wankers) is something else.

Am a little sad to be leaving Kyoto already as I know there is a lot I've missed, but I'm looking forward to the next few days & plan on making the most of them.

Not sure that I'll manage another blog entry before I get home, so I'll be in touch with you all once I touch back down in olde Sydney towne.

I'm lovin' it.

P

(BTW ++ to clarify, I come back on the 10th (Monday), so keep yr next weekend open after that so we can all catch up. I have no idea why I told you the 8th in that earlier email, sorry about that).