Kyoto Hotspots - Of a Sort, Part Ichi

This past weekend, my friend Justine from college came to visit. She was in Tokyo with some family friends and since she knew that I was in Kyoto she dropped in for the weekend. So began a whirlwind tour of Kyoto, with some dashes of "What the locals - i.e. Maria do." Best be done list form, since I do not have that much time for blogging as of late with all my research, and its damn hot. The temperature on my digital clock reads 78.5 degrees, there is no air and I don't want to turn on my AC, though I really should since my electric bill was only 1131 yen - about ten bucks - last month. AC on!

Saturday (I guess I won't do list):

Met up with Justine at Kyoto Station at around 11am; she called me from a pay phone, and was actually less than 10 feet from where I was standing in the central exit, I guess she missed me and I missed seeing her. Good thing I gave her both my cell and my address in Japan just in case. We dropped off her stuff in a locker at the train station and zipped off to Fushimi Inari Taisha. I had been there twice before, so I didn't take any photos but got a new charm for my bike. I realized since my bike accident and the subsequent replacing of basket/throwing away old charm, it takes me a minute longer to recognize my bike and even then I am not so sure until I put my key in. Then again, one guy almost made off with my bike at the combini, thinking it was his and I was SURE that I had it locked because I had my keys (which are also my apartment keys on the same keychain) in my hand. So much for the different keys, I caught him just in time.

I explained to Justine that to go through Fushimi is a 5km hike and I tried it; not really worth it when you see the same orange torii again and again, plus we were So it was "Fushimi Lite" - the first set of orange torii until you reach what I call the "first level" with a small area that sells the charms and has a small shrine, took some photos, oohed and aahhed and bounced back to Kyoto Station for lunch at the tonkastu restaurant on the 11th floor that I went to my first week here. Love that place. Good tonkatsu and you get refills on barley rice, cabbage and miso soup, though the soup was bad and tasted like vomit that day. Seems like I am zipping through this quickly? Well, thats how the two days were.

We then went back to my place to drop off Justine's stuff which was really two shopping bags, and she told me her train was actually Monday morning which was totally fine by me. One of the shopping bags turned out to be actually for me - a "wedding gift" of a sort, since she has seen me post tons of photos on Facebook, Justine got the idea that I like to take photos so she got me a digital photo frame. Unfortunately, its not compatible with Macs so the only way that I can get photos onto it is via the camera memory card so that means some of my older stuff can't be put on it unless I put it back on the camera; however, my Mac doesn't read the Canon as a external hard drive like my old Sony did so I have to put the pics on USB/CD load them to a pc then transfer them to camera. Bah. However, that photo frame is MEGA nifty!

After my apartment - with Justine exclaiming "So cute!" - we took the bus to Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion and mega tourist trap. However, it is a must-see. One does NOT live in Kyoto or Japan/visit Kyoto without seeing Kinkakuji. It was burnt down in the 50s and is a replica but it's a travesty to do otherwise. It's the basic "Kyoto thing to do." See gold temple, ooh, ahh. Then down to Kiyomizu-dera and the surrounding area.

This part I was really looking forward to; unlike Kinkakuji which was my second visit and Fushimi Inari Taisha, which was my third visit, I have not been to Kiyomizu-Dera. "Kiyo-mizu" means "clear water" and in fact, the temple is up for being part of the "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign (though the slogan: "Vote for Kiyomizu Temple as a symbol of clarity and serenity" in my opinion is rather lame.)It's really old - and the buildings date from the 1600s if I remember correctly so yeah! No current replicas trying to duplicate history (I was extremely disappointed to hear that Kinkakuji was a duplicate, and don't get me started on Osaka and Nijo Castles, and I know my statement opens many cans of worms about preservation/duplication that belong in another post far, far off in the future and not even in this blog).

One thing about Kiyomizu Dera that I really wanted to check out was Jishu Jinja, which enshrines Okuninushino-Mikoto, god of love and "good matches." Although I am very happily with Mel, I still wanted to try out the two love stones - placed 18m apart, if you can go in a straight line from one to the other then you will have good luck in love; I figured it would be good luck for marriage, in my case. Unfortunately, since we came later in the day, the shrine was closed. No matter; Kiyomizu-Dera is known for its autumn leaves, so I will go back again and battle the crowds in November. The view from Kiyomizu-Dera was amazing, since we had to climb steps and hills to get to it.

After, we walked around the area that was featured in the March Spring Light-Up (Ohmygod, I never blogged about that! Dammit! Will do this week, along with Shirahama, must must blog - good thing I have my photos to jar my memory, I have a visual memory that apparently surprised Justine as we walked around the city with me muttering, "Ok we are getting closer to (insert place here), because I remember this shop." and there we were, right at the place we were heading), but unfortunately, the shops began to close, since it was around 6pm. During the Spring Light-Up they closed at 9pm.

We checked out this little shop along Higashi-oji Dori that I noticed opened recently: a pottery shop, with three pieces for 1050yen. It had amazing coffee cups, very organic looking and modern in design at the same time. I guess my sense of location was pretty good because we got back on the main road and the grid of the city without having to double back to get to the shop. I picked out some pieces for my own "Japanese coffee set" (which still needs to be completed) and asked the shop owner who was actually a really young guy (in Japanese) if the shop opened recently. Yes, he said, not even 6 months. I told him that I liked everything a lot and would come back since I lived in the city; he gave me a flier for a pottery class that was 1050yen and I would make one piece myself to take home. Chen and I are thinking of doing it maybe next month, since all my weekends in June are full from here to kingdom come. When I get the chance, I'll take a picture of the one mug that I did unwrap; since this stuff is really fragile, I want to leave the cups and such as they are and wait till I get back home this August to use them. I am even going to bring them on the plane, not pack them in my suitcase. They are great because they are all handmade and its something really unique and different from the regular tourist fare (another reason why I would rather spend my money on pretty and useful umbrellas that you can't find anywhere else as opposed to another t-shirt with Hello Kitty on it).

Dinner was at Ganko Zushi, where I went with Professor Marme and his wife on Sanjo-Dori next to Starbucks. Although I couldn't find the crab dinner set that I wanted, I ended up with what I had last time - sushi, tempura and noodles, though since it was summer, I got zaru-soba, or cold soba. Ended up spilling soy sauce and soba sauce on my shorts on two separate occasions, but luckily, I acted fast and my shorts dried quickly with no stains. Justine and I also had lime chu-hi which is a flavored alcohol drink with soda in it and comes in other flavors. Very lime-y, but we were both full and happy (which is really rare at a full-on Japanese restaurant, given our "American" appetites. I didn't even finish my noodles.) On our way up Kawaramachi to Sanjo-dori, we ran into Chen, a good example of how Kyoto is quite small and that you run into people that you know almost every time your are in the Shijo-Sanjo-Kawaramachi-Karasuma shopping grid.

We then ended our night in Gion. I took a look through my guidebook, and deduced that given only two days, the walking tours were the best bet to cram everything with the "Maria footnotes" such as Fushimi and Kinkakuji and the places to eat/shop added on, of course. Before, however, I told Justine that there was this matcha shop in Gion that I learned about from Chen and had really good matcha ice cream. I was only thinking of the soft serve from the dispenser, but Justine noticed the displays of ice cream sundaes and parfaits in the glass cases next to the main shop; turns out this was also the place that had the really famous matcha cafe that is ALWAYS crowded during the day that Chen mentioned (my inner source of information on Kyoto if you haven't guess already is Chen. I still have much to learn). There was NO LINE! Woo-hoo! So we headed right upstairs and proceeded to gorge on a really big matcha flavored shaved ice and matcha ice cream sundae, with two types of matcha ice cream and a scoop of vanilla and red beans.

Off to the depths of Gion. Right on the corner of Shijo-dori and Hanamikoji is the Ichiriki Teahouse, the one mentioned in "Memoirs of a Geisha." In order to enter a right proper teahouse you need to know someone, so the chances of me ever sitting there are 1 on a trillion. Seriously. We walked a bit and headed back to Shijo; just as we passed the Ichiriki, I saw a flash of color flitting between the flaps of the noren, or the main entry curtain. It was blue, with a white circle on top. A geisha.

I remembered that Justine really wanted to see a geisha and pointed it out - "Look between the flaps, do you see anything!?!" There was a group of men in front of the teahouse apparently departing; the noren was flipping back and forth in their wake and right in the main entry area that faced the garden were three geisha kneeling, their white faces a stark contrast against the blue, cream and black kimono. I realized later that I had seen geisha - 2 of them in fact - out of their normal makeup and evening get-up at Starbucks once; they ordered cake and coffee and sat downstairs in their kimono and crazy hair-dos. As we walked in the inner depths of Gion, near Tatsumi Shrine, I heard something - clip, clop, clip, clop - like the horse and buggys at Central Park.

She just walked right by us, both nonchalantly and looking like a deer in headlights at the same time. It was the geisha in the blue kimono - or rather in the Kyoto dialect a maiko, apprentice geisha. You could tell that she was a maiko by two things: 1) her obi was freaking long, the ends trailed down to her feet and 2) the shoes that she was wearing were what I think are called okobo, which are 6 inch platforms. She briskly walked by us in the whole getup; I sort of felt a little sympathy for her, with me and Justine sort of bug-eyed, it was the typical reaction that she probably gets from everyone that sees her, even in everyday get-up.So, she probably feels like an animal in a zoo, especially since geiko and maiko are not that common these days.

However, it was an interesting experience - not that many "regular" people who go trekking into Gion to walk around get to have a maiko walk right by them. With that, since it was 10pm and the buses were about to end soon, Justine and I schlepped back up to my place and promptly collapsed.