Kyoto Song*

2 April 2010
We decided to have a day off visiting temples and museums (couldn’t visit the Kyoto National Museum anyway as it’s closed for refurbishment) and have a day just wandering around just looking at places and shops. We even got ourselves on board several of the Kyoto buses which, in keeping with the Kyoto Agreement, have engines which stop when the buses stop at traffic lights or are caught up in traffic in order to reduce fuel consumption and pollution. We soon discovered that not only is Kyoto the older more attractive sister she is far more serene and alluring. We also rapidly discovered that it’s not possible to walk very far without stumbling on a shrine or a temple – they are everywhere, in the middle of a shopping street we came across a torii (the gate to a Shinto shrine), on the corner of a road where we went to catch a bus we there was a Buddhist temple with beautiful cherry blossom and when looking at some machiya (‘eel houses’) we stumbled upon a small shrine in front of a cemetery (as you know by now one of G’s favourite places to visit.


The machiya developed because during the Edo perid, merchants in Kyoto built up significant wealth but were discouraged from flaunting it. They were taxed on the width of the frontage of their houses so they responded by developing houses with a tiny facade fronting a long narrow interior extending far back from the street. Like many large houses of ancient periods these have now been converted into apartments, hotels, and restaurants.
We visited a number of shops selling ceramics (why is that no surprise?), as well as traditional Japanese paper and woodblock print shops. We also wandered through the huge food market selling numerous unidentifiable comestibles. Kyoto is famous throughout Japan for its pickled vegetables and there were numerous stalls selling a vast variety of these, in our opinion, quite bland and uninteresting things in a vast array of colours – we seem to be given them at every meal whether we ask for them or not. Some of the stalls had the vegetables in the process of being pickled and they seemed to be half buried in a mixture of brown salt – quite unappetising. There were also several stalls selling a wide variety of tofu, tofu ‘skin’ sold in large sheets is a speciality of Kyoto – it is lifted from steaming vats like pieces of paper. And of course the inevitable array of fish including one stall that seemed to specialise in small octopus on sticks – a bit like fish lollies.

French food is very popular and it is difficult not to find a boulangerie – usually selling very good bread, in fact we went to one for lunch which has a small café attached and had some much-needed hot soup (the rain has gone but it is now very cold again), there are also several patisseries and charcuteries. Indeed anything French seems to be very popular – we even came across a French florist selling huge branches of cherry blossom and the most delightful petite bouquets but to top it all Tokyo has built its own Eiffel Tower!














One shop that we sought out was Ippo-Do a wonderful tea shop with a reputation for selling the best tea in Japan. The shop has a small tea house attached where it is possible to have a bowl of tea accompanied by a sweet (just one small but beautifully crafted sweet). By no stretch of the imagination did we partake in a tea ceremony but the ritual involved in making a cup of tea was amazing.

First, pour boiling water into small tea bowl, wait one minute; secondly, pour half of water from first teabowl into second teabowl, wait one minute; thirdly pour water from teabowl one into teabowl three and water from teabowl two into teabowl four, wait one minute; fourthly pour the water from teabowls three and four into the teapot, wait one minute fifteen seconds; finally pour tea; slowly savour perfume of tea and drink tea if, by this time, you are still alive and haven’t died of thirst. Subsequent brews do not take quite as long as the last one minute fifteen seconds is not needed – they are only required the first time in order to swell the leaves. Drinking tea in Japan is about far more than quenching a thirst it is about quiet contemplation, resting from the hustle and bustle outside and enjoying a ritual that has nothing to do with religion or superstition, only to get the water to the correct temperature so as not to scald the delicate leaves, and being rewarded with the warm aroma of green tea that has not been oxidised and a few sips of some of the weirdest tasting liquid in the world! Inevitably we bought a few grams of the precious leaves to take home.
Everywhere one walks in Kyoto the pedestrian crossings make sounds like bird-song when it is safe to cross – actually it is a very electronic sound but better than the panicky beep-beep-beep we have in the UK. However there is one incessant noise that drives us crazy and that is when one is in, or even anywhere near, Kyoto station, there is a constant Bing-Bong noise – the sort that is made at airports prior to an announcement being made but here no announcement follows just another Bing-Bong, followed by another and another. As usual the streets are spotlessly clean, the only litter we saw was McDonald’s wrappers - probably dropped a tourist or an apprentice Sumo wrestler (yes we’ve seen some as well as some trainee Geisha).
Disaster continues to follow us, yesterday there were winds of 118kmh in Tokyo which meant that many aeroplanes were unable to land and the bullet trains had to stop running (something that normally only happens following an earthquake) other trains were cancelled causing inconvenience to 1.08million people – told you the trains were packed.