Lots of Temples and a Music Festival

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We head off up the hill away from the city centre in search of temples. We don’t have to look too hard. Every second building here seems to be a spectacular temple. We walk up along Matsubara-dori Street towards the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. The street is wall to wall shops and is packed with tourists. We need breakfast, so we stop at a food stall. Issy says that other than sumo wrestlers there is no such thing as an overweight Japanese person, and therefore all Japanese food must be good for you. I wonder what sumo wrestlers eat. I try not to wonder about this too much, and instead try very hard to believe Issy’s line that all Japanese food is good for you as I munch on my breakfast of deep fried octopus cakes.

The Kiyomizu-dera Buddhist Temple is part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was founded in 778, and the present structure was built in 1633. It is massive, and is apparently notable for there not being a single nail in the entire structure. It is Saturday, and there are lots of school-aged children here in traditional Japanese dress.

We walk back down the hill through some other very well preserved districts, and head towards our next destination, which is Maruyama-koen Park. We pass a giant Buddha statue, and spend a few minutes admiring a giant Buddhist art mural in a room opposite the statue.

We hear some live music playing ahead of us, and Issy says that we should go and listen to it. She says that it sounds like it is coming from the garden of the temple in front of us. The temple isn't on the itinerary, but she is very determined. We pay an entry fee, and are directed to follow a very specific route through the temple grounds. It is a very long and windy route, and it takes us up a hill and into a forest. The sound of the music, which was quite loud when we were at the entrance to the temple, is now very faint. Issy is starting to get frustrated. She says that we only came in here so that we could listen to the music, and it seems that this isn’t where it was coming from in the first place. The temple also isn’t particularly interesting, which is only adding to her frustration.

Eventually we get back to the entrance to the temple, and find our way into Maruyama-koen Park. It seems that the music is actually coming from a sound stage in the Park. It is part of a music festival, so we buy some tickets and go in. There are a lot of Japanese acts performing here. I can’t help but think that it might have been useful if I’d come here a couple of days ago, before I was interviewed by the Niko Junior High School English Club about what I knew about Japanese music. We see playpens in amongst the seats, so parents can sit and watch their children play while they listen to the music. That said, we are at least twice as old as the next youngest person here; most of the audience look like they’re about 15, so whilst the playpens are a nice idea, I suspect they're probably a waste of space for this particular crowd.

We walk on through the Park and up some very long and steep steps to the very large Chion-in Buddhist Temple. The original temple structure dates from 1234, but was largely burnt and then rebuilt in the seventeenth century. The main gate is huge. We read that it was built in 1619 and is the largest structure of its type in Japan. We watch a religious ceremony in progress in the temple.

We go into a cafe to get some lunch. We‘ve noticed that there must be a law in Japan that says that even if there is only one couple in an entire restaurant, and there is a pile of a hundred English language menus sitting on the counter waiting to be handed out, under no circumstances must the restaurant give its customers more than one menu per table. This tends to drag out the ordering process quite a bit. Issy usually has first use of the menu, decides what she’s having, and then hands the menu over to me. By the time the waiter turns up however, both of us have usually forgotten what we’ve picked, so the whole process then starts again. It gets even more difficult if one of us orders something that the restaurant has run out of. This seems to happen a lot. We wonder why this law was brought in, and what the penalties might be for breaking it. We haven’t been to a restaurant in Japan yet that has shown any sign of transgressing, so we suspect that the penalties must be very harsh.

We finish lunch and catch the bus across town to Nijo Castle. This is also part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Castle was built in 1626, and while the capital had by then moved to Edo (now Tokyo), Nijo Castle remained the home of the Japanese Imperial Court. The whole complex is surrounded by walls and a moat, and the main building is the very large palace. The palace rooms are all very minimalist, with no furniture, and the main features are extensive murals on all the walls. The whole building is made entirely of wood, and there are a lot of measures in place to protect both the building and the murals. You have to take your shoes off before you go in, you’re not allowed to take photos, and none of the semi-transparent screens around the outside of the building are allowed to be opened. As we walk around it sounds like the whole building is full of birds, and we wonder if someone has decided to play recordings of bird noises to make everyone feel like they’re surrounded by nature. It seems instead that this was a cunning ploy by the original builders, who installed so-called nightingale floors throughout the palace; the floorboards all have metal ends, and when anyone walks on them they rub together and make a bird-like sound, which was intended to warn the occupants of intruders.

As we’ve noticed in all historic buildings in Japan, there are fire extinguishers everywhere in the palace. The whole country seems to have had its issues with fires over the years, which is probably no great surprise seeing that almost all of the old buildings are made of wood. We’ve read about the whole of Kanazawa going up in flames several times, and apparently the history of Kyoto hasn’t been too different. There are lots of people in Japan, but I suspect that they would be severely outnumbered by fire extinguishers. On the subject of fires, as we tried to navigate our way around today we both noticed that the name Nakagyoshoboshoshutchosho kept popping up on the Google Maps screen. It was a bit hard to miss. We get a bit curious and do some further digging, and discover that this is the name of one of Kyoto’s main fire stations. I think that if your house caught fire and you needed to tell the person next door to ring that particular fire station for you, your house would have completely burnt to the ground by the time you’d managed to finish telling your neighbour its name.

We catch the train back towards the hotel and then walk the rest of the way. We’ve noticed that whilst Japanese people are more polite and respectful than any other nation on earth, this politeness and respect seems to get a bit diluted when they get in their cars. We‘ve learnt to become very wary of any pedestrian crossings that don’t have traffic lights. We think that cars are meant to give way to pedestrians at these crossings, but it’s hard to be sure. The only times we’ve been reasonably certain that we could get across safely without getting mown down have been the few times when groups of policemen have gone out of their way to make themselves particularly noticeable. A lot of the streets in the tourist districts here are closed to cars other than taxis, but that doesn’t seem to stop the taxi drivers weaving between hordes of pedestrians at breakneck speed in search of their next fare.

We stop at a Seven Eleven to pick up some supplies. We also need to get some cash, and virtually all the ATMs in Japan are either in Seven Elevens or Post Offices. We’ve found we need to carry quite a bit of cash with us here, as most places don’t take credit cards. This seems to be a bit at odds with Japan being a world leader in IT and electronics.

We pay for our supplies, and the girl behind the counter then produces a cardboard box. It has two round holes in the front of it, each covered with a small piece of cloth. She doesn’t speak any English so we‘re not quite sure what she wants us to do with the box, but it’s certainly something. Eventually we cotton on that because we’ve spent a certain amount of money, we’re apparently entitled to some sort of lucky dip prize, and she wants one of us to put one of our hands in one of the holes in the box and pick out some cards. We hope that this isn’t a Japanese reality TV show setup, and that the box isn’t actually full of spiders and cockroaches. I’m a chivalrous man, so I step aside and let Issy put her hand in one of the holes. She picks out three cards, and the girl then disappears off into the back of the shop and reappears with a tub of ice cream, a drink and a packet of biscuits to give to us.

We head off into downtown Kyoto for dinner. We see a real geisha, all done up in white make-up, rushing off to entertain some clients. Issy tells me that she’s read that all geishas are minor celebrities, and if I had any thoughts of trying to talk to a geisha or take a picture of one, then I should think again. I’m not feeling brave enough to take a risk that she might be making this up. It’s Saturday night, and the streets of downtown Kyoto seems to be lined with clubs, and they all have menacing looking security guards manning their doors to stop undesirables getting in. There are signs promising beautiful hostesses and lap dances. This is a bit of a contrast to the temples and shrines of daytime Kyoto.

Most of the traditional restaurants seem to be full, so we settle for a Coles cafeteria-type cafe. We are shown to our table and see that it has a menu on it. I give it to Issy. My blood turns to ice. Underneath the first menu is a second one. I panic. I wonder what will happen to me if I’m caught with a second menu. We carefully hide it inside Issy’s first menu and follow our usual process of Issy looking at the menu first and then handing it over to me. We hope that no one notices our charade. We're not sure whether the harsh penalties for breaking Japan's strict One Menu Law are inflicted on the restaurant owner, the offending waiter, or the diners who have handled the second menu, and we decide that we'd rather not find out tonight. The food is excellent, and we manage to pay and leave without apparently arousing any suspicion.

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