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We were warned. Traveling Japan is not easy. No one speaks English and everything is signposted in Japanese characters. However, since prime minister Shinzo Abe told the nation last year it should take more care of their tourists, everything has changed. Suddenly everyone speaks English and under all Japanese texts an English translation pops up. Loud and clear.
And once you notice that everything is well organized and that the Japanese are friendly, helpful and very very very polite, then traveling in Japan is due to become a big joy.
Tokyo It's the end of holidays in Japan. While we are enjoying our Japanese breakfast in hotel Toyoke Inn in Narita, overdressed families sit in the lobby. We know we are too late for the annual cherry blossom festival. Even the prunes have finished flowering. But the weather is fine. A nice day to stroll along the Maranouchi area in the direction of Imperial Palace.
Everything is so quiet. So clean. Nowhere a bin and still not a single piece of paper on the pavements. Nowhere pictures of emperors, nowhere flags, nowhere billboards with advertisements and no one playing on his mobile. I fall asleep in the
shade of a pine tree at the Outer Gardens of the Imperial Palace. The sounds of the city at the background.
Kyoto The Shinkansen brings us with a speed of 300 kilometer an hour to Kyoto. While we enjoy our boxes with Shashimi, we are passing the forested mountains of Shizuoka prefecture. It takes only two hours and twenty minutes. Our hotel Hokke Club Kyoto is just opposite Kyoto Station. It feels as if we are in Paris. Soft jazz at the background.
Kyoto Station is an experience in itself with its futuristic glass and steel frame of architect Hiroshi Hara. It is so modern that the city hesitated to accept it, as it opposes the historic appeal of the city with its 17 Unesco Heritage Sites, its over 1600 Buddhist temples and more than 400 Shinto shrines.
One of them is Nishi Hongwanji temple, one of the largest wooden structures in Japan. And with a big holy Gingko tree in the yard. It's only a short walk from Kyoto Station. It houses a special Buddhist school, called Jodo Shinshui, founded by Shinran Shonin. The strict symmetry reminds us of Art Deco.
Afterwards we walked
to Higashi Hongwanji temple, the concurrent of Nishi Hongwanji after a rift in the Jodo Shinshui school. Unfortunately the temple was under reconstruction.
We called it a day and had a great Japanese meal with raw fish, shrimps and squid and warm sake wine at the basement of our hotel.
Old Kyoto After breakfast in our hotel room we took bus 206 to Higashyana area to see Kiyomizu-dera temple and Shoren-in temple. It's a area with lots of tourist shops and restaurants. Full of people, specially Japanese, who like to discover their own history. Many of them dress themselves in kimono's. Near Ninen-zaka we met some geisha's and the more colorful maiko's, who still have to become a geisha.
Kyoto Botanical Gardens The day after we spent all day in the Botanical Garden. It's a strange hobby of us. Where ever we are we try to visit a botanical garden. We have seen them all over the world. What we liked in the gardens of Kyoto, were the Japanese gardens, the bonsai trees, the orchids, bromelia's and aristolochia's. The last ones are known as Dutchman's pipes, because the flowers look like old fashioned pipes. We
saw them for the first time in the Botanical Garden in Kampala (Uganda). Later we had one ourselves in our garden in Thailand.
The lane of camphor trees smells of camphor indeed. It reminds me of wardrobes. My mother used to put camphor mothballs in between the clothes to repel moths. Later I used them myself in the showcases with beetles. It was said they put camphor in our tea, when I was in military service in Suriname. To suppress our libido. No one believed that of course.
More temples There were still two temples we were eager to see: Daitoku-ji temple and Kinkaku-ji. Both are Zen temples. And both temples are not far from each other in the northern part of Kyoto city. Daitoku-ji is named after founder Daito-Kokushi. It is part of a temple complex. Many temples of the complex were destroyed as a result of the anti-Buddhist policy following the Meiji Restoration. Only 20 are still intact.
The temple looks strict. As a Zen temple should be. Also the front garden represents the Zen spirit. The gravel raked in a special pattern and with two heaps of gravel formed in characteristic cones. Nothing
is allowed, you may not take pictures, you may not sit and you may not touch anything. Which contributes a lot to the feeling of being in a Zen temple.
Kinkaku-ji temple is completely different. It is also known as The Golden Pavilion. Once I read '
The Golden pavilion' from Yukio Mishima. It describes the incredible story of a young monk who sets the the Golden Pavilion in fire, because it was too beautiful. It happened in 1950. The monk tried to do seppuku afterwards, but didn't succeed. By the way the writer did succeed in doing suicide.
The temple was rebuilt in 1955. I never realized I would see the temple once, when I read the book. The temple with its golden form fits wonderfully in the many varieties of green of the surroundings, mirroring itself in the pond with blue irises.
Geisha dances From Kinkaku-ji we took bus 205 to the Ponto-cho district. It's an area with narrow streets with little restaurants and jazz clubs, situated near Kamo river, the cradle of the geisha's. We visited Kamogawa Odori, where since 1872 Geisha dances take place.
After a short tea ceremony with powdered thick
green tea (I got diarrhea of it) we saw the famous Kama River Dances. Colorful dressed maiko's. Very slow movements like t'ai chi. An orchestra of women, playing mechanic music on shamisens with three snares, ko-tsuzumi's (small hourglass shaped shoulder drums), a large floor drum, called taiko, singers producing throat sounds and sounds like young birds.
The way back After shower and dinner we took the Haruka train to Kansai Airport in Osaka to be in time for our flight back to Bangkok. It's only a 75 minutes ride. But the train got a delay of 2 hours. So we had to run to catch our plane. It was the first time something went wrong on our trip in Japan. For the rest traveling was very easy.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Bullet Train
I'd love to ride one of these.