A small novel about my day

As planned, today I got up early and went to Kyōto for yet another round of sightseeing. Not as planned, the 30% chance of rain turned into a day-long miserable drizzle.

Once again, I missed my bus by about two minutes, and because it was so early on a Sunday morning, I was going to have to wait quite a while for the next one. Well, I suppose fifteen minutes isn’t all that bad, but it’s a long time to stand in the rain and stare at the passing cars. So I walked two bus stops down just to give me something to do, and the bus eventually caught up to me. After an uneventful train ride, I arrived in downtown Kyōto at this big bus terminal. It took me a while to find the proper bus stop, and—big surprise—right as I found it the bus pulled away. With my newly gained fifteen minutes, I purchased a mixed fruit juice drink from a vending machine and snacked on the little packet of Pocky I had brought while I waited for the next bus.

Okay, this was like the longest bus ride EVER, I have to say. I knew that my destination was a fair way from downtown, but really! I was on the bus for at least half an hour, probably closer to 45 minutes. I was going to two places today—Kinkaku-ji, and Ryōan-ji. Both were on the same bus route, so I planned to overshoot whichever came first and get off at the second one, so I’d know if they were within walking distance and how to get from one to another. We passed Kinkaku-ji first, so I sat on the bus until we got to Ryōan-ji.

After using the restroom (again, no soap), checking out the small tourist shops outside, and purchasing my ticket, I moved on into the Ryōan-ji complex. It’s a small collection of buildings situated within a big landscape garden, and in addition to being a huge tourist attraction, it’s a working temple. That means that, although there are gift shops and all, there were a lot of places that you couldn’t enter because that’s where the monks live and such. Pretty cool. (By the way, just across the street from the temple is a convent of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.)

The first thing you come upon in the gardens is a beautiful pond with lily pads all over it nicknamed Oshidori-ike, or Mandarin Duck Pond. Apparently there used to be a lot of Mandarin ducks living there. In Chinese and Japanese folklore, these ducks mate for life, so this pond is now a popular date spot for Japanese couples! Very cute. I saw a bunch of ducks in the pond, but none of them were Mandarin. I also saw a bunch of couples holding hands. I don’t know if any of them were Mandarin; I think most were Japanese. ;)

Ooh, Eric and Andrew, I thought of you today! There’s this little island in the middle of the pond that I went out on. Guess what it’s called? Benten Island—like Ben 10! Do you still watch that show? I know you guys used to like it a lot. In Japanese stories, Benten is a goddess of luck, and she really likes snakes and dragons.

I then went into the main temple building, where Ryōan-ji’s famous rock garden is. It was really, really cool. The wood building is very simple, as you’ll see in the photos when I get them up, but very spacious. It also smelled good because of the rain and the wet wood and the incense. I started at the back of the main building, seeing the back gardens that were covered in the most beautiful moss. The rain really made everything so beautiful, dripping off the eaves and making the small streams swell. It was quiet and cool and lovely. And there’s nothing like seeing rainwater drip off a red Japanese maple leaf at a Zen temple. Pretty cool life experience, there.

One of the really cool things was the tsukubai, or wash basin, at the back of the main hall. It’s used, like all the other wash basins I’ve talked about, for ritual washing. What’s cool about this one is the inscription. Check out the picture; I’ll try to explain, but it’s hard because you need:

1.) an understanding of the Japanese writing system
2.) to be able to understand some fairly abstract Japanese words
3.) some sort of appreciation for “Dude, that’s so deep!” kinds of thoughts

I don’t really have much of any of these but #3, but I’ll try to get the point across.

Written alone, the characters on the outside of the basin don’t mean much. But if you pretend that the square in the center is a part of the characters, they become 吾, 唯, 足, 知. Each means “I,” “only,” “enough,” and “know.” So it’s like these nonsense words come together to say something like “I already have everything I need.” Sweet! I love stuff like that.

After that I went around to the front of the building, where there’s a porch-like area to sit and look at the karesansui garden. Basically, it’s some rocks in a giant sandbox surrounded by a mud wall. But it’s absolutely beautiful. I don’t know why. So very peaceful, though, to sit there and listen to the rain hitting the sand. It was very crowded, though, so it was hard to really pretend to be a 16th century monk. Still, I loved it. It’s probably the most famous garden in Japan, which probably makes it the most famous garden in the world, really, except maybe the grounds of Versailles. It’s so cool to get to see things in person that you’ve been seeing for years in textbooks.

Then I left the nice, dry main hall and went around the rest of the walking path. I am still so amazed at how very green Kyōto is. The moss, the lichens, the grass, everything is the most beautiful blue-green. It’s like Kentucky’s fields and forests at their most lush, or those gorgeous photos you see of Ireland. Today it felt like a rain forest, what with all the dripping and such. I took more than one picture today that is total Ferngully.

One thing of interest for me was the pagoda, which was, as far as I can tell in my limited knowledge of Southeast and East Asian architecture, in a very much Southeast Asian style. It looked like a Thai pagoda rather than a Japanese one; I wonder why? This is the first looking anything remotely like it that I’ve seen in Japan. Strange.

Anyway, after wandering and gawking at all the pretty, I went and had some nice warm tea and curry rice at one of the souvenir shops/restaurants and got nice and dry and cozy before leaving for Kinkaku-ji. Actually, at this point it was so much later than I had anticipated, and I was so tired of the rain, that I considered just going home. But the bus ride had been so long, and I was already right there, so I went on ahead for even more sightseeing. Unfortunately, on the bus from Ryōan-ji to Kinkaku-ji, I lost my balance when I was trying to get my fare from my wallet and kinda fell into an old lady. Oops. But she was very nice about it. It reminded me of a story in some of my old Sesame Street books where Grover is on the subway and he accidentally sits on a woman's lap.

Kinkaku-ji, like some of the other places I’ve talked about, was originally built as a nice home for a rich guy back in the day, and was later converted into a temple. The “Kinkaku” refers to the Golden Pavilion, the gilded three-storied structure sitting above a reflecting pond. Man, when they say Golden they do mean golden! I was amazed at how brightly it shone, even in the rain. At first I really didn’t like it, to be honest. It’s ridiculously gaudy. It grew on me, but still. It seems very much to me more in the Chinese aesthetic than the Japanese. But there are exceptions to everything, of course, and I do tend to think of Japanese art in terms of austerity, which certainly isn’t the whole picture.

Anyway, after getting my picture taken in front of the Pavilion and picking my way through the big crowds (lots of school groups, actually), I went along the winding walking path through the gardens. There were some really neat springs and shrines, and a pond high up on the hillside that made me really want to go fishing. There was also a waterfall called the Ryūmon Taki, which means Dragon Gate Waterfall. The name comes from an old parable that if a carp can jump over a waterfall it becomes a dragon. There was also a really cool tea room that you couldn’t enter but could look in. It was neat, having studied the tea ceremony and its aesthetics so much freshman year, to get to see that. Toward the end of the tour route there was a tea house that you are allowed to use, but I decided against it. Instead, I went into a souvenir shop and finally found something for Grandma! The last thing I saw was the hall dedicated to Fudō, the purification god who was featured at that mountain temple I went to last week.

And then I came back home, taking a super-packed bus on the long way back to the train station. On the bus I realized that hours of walking in the rain had caused my brown flip flops to leak their dye all over my feet, staining them red in places. Oops. When I got back to the dorm, I washed my feet and took a really nice nap.

I made myself something of a full meal for supper, so I’m pretty proud of that. I had cherry tomatoes, steamed cauliflower, and okonomiyaki with carrots in it. I can feed myself! I was very, very hungry this evening, though, and ate a lot of Choco-chippu.

Last week was crazy with my Japanese language midterms; this one will be really insane because of my afternoon culture classes. On Tuesday I have a debate and an exam; Thursday there are two papers due. Yuck. But hey, it keeps me off the streets, right?

Oh, about my spelling. Um, I know it looks really pretentious when I write Kyoto as “Kyōto” and all, so I’m kinda self-conscious about it. But that little line can actually make a really big difference in Japanese sometimes, and I like to be accurate when I can. (Example: yubi means “finger;” yūbi means “graceful, dainty.”) So, I’m sorry that I’m too much of a snob to write “Tokyo” instead of “Tōkyō,” but if you’re going off the original Japanese, it is an important distinction. Just wanted to let you know that I’m not trying to be ridiculous. And, in case you care, the line just makes the vowel long, so you hold the sound for longer than normal. Thus, “Tōkyō” is properly said with four counts: “toh-oh-kyoh-oh.” “Yubi” has two counts (yu-bi) and “yūbi” has three (yu-u-bi).