More Temples

On my sister’s first day in town it poured rain, so we opted to try the hotel buffet for breakfast instead of going to the convenience store and back as had been the plan. The buffet had some American foods that I hadn’t had in awhile (such as cereal, sausage, rolls) as well as traditional Japanese breakfast foods such as grilled fish, miso soup and various vegetable salads. Because it was raining, I decided that it would be a good day to try Teramachi Street, which is a covered outdoor mall, filled with small stores, restaurants, and souvenir shops. Both Mom and my sister managed to come out of the day with kimono and obi that had been significantly reduced in price before New Year’s. I didn’t buy much of anything, although I did pick up some much-needed fuzzy socks to sleep in (They’re sea-foam green with cherries) and a lovely scarf with a deco motif. That evening Mom wasn’t feeling her best, so only my sister and I went with my host mother and host sister to conveyor-belt sushi, where we ate a lot (too much) and my sister tried natto (fermented soybeans) sushi. I made the mistake of saying, just as she put it into her mouth ‘I’ll tell you what it is later’, which I guess sounded a little too ominous. She managed to get it down, no thanks to me.
It must have been the next day that we went out with my host mother to see the gold temple (Kinkakuji), one of the most famous in Kyoto. It was originally the second home of a shogun, but was turned into a temple after his death. The main focus of the complex is an open sort of building whose top two floors (of three) are plated almost entirely gold. This sits on a manicured pond that the shogun used to paddle around on in a little boat. After this, the path leads up through some gardens, out past some more temple buildings and a tea room. There are a couple of places along this path that have small clusters of stone images surrounding small bowls. The aim is to toss a coin from the path and make it land in the bowl, which I did manage to do, but only on a bounce (does that count for less luck?). We stopped briefly at the tea room for some matcha and a semi-sweet rice and bean cookie, and then were off to lunch. We ate lunch at a café attached to a bread shop in Kitayama, and ordered lunch sets that we could barely finish. It was a very good thing that the dessert that came with the set was a light apple jelly with frozen yogurt, because anything heavier would have made me ill.
It was either that evening or the next day that we went back to Kitano Tenmangu shrine to look around, going through the Kamishichiken geisha district on the way, which was all but deserted. At the shrine my sister wanted to buy a charm, and asked me to ask the priest at the booth what a pretty purple one meant. I didn’t quite understand his answer, but I thought that he had said something about ‘finding love’ or something, which my sister figured didn’t sound too threatening, but when I bought it the priest said ‘Congratulations’. Now, I’m still not certain what he meant by that, but my immediate thought was that I had bought some sort of ‘safe childbirth’ charm accidentally. Oh well, at least it’s pretty. At some point, on one of these days, we attempted to visit Nijo castle, the official residence (I believe) of the Tokugawa shoguns for when they were in Kyoto. Unfortunately, the castle was closed for New Year’s, as was the sword shop across the street from it. On the way there, however, we stopped in at a shrine that was home to a wild boar-God, where we bought a shrine charm for back pain.
-While Teramachi has a lot going on during the pre-new year’s season, the Nishiki market is positively a mob scene.
-The Shijo area shopping district, including Shinkyogoku and Teramachi, are great places to go when it rains because pretty much all the walkways are covered.
-While in America New Year’s is a big party holiday, in Japan it’s very much a family thing, which, among other things, means that most of the geisha districts seem pretty much closed down.
-There really should be some sort of special radio station in Kyoto that (rather like school closings announced on snowy days in Colorado) tells tourists which temples are closed on a given day. It would save a lot of walking.
-2007 was the year of the boar, the last in the 12-year animal cycle brought to Japan from China a really long time ago. 2008 is the year of the mouse.
-My host mother is a check paying ninja of the highest rank. I had thought to physically grab the check for lunch when it came, but she used her lightning-fast reflexes to get it before I could. Clearly the only reason that I have been allowed to pay for my host sister sometimes is that she is still in training.