Kyoto is a great place to get lost. It's a pleasurable experience to simply walk aimlessly around the city, because you're always stumbling across something unexpectedly beautiful. A children's playground at night, inhabited by a gang of friendly cats. Or a shrine with a hundred lit paper lanterns. Or a narrow flagstone-paved street that leads to a love shrine.
The character of the city shifts quickly as you move, from urban to wooded to feudal.
We started the day at Nijo castle, which is famous for it's nightingale floor. The floorboards are constructed in such a manner that they chirp like birds.
the purpose of the floor is to repel attacks by ninja assassins. As the crowds of tourists wander through the palace, the effect is intensified, and one hears an entire flock of demented, drunken birds, chirping dissonantly. It's some of the most distinctive music I've ever heard.
Afterwards, we took the bus (a mistake, as the pace of Kyoto's public transit is turgid) to the Golden Pavilion and Ryoanji Temple. The first, while awfully pretty, was overrun by busloads of Japanese schoolchildren. Jonathan attempted to throw several coins into a bowl in the temple's garden, but failed. Ryaonji has so many picture-perfect areas: a pond filled with lilypads and lotus flowers, an old stone staircase under a canopy of tree cover, a moss covered garden, and most famously, a Zen rock garden. At the rock garden, the tourists sat contentedly on a series of bleachers, as if watching a baseball game. A baseball game with no players and no rules that did not exist to begin with.
We wandered through Gion, which is famous for being home to the geisha. We negotiated tiny streets, visiting an enormous concrete Buddha, and meandering up the path to the Kiyomizu love shrine. At the shrine are two stones placed a distance apart, and it is said that if one wanders from one to the other with one's eyes closed, true love is assured.
Then we ate in one of Kyoto's many European-inspired cafes, which more evokes a Miyazaki vision of the Old World than a Paris bistro. The decor is reminiscent of the living room of a French grandmother who owns twenty cats. The menu is a selection of European foods as imagined by a Japanese person who must rely on movies and books for his knowledge of Europe. Lots of frilly and sugary deserts involving fruit, spaghetti, and inexplicably, curry.
We then wandered the shopping district, where Wallace partook of some grilled mochil, and I had some pudding. Jonathan found an arcade with a complement of competent Street Fighter players, and proceeded to have his ass beat handily. But he persisted, insisting that humiliating defeat was the only way for him to learn.
1 comment:
Good words.
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