Kyoto, Gion

(Kiyomizu)

We started the day with breakfast in the Amherst House



and then a walk down to the office on the Imperial Palace grounds where you can sign up for tours to various imperial places. We made reservations for the Katsura imperial villa tomorrow at nine in the morning, and then took a cab to the Kiyomisu temple. The cab driver took us through several interesting areas, the most interesting of which was the Gion neighborhood, where we saw a Geisha in training (a Maiko) walking up one of the beautiful stone paved alleyways. He let us off at the temple and we walked up the steps to the main temple.



The latticed foundation was pretty impressive, but as usual at spots like that, I had a hard time finding a unique shot! I did shoot a half of a roll, so I'll keep my fingers crossed and update this entry when they get developed and scanned. From Kiyomisu temple, we walked down the hill to Kawai Kanjiro's house, but it was unfortunately closed, and we started making our way through the thoroughly uninteresting neighborhoods in between the house and the river. Along the way, I saw the first of what would be many posters and drink machines of Tommy Lee Jones shilling chilled coffee drinks. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but find it kind of amusing how big stars won't do that kind of product endorsement in the US, but are all over it in Europe and Asia.

The sun was beating down and eventually we relented and took a taxi to the train station, where we got money at the central post office, made train reservations for our trips to Magome and then said goodbye to our wives, who decided to go to Nara. Kenji and I found a photo store which sold 120 film and DV tapes, stocked up, and then took the subway. We accidentally got off at the Shijo station instead of the Karasuma station, where we had planned on transferring to the red line, but gave up, surfaced, and walked along Shijo street to the river. We stopped at an excellent tea shop along the way and bought some Hoji-cha tea. After crossing the river, we stumbled upon a beautiful tree lined street next to a river called the Shirakawa where I got a few unorignal shots of the river, and then continued on to the Gion district -- our original destination. The light was just getting good, and I managed to get a few interesting shots, and there happened to be a photographer doing a professional shoot of two Geishas. I quickly shot some handheld shots and even managed to get the tripod set up and get one more shot before some Spaniards walked in front of me and started taking pictures. That's one of the curses of the Hasselblad: people always seem to want to take the same photo as you, no matter how lame it is. Getting in front of me was a first though.


From the Gion district, we continued on to the Pontocho street, where we ran into Kenjis friends from San Francisco AGAIN, and then found an excellent restaurant, where we had grilled mackerel, grilled chicken, mochi with lotus roots, grilled cuttlefish, some special Tofu and thin mochi wrapped around pumpkin. Everything was superb, but the tofu was really unique. It had an interesting texture, and a wasabi/herring egg garnish. The tofu itself was different form any that I have had; the description said something about it being skimmed off the top of the tofu vat.

Tripe

There are times when ignorance truly is bliss. One of those times could, for example, be when you are enjoying a delicious, but somewhat suspiciously textured "pork skewer" braised in a special white miso sauce. Sure, you might have unconsciously had an inkling that this wasn't a normal cut of pork, and that it was strangely translucent and jelly like in the areas closest to the skewer (all meat looks the same when its been grilled to a crisp! It's the barely cooked meat at the center which gives you an inkling of what you're eating), but hey: if it's delicious, so don't rock the boat, right? It is therefore very disconcerting and down right nauseating to suddenly have one of your dining companions wonder out loud "I wonder what I'm eating? Intestines maybe?" This was the situation at the restaurant (tantan-men) that we found on the Pontocho street in Kyoto. The food was excellent -- my favorite was the spicy szechuan style white miso sesame soup with ramen noodles. I'm going to try to reproduce this one at home sans some of the oil. The skewers really were excellent, but I had to stop eating it as soon as Kenji articulated my intestine concerns.

Earlier in the day, Chloe and I had gotten up to get some pictures of the Aomori harbor


and then taken the plane from Aomori to Osaka. I was impressed by the speed with which we were corralled onto the plane and we got into the air, but a little troubled by this:

Hopefully use of the emergency battery doesn't require the panel to actually be removed!
We were treated to a view of the Japanese "alps" along the way.


and had the first day of our Japan Rail Pass. This pass is offered outside of Japan, and we have been using it for years. There are different periods and both coach and first class passes available. Its function is similar to the Eurail pass. The first class ticket gets you access to the green cars, and makes it easier to get reservations on overbooked trains, and is well worth the extra money. And that's not even talking about the miles of legroom that you get! We took the bullet train from Osaka to Kyoto, dropped off our things at our palatial digs at the Amherst House, and headed out to the Nijo Castle (completed 1626.) At the Kyoto train station , we ran into Kenji's friends from San Francisco AGAIN!




Although one cannot use a tripod, camera or even sketchbook in the palace, they thankfully do not require a partial lobotomy at the end of the tour to prevent any unauthorized remembering of the beautiful screens. Among other fun things were nightingale floor and concealed body guard chambers in all of the rooms where the shogun(?) might receive visitors. I had heard of the nightingale floors before, but had chocked it up to a little Japanese poetic license, but those floorboards really do sound like birds when you're walking on them! And as for the bodyguard chambers, I'd like to have some of those at home: salesmen at your door? Samurai jump out and cut them to pieces.

Our last stop before McTripes was a pilgrimage to the Aritsugu Japanese knife store. At four and a half centuries old and eighteen generations they've had plenty of time to perfect their knives, which is why I didn't blink at paying $120 for one (there was a lot of blinking by Kenji and Gail though!). I bought a "deba", which completes my set of knives -- a paring knife, a long sashimi knife, and now the most fearsome of japanese knives -- the Deba. Kenji actually has two of these and offered to give one to me, but they are WAY too big, and I don't want to lose a finger, so I bought a small one. The deba is strong enough to cut through chicken and fish bones, and is the historically favored weapon of disgruntled housewives in Japan.


I looked at the popular stainless MAC knives, but I find them harder to sharpen because of the bevelled edge and well, lacking in soul

They even engraved NANAO in Kanji on the deba for free!

Nishida / Aomori Museum

We had another spa session this morning,





but not before having another excellent meal: a huge Japanese breakfast.


The best items from this menu were the home made tofu and Japanese style miso-egg

Last year, Kenji had a huge show in Aomori, and he has been in contact with one of the curators, named Emiko, who very generously offered to drive us around while in Aomori. There were also several other people from the museum to help out, all of whom fawned over Kenji and called him Sensei (teacher). Kenji seemed very happy with all of the attention, the Japanese breakfasts, his local dialect etc. It was strange to see him so at home in a place I had never really known, but I was happy to see him so completely in his element.

We were picked up at the spa by Emiko at ten and made our way up to the Nishida Sake Brewery. The back story for this trip begins back in Berkeley, where we were eating at our favorite sushi restaurant: Kirala. I decided to try out a sake and asked for a menu. I was really surprised to find an entry from Aomori (my dad's home town) called Nishida Denshu and showed it to him. It turned out that it was from the Nishida Sake Brewery, and the Nishida in question was one of my dad's friends from middle and high school -- Nishida-san! It also turned out that the sake was wonderful, so when we decided to go to Aomori, I pleaded with Kenji to write to Nishida-san to get us a tour of the factory. We subsequently learned that Nishida does not offer tours to anyone, and its actually not that easy to even buy his sake because he makes it in such small quantities, and it is highly sought after.

Happily, Nishida invited us to his house/brewery, but at the beginning of the day, we still didn't know if we were going to get to see the factory. It was out of town, which was a blessing for him, because it meant that his very old house survived the US fire bombing of Aomori (the same fire bombing which had utterly flattened all of Aomori, including my fathers large house... leaving a smoldering pit with the occasional fire proof warehouse left standing).

Anyway, to say that I was excited to see the source of the sake is an understatement. His factory and house is a sprawling complex, with a beautiful garden and old style house at its core. We got a tour of everything, including the machine which mills the rice,

to the storage tanks, where the rice/yeast/water slurry lives for one year


and finally the presses.

Interestingly, Nishida says that he gets the best sake from these old style presses rather than his fancy new filtration machine. He also showed us the well from which he gets the water with which the sakes is made

as well as some samples of different milling levels of the rice



I also had a chance to take some pictures of Nishida-sans beautiful enclosed garden.



And it turned out that Nishida-san is also a devotee of the Church of Hasselblad.
Nishida gave us excellent postcards, and two special bottles of Sake -- one of which is a brand new product.


From Nishida-san's we went to a local noodle place and had some excellent tempura-soba, and then on to the vast and expensive new Aomori prefectural museum. The highlights for me were the jaguars made of rope:


The hyper futuristic "Sleeper" style can't-be-anymore-white bathrooms
Incidentally, judging from the looks I got, the bathroom is one of the places where Japanese people do not approve of camera usage
the jomon ceramics (excavated at the museum site)

and of course the Munakatas

I'm sure there will one day be a Kenji section in that museum.
Some of the other things were some Marc Chagall theater backdrops:

and some really elegant and functional plywood chairs:
whose design I will probably copy (I got lots of close up pictures of the joints etc). The most bizarre thing was probably the huge robotic space baby thing which would started screaming and marching every 5 or 10 minutes or so. Sadly I was too much in awe of it to remember to take a picture.

On our way out of the museum, we encountered a guy doing pirouettes on a unicycle. Definitely not something you see everyday. Well, it got a whole lot weirder when the music started, and a troupe of them came cycling out from behind the museum and the lights and sound system started up


It was mesmerizing.


After a little rest at the JAL hotel downtown (the same place I had stayed with my dad back in 2000) the museum people threw a part for my dad. Chloe and I did our best to communicate, but mostly concentrated on drinking Nishida sake, and scarfing down the excellent food. The scallops and corn-mochi were awesome


but so was the sashimi and the five other dishes! Kenji, mom and I were all asked to give on the spot talks. I did my best, but who knows how it got translated!