Tsumago

Today we took a series of trains from Kyoto (bye bye Amherst House!!) to Tsumago. The trip required a layover in the boring and ugly town of Nakatsugawa, but Chloe and I were fine with it, having both been sickened by the train ride from Kyoto. The conductor had been a woman for one section of the train, and Kenji had jokingly but extremely loudly announced his displeasure at having a "female" drive the train. The other American tourists next to us did not seem particularly amused. From Nakatsugawa, we took another train to Tsumago



Tsumago is along the old post road from Kyoto to Edo, and had been written up in the New York Times. Gail had booked us into a guest house in Tsumago for the night. Someone had subsequently told us that it was a popular Gaijin destination, but we saw nothing but Japanese people when we got there! I'm not sure where all the Americans on the train were staing, but apparently not in Tsumago. We dropped off our luggage and because of the late-ish hour, took a taxi to Magome and walked the trail back to Tsumago. We stopped in at the Hinoki store:


At 8 km long, I strongly advised Kenji to take the taxi and start from the halfway point, but he refused and suprised both Chloe and I by hiking 90% of the trail and taking a taxi for the final bit because it was getting dark. We're not sure where he's getting the energy from, but he has no more excuses for not walking to Solano anymore: if you can walk five miles of mountain trails, you can walk the one mile on flat pavement. The post road itself was lovely, passing through Cedar and Bamboo forests as well as alongside small clusters of houses and rest houses.







The guest house itself was a traditional japanese house with ricepaper screens, tatami

and even a fish pond full of gigantic Koi

We had dinner,


which had small heavily salted and angry looking grilled fish:

and completely coincidentally had Koi as one of its dishes



and then took a bath. The town empties by around 6 PM, so I wandered around taking pictures with the Hasselblad for a while, then came back to go to sleep. Chloe and I slept soundly and comfortably on our futon, but my mom was kept awake by a snoring guy in the next room, who got up at 5:00 AM to chat with his wife for an hour. I have to say that a futon is really a lot better than all but the fanciest western style mattresses that you find in hotels. Said another way: a guest house futon is almost never a back breaker, while hotel matresses almost always are.

Chloe and Kenji along the main street of Tsumago

Katsura and Himeji

We started off the day by taking the subway and rail to Katsura Rikyu. It was raining quite hard, and by the time we got to the villa, our jackets, shoes and pants were all soaked through. Along the way I decided that we should start calling our cabin in Alta "Alta Rikyu". Maybe I'll make up signs and offer tours. The grounds and villas were spectacular but the tour was a little too structured, and even had a guard trailing along to sweep up stragglers. The combination of the guard telling us to move on, the interdiction of tripods AGAIN (WHY?) and the heavy rain made it pretty hard to get a decent shot in, but I gave it a few tries. Here are a few picture of the villa:





From Katsura, we took a cab to Kyoto station, where I took my now full (238 photos on a 512 MB card) memory stick to the camera store in the Porta underground mall for offloading to CD. It was a little over priced and took 40 minutes, but now the card is free for the rest of the trip! From here, we hopped on the Shinkansen to Himeji, where it thankfully was not raining, and walked the grounds of the castle.

I took a few pictures




And got a few on digital which I was unable to get on film before the bird flew away!



The castle and it's grounds are impressive and beautiful in a way that defies description, at least by me. You can see photos of it beforehand, read about it in twenty different books or take a virtual 3D tour, but nothing prepares you for it's grandeur. This goes for the outside of course, but most especially when you tour the interior, with it's meter thick supports which reach almost from bottom to top.


Here is a photo of the wooden lattice of the castle.


And a few more views.






It truly is one of the most elegant and impressive man made structures that I have ever seen.

We went to dinner at the same restaurant as yesterday and had mostly the same things, with the addition of a Kyoto green vegetable soup and few other interesting things. In order we have (skimmed tofu, some kind of soup that I forgot the name of -- I think it had fried tofu in it though, cuttlefish, hokke, Kyoto vegetable soup:






Desert was sesame (!) and vanilla ice cream in mochi. Although I enjoy trying strange ice cream flavors, sesame ice cream ... sucks.

Chloe and Gail's Nara adventure

Special Guest Blog entry by Chloe!!!

This entry is a guest blog by Chloe because Max decided to forgo a trip to Nara in favor of wandering the streets of Kyoto searching for Geisha with Kenji.
We spent most of the morning trekking around Kyoto and, because Max's shoulder was bothering him, I was relegated to the role of camera sherpa. Max, Gail, and Kenji had decided to skip Nara because they were tired and had already seen the city. I agreed since I figured the temples in and around Kyoto would suffice. At lunch someone mentioned that Nara housed a 20m tall Buddha, one of the biggest bronze statues in the world! This, in conjunction with lugging the camera equipment around for a few hours that morning, made me decide to visit Nara. I announced that I was going alone to Nara to see the Buddha (thus no camera bag to carry!). This was greeted with an immediate offer by Kenji to accompany me since I have no japanese language skills and would most likely end up on the wrong train or stranded unable to return to Kyoto. After walking around all morning in the hot sun Kenji was a little worse for wear but his chivalry forced him to make the offer. After fruitlessly trying to convince Kenji that I would be able to navigate my way around Nara and the train station, Gail offered to accompany me. So the girls set out to Nara meaving Max and Kenji to their own devices for a few hours. After a calm and uneventful 45 minute train ride we arrived at the Nara train station and took a cab to the Nigatsu-do, an enormous temple overlooking Nara


Since arriving in Japan I hadn't seen much in the way of wildlife (unless you consider the frighteningly large Japanese carp wildlife) and I was rather excited to see deer wandering around the temples. Gail was looking at me suspiciously as I made little cooing sounds, remarking on how cute and bambi like they were.

I soon realized that while a few deer are cute, lots of deer are rather scary. As we continued down towards Todai temple and the Daibutsu-den where the Buddha was housed we heard the hysterical crying of a little girl. I looked over and saw two small children trying desperately to eat ice cream while their father valiantly attempted to stave off the marauding deer with his backpack. This was a losing proposition as he was far outnumbered. Here's one guarding the temple entrance.


We arrived at the impressive Daibutsu-den (apparently the largest wooden building in the world!) and there was the Buddha


I could not believe the sheer size of the statue and how inconsequential all the viewers looked in comparison. Here's a photo with people in the foreground for scale.


Perhaps my favorite statues were these warrior heads, or Max and Kenji as I have named them (Max is on the right).


We continued down towards the Nara train station and once out of the temple area we were able to eat ice cream unmolested by deer (green tea "macha" for me). Another smooth train ride back and we were ready for dinner with Max and Kenji. We hurried back to the Doshisha only to find it deserted and Max and Kenji just returning from a multi-course dinner! Unfortunately no restaurants in the area looked the least bit inviting (completely empty at 7pm, not a good sign) and we ended up getting take out noodles from the neighborhood 7-11. Better than a US 7-11, but not very good. At least I got some Pocky (chocolate dipped cookie sticks) for dessert.

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.