KYOTO: Land of Shrines, Temples, Kimonos, and Geisha

On Saturday (Sept 9^th), we took the Bullet Train to Kyoto. What an efficient, clean way to travel! The Bullet Train or Shinkansen has a speed of approximately 200 MPH and got us to Kyoto in 2 ½ hours. In the 50-plus-year history of the Bullet Train, there has not been a single passenger fatality or injury due to derailments or collisions. Equally impressive, the Bullet Train has carried over 10 Billion Passengers and in the most recent reporting the average delay from the schedule per train was only 24 seconds. I think BART could learn a thing or two about how the Bullet Town operates!

A little bit about Kyoto before we talk about our first day. Kyoto is a metropolis of approximately two million people and is considered the cultural capital of Japan. It has over 2000 religious places-1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto Shrines, many of them dating back to the 700 and 800’s. An interesting fact about Kyoto was that it was originally on the list to be targeted for the atomic bomb in 1945 but at the insistence of the Secretary of War Henry Stinson, Kyoto was removed from the list. Henry had honeymooned in Kyoto and loved the place for its history and charm and saved it from the Atomic Bomb. It is the reason that, unlike Tokyo that suffered severe bombing in the war, Kyoto still has many ancient cultural landmarks.

Kyoto seems very rich in culture and heritage.  We walked around the narrow streets and saw many women and men exquisitely dressed in kimonos even in the 90 degree temperatures!  According to our guide Bret, the people of Kyoto also have an air about them.  He told us that in Japanese culture, the hosts will serve green tea at the end of a party or gathering to signify that the evening is over and it’s time for the guests to go home.  In Kyoto, the hosts serve green tea when their guests first walk through the door!

This morning we got up bright and early at 6:00 am to see the Torii Gates at Fushimi Inari-taisha. (Brad didn’t get much sleep last night because, of course, he watched his beloved Colorado Buffaloes beat Nebraska at 1:00 am in the morning here. Did you expect anything differently from him?) The 10,000 Torii Gates and the shrine(s) are one of the most popular tourist attractions in all of Japan. Hence our guide insisted that we get there to enjoy the area before all of the thousands of tourists descended upon it. The shrine was founded in the year 711 and the temple gates are the oldest in Japan. Their Vermilion color wards off evil spirits and represents the sun. The gates were truly a sight to be seen and we climbed up through about 2000 of them feeling like our sins had been absolved and our dreams and wishes might someday come true. Truly it was a spiritual place made even lovelier at dawn.

The rest of our day was spent at SanJusangendo (a Zen Buddhist Temple) and walking around a beautiful Zen Garden at Totofukuji temple. The SanJusangendo temple is famous for its 1001 Thousand-Armed Kannon Statues (Yes, they are supposed to have 1000 arms each but, I think they only depicted about 20 or so on the statues.) We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the Temple so this stock photo will have to do so you get an idea of how amazing this Temple was. The Zen Garden was just that…very Zen-like. It was built in the 1300’s and is a typical rock and sand garden. The monks at the temple groom the garden every seven-ten days and it takes about seven or eight hours. I am still very curious as to how they keep the circles and lines so perfect without a single footprint or line out of place. Can someone explain that to me?

We met together for lunch at an amazing Ramen restaurant in downtown Kyoto and then got very creative at a Roketsu dyeing studio. We learned the ancient art of wax-resistant art at a hands-on studio. The whole process can take up to 20 steps for completion although I think our group might have skipped a few steps in order to make it home in time for “happy hour.” We all picked out different stencils and then painted/traced our stencil onto fabric with wax. It was very important to put a LOT of wax on your fabric so we kept having to brush our paintings over and over. We were worried that our prints would look like one big blob but the helpful people in the studio coached us along the way. (Although the older grandmother giggled and laughed a lot at us and probably made a few disparaging remarks in Japanese about our lack of talent!) After we painted the wax on our fabrics, they were all placed in a large tub of indigo dye and soaked and poked a lot. Lots of rinses and different things happened next but we were all left with beautiful pieces of art and we ooohed and ahhhhed a lot about what amazing artists we were. (Although I am sure the Grandmother didn’t really think so!)

So…that’s it for our first 24 hours in Kyoto.  Tomorrow we’ll spend some time learning more about the geishas and the geisha culture here in Kyoto.  I thought I knew a little bit about the culture after reading “Memoirs of a Geisha” a while back but have found out that only about 80% of what was in that book was accurate.  And to make things worse, the Japanese hate that novel for its inaccurate depiction of a Geisha!  I hope to be enlightened tomorrow