Kyoto Trip

In November, I decided it was time for a little vacation. I checked out the trips that were going to be run by the local tour company and decided to go on the guided tour to Kyoto and Nara. An interesting historical fact is that Kyoto and Nara were the two previous capitals of Japan before it was decided to make Tokyo(previously called Edo) the current capital. Nara was the original capital before it moved to Kyoto. Kyoto is still an important city in Japan, having a large number of temples and shrines in the area and one of the Imperial palaces. You can only visit one of the Imperial palaces by making special arrangements with the organization in charge of maintaining them, so I wasn't able to go this time.

The first day we went to the Heian Jingu shrine, where I bought my Japanese temple stamp book and got my first entry put in. The idea is pretty interesting, but I dislike the overly commercial nature of the setup. I'm fine with paying for the book, but then you also have to pay 300 yen to have one of the monks sign it and enter the seal for the temple on one of the pages. 300 yen was the price at all of the temples/shrines that we visited during our trip. Going to a temple or shrine in Japan is an extremely tourist-type attraction with lots of souvenirs to be bought, such as various charms for specific types of good luck. I saw charms for success on examinations and driving safety, among others.

Front cover of my shrine stamp book

Stamped pages

 Going to the temple itself may be free or require payment, but there are usually sections where you have to pay for admission. For example, the Heian Jingu shrine has an extended garden that you can explore behind the shrine buildings, but you have to pay for admission. I was curious to see it, so I coughed up the money and took the walking tour. The first half was pretty dull since it wasn't the best season for gardens. The second half led around a pond, which was much more scenic, with the fall trees being reflected beautifully in the water.

After our visit to the temple, we went to see a Maiko perform at a local museum. A Maiko is basically an apprentice Geisha. I wasn't too interested in this part of the tour, but I did take a few pictures. To me, it seems like kind of a sad life for a person to follow, since they seem to be like living dolls constantly on display just to amuse other people. Her day was pretty much set for doing the same brief presentation to different groups of about 30 - 50 people. After taking a few pictures, I just wandered around the museum.

On our second day, we went to a nature preserve where they have lots of deer roaming around. You can buy special deer crackers to feed them, which I tried, thinking it would be a good opportunity to get a picture of a deer. I wasn't prepared for how brazen the deer were. The crackers came wrapped with a simple paper band, but I didn't even get a chance to take it off before I was being literally mobbed by several deer. I tried to get some distance and take my time to compose myself for a picture, but one deer was annoyingly persistent and was starting to chew on my shirt because I wasn't giving him all my crackers. I had wanted to try giving them to different deer, but he ended up getting all of my crackers because I just wanted to get away from him at the point.

After ditching the deer, I headed over to the Todaiji temple grounds to see the large Buddha statue there. We were allowed to walk around it and see it from several different angles. They had a lot of other interesting displays and artifacts in the building where it was housed as well.

Dai-Butsu(Big Buddha Statue)

Another statue in the building

One of the pillars in the building has a hole the size of the Buddha's statues nostril that you can crawl through if you are small enough to fit. It's supposed to be good luck. Since it's a small hole, and I am decidedly not a small person, I didn't even try. You basically have to be a kid or very small adult to fit through.

Hole in pillar with someone trying to crawl through

After we were done at the temple, we had free time to explore Kyoto. They had given us a map on the bus while we were driving to Kyoto and I had seen several things that had interested me. Unfortunately, most of them closed around the time we got back, but there was one that had longer hours and was fairly close to our hotel. As soon as we got back, I headed off to find the Shinsengumi Historical site at the Yagi house. The Shinsengumi were a band of samurai policemen active around the time of the Meiji Restoration, when Japan started modernizing. They gave us a tour of the house and a short talk about the history of the Shinsengumi, but it was all in Japanese, so I only understood a small fraction of it. I'm sure it was fairly interesting. Afterwards, I got the tour guide to take a picture of me in front of the house before they served us tea and dessert. I have to say that going there was one of the high points of the trip for me.

Afterwards, I got dinner and went to see the light show at a local temple. It was a fairly long walk, but it was definitely a good opportunity for photos. It was definitely worth the money I paid to get in.

On the last day of the trip, we went on a tram ride through the Hozu river gorge and had the chance to take pictures of the gorge. I took some pictures, but mostly I enjoyed the opportunity to sit down for a while, since we had been doing a lot of walking on the trip.

After arriving at the tram's destination, we were allowed to explore the area on our own while making our way to where the bus was waiting. I visited the garden at Tenryu-ji temple, which is a famous Japanese garden and took a lot of pictures.

Pictures from the garden at Tenryu-ji Temple

Then I made my way over to the temple entrance, where I had just enough time to get another stamp in my shrine book. I really just wanted that stamp because the temple has a cool name: Temple of the Heavenly Dragon. After that I hurried down to the bus location, looking for a spot where I could grab a quick bite to eat along the way. I ended up going to another Tonkatsu restaurant and having curry, which I had several times during this trip. After eating in a hurry, I had just enough time to get to the bus. I knew it was fairly close to where I had gotten lunch, but I forgot the exact location and ended up having to call the tour guide for the bus location. Her directions were a little confusing and I ended up going to the wrong parking lot, which made me a little bit late. She ended up having to come look for me.

Then we were off to our last stop of the tour: Kinkakuji Temple, the home of the famous Golden Pavilion. There were a ton of people there, considering it was a Tuesday afternoon. I briefly wondering if anyone in Japan actually worked or went to school because the place was literally packed. We followed the path around the temple grounds and got an opportunity to take pictures of the Golden Pavilion(entry prohibited) and get our shrine books stamped before it was time to head back to the bus and go home. All in all, it was a good trip, but I will definitely go on my own next time and see what I want to see. I'd like to go see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gozan_no_Okuribi, but I'm not sure I want to deal with the crowds that will be there.

Kokura Gion Daiko Festival

Confession: I am a terrible blogger. The event that I'm just blogging about now happened 6 months ago. That being said, here we go.

Japan has a lot of festivals during the year. I found out about this particular one through a local travel agency. For those who don't know, Daiko or Taiko is a type of Japanese drum, usually quite large. The event was basically a drum competition between groups from all over Japan. Each group designs a portable shrine with a drum attached to the front and parades in succession in front of the audience and judges, who are either seated in bleachers or just standing around the parade area. Here is a picture of one of the shrines.

On the day of the event, our group got there a few hours before the official start of the drum competition, so we had time to check out the surrounding area beforehand. After buying a ticket for a seat in the bleachers, I went exploring and found the local mall. By some amazing coincidence, the mall had a traveling exhibit in a small museum. Can you guess what the exhibit was? A traveling exhibition of Hokusai pieces from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Hokusai is probably the most famous ukiyo-e artist, who is most famous for his Great Wave print. Seeing the advertisements in the mall, I couldn't resist the temptation to go and see the exhibit. There were a lot of good pieces in the exhibit and I grabbed a few souvenirs from the souvenir store on my way out.

I made it back to the main parade area just in time to catch the opening ceremony, which consisted of a group of guys carrying a shrine down the main parade area, then heaving it in the air a few times. It was fun to watch and I was in the perfect position to get a video of it.

I felt bad for the guys carrying that thing. It was super-hot that day. Anyway, after they passed by, I was able to get back to the bleachers and watch the drum competition commence. Since I was one of the last ones to get to the bleachers, I was forced to stand for a while. Although I would have liked to sit down at that point, it was actually good, since it gave me a good vantage point for taking pictures of the event, which you can see on my Facebook page. After about an hour or so, I got tired of watching the parade and standing in the heat, so I decided to wander around some more. There was a large castle nearby, so I took some pictures of that. I think it was closed for the festival, so I couldn't actually go see it in person that day, which was a little unfortunate. 

Since the drum competition was part of a larger festival, there were a lot of booths set up to sell food, items, and also for playing some carnival type games. The tour guides had given us a map of the local area in advance, and I had seen something that particularly interested me, so I headed off to find one of my favorite places in any area, the local bookstore! I browsed the shelves for a while and ended up getting some manga volumes and possibly also a CD, IIRC. By that point, I was getting hungry, so I headed back to the mall and got some food. And then it was time to go back to the bus for the trip home. I had to find an alternate route to avoid the crowds and some shrine bearers coming the way I had originally come down and saw the entrance to the castle along the way, which I had missed earlier.

That's it for now. Hopefully it won't be this long before my next post! :)