The calves are not responding well to all this walking. Stretching session this late afternoon and I’m still feeling pretty stiff.
Last night we wandered in the banana district of town, which is a euphemism for a male thing that sometimes looks like the fruit. Nothing was on show so Alex got a bit disappointed. But we found a counter restaurant for a maximum of six, and ate there. The guy was real nice, jokey and eager to please, like most people we’ve come across so far (this evening in the train 2 women followed us on the wrong line for them thinking we’d made a mistake – we hadn’t, so that got off and turned round). It was just us and him, he knew five food words in English and us nothing in Japanese but we got by. He talked about beefoo and his wifoo.
I had pickles and cabbage salad, Alex tempura veggies and SHRIMP, which she ate like a big girl. Besides, she didn’t die, so there may be an opening here.
We got home, read for 10 minutes and fell asleep like logs of Lao frangipani tree. Amazing how well we’re sleeping here: the cold air, the walking, the opaque curtains, the silent streets, all these combine to give us a rest like we haven’t had in over a year. Still, we’re knackered.
Today was cultural day as we headed for Ryoanji and the golden temple. I’ve known about the former for years. It started when I got into architecture all the way back, and cropped up again when I worked on my PhD thesis as John Cage was deeply influenced by it. He even wrote pieces with this title.
Well, I was a bit underwhelmed really. It’s a single walled garden 25m x 10m. You sit, think profound things, walk around the house and leave. It was nice, don’t misunderstand me, but not as impressive as I thought it would be. The landscape gardens around the shrine are very pretty. We walked around the lake twice and ended up eating at the shrine’s restaurant, a VERY traditional place in its own big Japanese garden. The tables were 30cm high, you sat on flat cushions on the tatamis. There’s glass openings at the bottom of the sliding doors, which become rice-paper after 60cm or so. It’s very uncomfortable for us, but it feels like you’re a samurai of sorts, and it’s cool. Food was expensive but original and pretty good. One more tick on our list. The knees and back won’t withstand a lot more of those tortures.
Then we walked to Kinkaku-ji, the golden temple. Yeah… Same feeling as previously: not flooded with gasping awe. Nice yes, but you see it and you think ‘ok, what next?’. It’s a lovely pavilion whose 2nd and 3rd floors are all golden (inside and out), so it looks pretty spectacular what with the wooden hill backdrop and lake and what have you. But that’s it. And you can’t go in. So you follow the crowd, most of which seems to be made up of Chinese groups, along the narrow path which takes you round the back and up the hillock to exit by drink-vending machines and ice-cream stalls.
What was much more interesting we thought was our walking through the locals streets to go from the train stations to the temples and vice-versa. Very endearing. Extremely quiet, again, but far from dead: there’s all the life you want there, it just goes on as if no one wanted to awaken a nearby monster. Lots of houses, even shabby ones, seem to have a garden of sorts, with Japanese pine trees most likely. The atmosphere is just right, just lovely. No one laughs at you for being a foreigner (a Chinese kid on the train did have to point out to her parents ‘waiguoren’ as she looked at me; when I replied ‘ni ye shi waiguoren’, which means ‘you too are a foreigner’, she clammed up).
Yep, we like it.
The bikes and motorbikes don’t appear to be secured. Looks weird, wrong and wonderful. I saw a few big bikes on the road today: Hayabusas, Super Fours and ZZ1400s. All Japanese. I’m still to spot a non Jap bike.
One of the questions that we had before arriving was ‘how long before we beg for non Japanese food?’. So far we’re still happily eating away at the local cuisine, which is very varied and subtle and delicious. Breakfast at the hotel is a dream.
Speaking of which, it’s nearly time to meet up with Dom and Kat on the bridge over the river Kamo. I have a feeling I’m going to zap and gobble up one of those scrumptious pancakes. I know I’m bad. Bad boy.
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