Goo, where pig is king
Somehow, I’d managed to go out a gate that was considerably above the one I’d gone in, but at least I knew how to deal with that, so I headed down the street the hotel was on. There were a lot of wedding hotels on one part of the strip, and a shrine which was apparently doing wedding business, although it was also a historic site, the Goo Shrine. Apparently, in the 800s, a crazed monk tried to take over the country, and a general loyal to the king did battle with him and was repulsed. Wounded in the leg, he made a retreat, but he wasn’t doing too well. Suddenly, out in the country, 400 wild pigs appeared to him and guided him to a place of safety. He recovered, defeated the monk, and built this shrine, which, instead of the traditional lion-dogs guarding it, has pigs! There were also hundreds of toy and ceramic and wooden pigs, no doubt donated by satisfied customers who’d used the shrine. Back in the street, I passed the hotel, hopped on the subway, headed to the station, and went from there to my second UNESCO site in two days, To-ji, the temple which is Kyoto’s symbol.
To-ji
It feels redundant and silly to set down impressions of a place like this, which overwhelms and confounds them, especially in a superficial traveller like myself who lacks a lot (although not all) of the background to go in deeper. I must say that the so-called “lecture hall,” with all the statues supposedly carved by the founder, would be hard to lecture in, since nearly the entire interior, a considerable volume, is filled by them. I don’t know what he was like as a theorist or theologian, nor do I know much about the Esoteric Buddhism he introduced, but he was a hell of a sculptor. There was a caption in English which said that the statues were working together for peace for all nations, and I hoped they were doing their job. The feeling inside was certainly peaceful, but I also detected a tension, which might have been my own. The next hall had three more statues flanked by renderings of lotuses, also spectacular. I wandered the garden some, checked out the working buildings (four monks were standing chanting sutras), saw that the museum was closed until the 20th, and walked around the 200-foot pagoda.
The book said that the “Rashomon site” was nearby, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps it’s just there and not marked; been a long time since I saw the film. I wandered the streets behind the temple and found the sub-temple to its north, but it, too, was closed, as it is most of the time. It was getting hotter and hotter, and I reflected that I had, after all, resolved to take the day off and take care of some menial business, like washing my socks. So I walked back to the station, found the subway, and came back to the hotel, stopping off at the neighborhood 7-11 for a couple of those triangular rice-and-nori things Carl had said were so good. They were, although the fillings were meager enough that I had no idea what they were.
Did the laundry, checked the internet for news -- not much -- and then cruised around for a possible replacement for this hotel, which I planned to move from tomorrow. Either the ANA or the Kyoto would be both affordable and better in terms of service and room. Also browsed the book for a dinner recommendation, and found a place that’s both good and has an English menu. What the hell, after last night I was a bit cowed by dining, so I decided to go there. After I move, I can also start exploring again, and maybe I will, after all, be able to see a lot of this city.
Which I certainly got to do tonight. Not a lot in terms of geography, but I think I know where everybody in Kyoto was. I’d chickened out, as I said, and gone for this place with the English menu, but to get there, I had to take the subway two stops and then walk down what looked like a long street. I saw from the map of the area in the book that it had a number of the listed restaurants and shops, but I wasn’t prepared for what was there: it was Shiji, a long, brightly lit, covered-sidewalk street lined with the noisiest, busiest places I’d yet seen here. Restaurants, fast-food joints, stores of every description, and lots and lots of people.
As it turned out, I was walking towards the river and Pontocho, one of the two geisha districts, and when I checked the little map I’d made from the map in the book, I noticed that the restaurant I was heading to, Yamatomi, was up the next-to-last of the narrow streets which transect the main street. These are lined with restaurants, bars, and clubs, and people patronizing them. I walked and walked up the thing, and didn’t see the place, which I (again) assumed would have a bilingual sign, but there was a restaurant worker smoking a cigarette on a break, and I asked him, and he said, in perfect English, “Right over there.” Walking in, I was exuberantly greeted by a chubby older woman, and urged to sit at the counter, which I did. She snapped “English menu!” to someone and one appeared. I started out with a soup with fried tofu in it, followed up with two pieces of eggplant with two different kinds of miso (one blonde, one dark and sweet), then had the tempura vegetable combo and the tempura squid. Too much, I guess, and definitely too greasy, but the woman and I communicated in broken English, she pointed out her daughter who was helping her run the shop, and, when she went to take a telephone call (I think she may have been some kind of ex-geisha, although I might be wrong here), the cook behind the counter came up and turned out to speak pretty good English.
As I was finishing up, a whole bunch of Japanese tourists came from upstairs, pretty drunk, and one man came over and introduced himself. I’ve forgotten his name, but he was from Hokkaido, specifically Sapporo, and told me he was on vacation, too. He advised me to come to Sapporo, saying it was Japan’s most beautiful city, and told me he had a friend from Texas in Sapporo who taught English. Mama-san and her daughter, meanwhile, were giggling German at me, and the whole experience was pretty much fun. Finally, I disengaged myself and threaded my way back through the crowd, which by this point was gaining lots of busking young Japanese guys with rock and roll attitudes, attended by adoring young girls. They were playing very competent rock and roll with Japanese lyrics, and there seemed to be a lot of competition among them for attention from the crowd, which was nonetheless going its own way, for the most part. I finally got to the subway and went back to the hotel.
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