But the big goal today was the Sanju-Sangen-Do temple with the1001 Kannon statues, and I figured out from the city’s tourist brochure, which makes an excellent supplement to the book, how to get there using public transportation. This proved quite easy: I bought a two-day transport card from the concierge, and went down into the subway. The train came, lots of people got off, and I got on. I sat there while a recorded voice said something over and over, and then someone knocked on my head with his fist, like I was a door. Turned out the train was out of service, and I wasn’t supposed to be on it. So I got out and finally the real train came. Guess that’s how they treat blockheads here, although all the other signs in the subway are bilingual. Why wasn’t there a sign telling me not to get on? After all, I noticed later, there were bilingual “Out of Service” signs in the Tokyo subway.
From the subway to the bus, which was an imitation cable-car, and thence to the temple. But across the street was the city museum, and I thought maybe that would provide a better orientation as a starter. I was right: although the collection isn’t as filled with stunning masterpieces as the one in Ueno Park in Tokyo, the captioning is simple and easy to follow, and so I was able to make sense out of the progression of eras for the first time since I’ve been here. (It’s been all downhill since the Heian, if you ask me).
One caption really got me: in discussing Zen painting it said “Before we can appreciate the painting, we have to locate ourselves in it.” I realized in a flash that that’s something I’ve been doing forever, and that it works with Western painting, although I’d also bet this kind of theory is way out of fashion at the moment. Anathema, even. But what a wonderful thought.
After making the fortuitous discovery of a lot of sculpture and inscribed stones in a sort of garden by the toilets, I left and headed across the street to the temple. There’s only one thing here, but what a thing! This huge long hall (120 meters long) is filled with literally 1001 statues of Kannon, one huge central Kannon, 28 guardian deities (I liked the guy playing the guitar-like instrument), and two gods of wind and thunder flanking the whole shebang. It’s also a working temple: there’s no sign to the “exhibit,” but to “worship.” And people do. They’re praying, writing things on candles, burning incense, writing things on slats of wood to burn, and generally doing the thing the temple was built to do. The whole thing dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, and it’s pretty overwhelming.
Sanju-Sangen-do
So was the heat when I got out. Still, there were lots more things to see in the vicinity, and it seemed pretty easy to get to them. Kiyomizu-dera, the temple on the hill, seemed to be a good bet, so after superficially looking at a couple of places on the way, not paying to go in, I headed up a narrow street that went up the side of a hill. It was jammed with souvenir shops, so I knew I was headed the right way, and knew even more when school groups, led by shouting women with pennants, started appearing along the way. This temple is a complete and total mystery. Like Sanju-Sangen-Do, it’s another UNESCO landmark, in part because of the way it hangs off the hill, supported by beams in a very modern way. As I got there, a group of geishas was hanging around, and given that it was about 95, I felt very sorry for them. They had bewitched some teenage boys, though, who were giving them stuff, and were mincing along on their high-rise clogs. Who would ever choose this life? And what does it consist of? (I’d been warned by old Japan experts not to read the Memoirs of a Geisha novel, and I hadn’t). The whole admixture of modern and ancient in this culture just gets more and more confusing the longer I look at it.
Kiomizu-dera
Geishas in the heat
And it was certainly in full force here. Again, this is a working temple, with zillions of sub-temples around it, and even tiny rocks carved with Buddha images with red cloth adorning them. People have clearly come here to fulfill vows or to make them. One feature is many stands where you pay some money and they hand you a cylinder which you shake for a while, then extract a chopstick-like stick from it and read the number on it to the attendant, who takes a fortune out of a cubbyhole with that number. Another thing was a place where several streams of water were coming out of a series of pipes which went into a shrine-like building. Hundreds of schoolkids were standing in line for this, then getting on a platform, extending a cup on a long pole, catching some of the water and drinking it. This produced a lot of giggles. No idea what was going on. I apparently missed some sacred groves and a sacred waterfall, but the heat was getting to me.
Eventually, I found my way to the exit, and went down the hill on another street, which was even more clogged with shops and tourists, although I didn’t see much of quality. As the book mentioned, it drops you at a shop called Shichimaya Honpo, which specializes in a chili-powder mixture and also little ceramic vessels to put it in. It’s delicious stuff, and powerful, too, from my sampling, and some of the vessels are wonderfully made. I bought one, and of course it came with a packet of the stuff. From there, you head down some steps onto a street called Sannenzaka, paved with stones and lined with very refined tea-shops. Unfortunately, I didn’t want tea and tea-sweets, and this seemed to be all there was there, although I’d sampled a triangular ravioli-like thing with a bit of red-bean paste in it which was a typical tea-sweet earlier and found it nice enough. The tourists turned off to head to Maruyama Park, but I went towards the bottom and found a sushi-shop with an English menu posted outside. I went in and found myself alone with the chef, ordered some rolls with pickles inside, and had a nice lunch, although the chef seemed pretty drunk and managed to spill his glass of sake while he was making preparations for the evening crowd. It was quarter of two, so I guess the rush was over.
Sannenzaka, I think
At the bottom of the hill is another pagoda, but there was no info and the book was also unsure of exactly what it was, and I turned right on a main street and walked until I got to the park. There, the main temple was under construction so I continued to wander around and, knowing I was at the top of the Gion district, decided to go down into it. The book says it’s charming, but nothing was charming in this heat. I turned onto a street called Hanami-koji, which is lined with historic tea-houses, and walked straight into what must have been a funeral. Way up ahead, I could see what looked like a wooden boat, and there were scores of people dressed in black suits and kimonos. Police were everywhere. The street emptied out fast after the cars left, and I found myself at what I found later was Kennin-ji, one of the earlier Zen temples, but one which is not viewable. Also, there was no documentation, so I had no idea what it was. I was getting delirious in the heat, so I was very happy to see the mystery pagoda looming up at the top of one street and headed up to a main artery where I knew the 100 bus, which would take me back to the station, would be. Unfortunately, school had just let out, and I stood there inches from the street with dozens of giggling, screaming schoolgirls and boys. The bus stop doubled as a taxi-stand, though, and when a taxi came along, I decided the hell with the bus-pass, and jumped in and went back to the hotel, where I figured a shower and some lounging around would be a very good idea. I’d heard of Kyoto temple burn, and I was feeling it. Incense had gotten inside my nose, and I was reeling from an overdose of imagery (which is what you get looking at 1001 anythings, I guess). Time to calm down.
And that was a good idea. I lazed around in a yukata after the shower, typed this up, and started thinking about dinner. I had an idea for a place I wanted to go, so I went to the concierge and asked her if she’d call to make sure they’d take me, that I wouldn’t have to sit on tatami, and maybe someone had some rudimentary English. She placed the call, but got an answering machine, so she checked her extensive records and discovered they were closed Tuesdays. I told her of the place I’d tried to find the previous night, the yakitori place, and she said “Oh, I know a good yakitori place, called Agatha.” This was the same place I’d found closed. “They moved,” she said, and gave me their card. They were about 100 feet from the awful place I’d eaten at last night!
Agatha is a very odd place, but quite worthy of the two stars the book gives it. Yakitori is a deal whereby stuff is threaded onto a wooden skewer and charcoal grilled. It gets painted with glaze, dipped in miso, all kinds of things, but the main thing is grilling to the perfect point. I knew it was going to be okay because this time “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” was being sung by Stevie Wonder, on a CD, the way God intended it to be. The restaurant is named after the late Dame Christie, and, indeed, the set menus are named Poirot, Marple, and Christie. I took the Marple, because it had the most skewers (10) and didn’t include dessert, which looked odd (pear sherbet, yeah, but “milky sorbet with sweet balsamic flavor?”). In no particular order, I got octopus, an asparagus spear wrapped with ham, amazing beef, chicken meatballs, “wheat protein” with two kinds of miso, a huge prawn, a ham and cheese roll which was resistant to the chopsticks and had to be popped in my mouth at once, one which escapes me now, and then the piece de resistance, a thing of salmon with a garlic mayonnaise-y sauce in a pocket made of thinly shaved potato, which used two skewers to hold it together, and which I considered cheating until I tasted it. I was thinking of ordering another of the beef skewers, but this was such a perfect end I passed. The flavors lingered with me well into the night, which I mean in the best possible sense.
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