I’d discovered a bakery nearby, which seemed like a good breakfast alternative, as well as a way to probe the weird fascination and interpretation of the West that is rampant here. I bought too much stuff, including a potato-salad sandwich (well, who could resist that? It wasn’t bad, and provided insight into those inch-thick pieces of toast you get here because they’d taken one of those slices of white bread and sliced it about 7/8 of the way down before adding the filling.), an odd cheese roll covered with hot chili powder, and some boxed coffee. I avoided sugary stuff because I knew the coffee would have plenty, and this turned out to be a good strategy for a day that involved a lot of physical exercise.
My intention was to hit the Philosopher’s Walk, a place where a noted thinker of the post-war era had taken his constitutional every day until his death in 1958. It was supposed to be lovely, although mostly in the spring when it’s loaded with cherry-blossoms. There were also a lot of temples in the area, and it seemed like a good idea to do both. What was really cool was that the whole thing was just a short subway ride away from the station just under the hotel, which was quite convenient.
First stop was the Museum of Traditional Crafts, which was almost impossible to find. It turns out to be in the basement of the local convention center, and is only identified by its Japanese name. But, like the one in Kanazawa, it was brilliantly annotated and had some excellent videos illustrating some of the craftspeople in action. I saw a guy put together a little chest of drawers without nails which fit so perfectly that he had problems with the last drawer, because when he slid it in, the displaced air would puff another one out. He had to deal with this several times before it sat still. That’s precision: these people work without plans. There was even a room where some people were banging out gold inlay, but the products were so garish after what I’d just seen that I did a quick turn and left. I guess the reason places like this are more tourist-friendly is that you can leave them and actually buy the stuff they have on display. You just can’t go out and buy an Important Cultural Property on the open market.
It would be easy for me to criticize myself for doing these nice air-conditioned museums first thing, before the heat of the day really gets going, but whereas yesterday I could easily have visited the temple beforehand, then gone to the museum, this really seemed like the first logical stop today. The Heian Shrine was just up the street, and I went to look at it, all red and garish, and wasn’t much moved, although it seems to play a significant role in local affairs. After a quick turn, I headed off to yet another temple, Nanzen-ji.
Garden at Nanzen-ji
It was here that temple burn set in definitively, although this is yet another UNESCO site (does anyplace in the world have more of them thant Kyoto, I wonder?). The gardens were astonishing, and the paintings on the screens, too. It’s a Zen temple, so of course the gardens are going to be challenging, and the paintings, which were largely of tigers, with the occasional lion or leopard, made me wonder: were there ever big cats in Japan? Where did these people get the models for these (admittedly not all that accurate) depictions? But I was beginning to feel dragged, and the last temple on my list would do me in.
The Philosopher’s Walk beckoned, though, having come highly recommended. The heat was now upon us, and so, dammit, were the school-groups. Chatter, chatter, chatter, giggle, giggle, giggle. These kids, of course, are part of the tradition, and an active one, at that. But there’s something really oppressive about their conformity, their uniforms, and their behavior. Of the adults I’ve seen, the vast majority of the Japanese have been women. Apparently a few years ago, JR had a slogan for the Shinkansen: “Let’s go to Kyoto!,” the idea being that if you didn’t have anything to do, you could hop on the train, take in a temple or two, and be home for dinner. Thus, the commercial streets leading to the attractions tend to be lined with tea and coffee places that are often Western in aspect and aimed at the ladies who like calories and French names and appointments. You can’t but start to think of the bored women whose lives are centered around workaholic husbands who die of stress-related illnesses well before their time has come, Japan being a notoriously long-lived country. Hubby comes home, dumps some money on the table, and says “Here, go do something.” Thus the profusion of luxury stores (even Kanazawa had a high-end mall), the endless tea-sweets, the high-end fashion. And the Philosopher’s Walk was no exception. Had I wanted coffee and eclairs to relieve the hike, I would have had no problem finding them.
Round house on the Philosopher's Walk
It does, however, go in a straight line through an upscale neighborhood, and you get to peek into the lives of normal rich people, some of whom have exquisite gardens in the Japanese style (when it’s work you do yourself, or your own home, you don’t try for the French formal approach, I guess), and at least it’s shady and runs along a canal, so you have running water for a companion.
Ginkaku-ji
And you end up at the approach to yet another UNESCO temple, Ginkaku-ji, which is also Zen. It’s got a great garden, but there’s no access to any of the buildings, and the walk takes you way the hell up the hillside so you can see the ozone layer settling over Kyoto. (Ironic that this is where the global warming treaty was hashed out, because Japan’s got a particulate pollution problem that reminds me of L.A. thirty years ago. On the other hand, if someone made me come here, I’d sign anything they put in front of me, particularly after dinner). I finally decided that this was not where I wanted to be, amidst the schoolgirls (too bad these women all marry and settle into these pampered lifestyles by the time they’re 30: they’re amazingly attractive for the most part, but I wonder just how many rebellious intellects there are in this country), so I found my way out and walked philosophically back along the trail, watching the fish in the canal who swim against the current (well, at least some organisms do that here!). Eventually, I discovered that if you turn right where I’d turned left a few hours earlier, you reach a subway station which deposits you under the Kyoto Hotel, so I could have ended up at the nice air-conditioned museum. Ah, well. As a bit of poetic justice, I got on one of the trains that ends at my station, the same one I’d gotten knocked on the head for yesterday.
Dinner was at the place I couldn’t go last night, Kurokawa, and for the most part it was pleasant. Little tiny place with a counter, a family-owned izakaya yet again. Dad and son doing the cooking and Mom and sis doing the serving. The concierge must have done a real number on the guy, because when I poked my head in he welcomed me effusively and made it known that he would serve me real Kyoto food. I started out with some mixed vegetables, sort of salad-y, and then we moved on to a soup with fried tofu in it. Various other concoctions followed, including squid with that awful grey yam jelly and, of all things, potato salad. There were two women sitting to my left, one rather young and mostly drinking choshu, the other, who didn’t look Japanese, had some English and helped translate. A sullen couple from Hokkaido was also there, but they didn’t contribute much, despite our host’s trying to liven them up. After the sort-of-English-speaking woman left, and I knew I was getting to the end of my meal, because I’d been served a sort of rice casserole, a guy in a suit came in. I’m of course not sure what he said, but the word “gaijin” appeared in his speech. My guess is he came in and said “What, Kurokawa, you’re serving gaijin now?” The host, from what I could, again, infer, said “He’s American, and he eats with chopsticks like a real Japanese person. No knife, no fork.” This last was in English. “You doctor?” the guy asked me. “No, journalist,” I told him. I’d been served some slices of nashi, and a tiny fork, but the host grabbed a very small chopstick and handed it to me. “Japanese chopstick,” he explained in English, so I impaled the nashi slice on it, looked inquiringly, and he nodded, so I ate it that way. This seemed to mollify the newcomer, and right about then, the vegetable delivery came, which seemed like an odd time -- it was about 10:30 -- to have that happen. The son tore into it like it was Christmas, though, and the host regaled me with the uniquely Kyotoan ingredients in the bag: spherical eggplants, kabocha squash (which he said was pumpkin, and, in fact, the word translates like that), and one or two other things. Eventually, I took my leave. I realized, though, that I’d been patronized, treated like the pet foreigner. This may be the price one pays for authentic food, though.
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