Sunday in Kyoto

Beautiful wool shop.

Today is a REALLY hot day: Max 27 degrees. Very unseasonable for November. First stop Roanji Temple, with its beautiful gardens. Second stop Golden Temple. It’s still very very busy, still the long weekend and many people are visiting these temples today. It’s really interesting to me to see what people are wearing: fashions are very different in Japan. It’s an inspiration just to sit and watch people go by.

These temple gardens are a joy to walk through, but we never see a single monk. What are the monks doing while all the tourists are here? The Golden Temple is perhaps the biggest attraction in Kyoto. It is actually gold coloured all over and many people want to have photos taken across the lake with the temple in the background. You have to fight for a space to do this.

We had a quick lunch in a Japanese set meal place and then there was free time to do what we wanted. Most of the group wanted to visit two yarn shops recommended by Arne and Carlos. One was called Itokobako and the other Avril. At Avril, we all had our Arne and Carlos bags with us, and the owner was very excited when she saw this. There was also a Rowan Magazine in Japanese on display.

Display of wool in Avril
Arne and Ruthe on the left 

Saturday in Kyoto

We started off with a temple visit:

Nansenji Temple and garden was built in 1296: it belongs to the Buddhist Zen sect. We saw the first dry garden with waves raked in the gravel. The waves are the sea, the rocks are the mountains in this type of garden. We walked through the garden on a raised wooden platform to ensure that the garden is not spoiled by all the footsteps. A small teahouse with steppingstones leading up to it is a typical teahouse garden which we saw.

We were allowed to take pictures of the garden, but not the inside of the houses. The area of a room is expressed by how many tatami mats, for example an eight mat room.

We saw an interesting aqueduct: water is brought from Lake Biwa to irrigate the gardens. This technique of building was brought from Europe. The bricks from which the aqueduct are constructed are most unusual in Japan.

Vegetarian restaurants are typically known as monks food. It’s known as monks food because monks were always vegetarian !

Later

We walked around Gion, the district for Geisha and Maiko. But their business only starts after dark. We saw only one hurrying to work, distinguishable primarily by her white face powder and elaborate hair do. The traffic back to the hotel was horrendous. Saturday night in Kyoto!

Some people stayed in Gion for dinner or stopped en route for more shopping. Ruthe went to a sushi train and also to a Cat Cafe, where beautiful breeds of cat wander around the customers who order a drink! This was what I did:

Room service!

On the road to Kyoto

Today is a public holiday in Japan and there’s a lot of congestion on the road going south. Also, there is construction work on the motorway which has added to our delay. Arne and Carlos gave an interesting talk on the bus about their careers as knitting designers, which led to enormous popularity in Japan. Their tours for 2024, including the Norwegian coastal cruises and one tour of English gardens (including King Charles’s place at Highgrove) are already fully booked.

The other people on this tour are really expert knitters and at this moment, most of them are sitting knitting socks on four needles but really complicated designs. I must be the only one not knitting because I’m looking at the scenery or just thinking or writing. There is also a lot of discussion going on about the best yarn stores, various patterns that people are using and the interesting stitches that I’ve never heard of. I must learn more.

On reaching the city of Hikone, there were huge crowds in the street. People were watching a parade since this is a public holiday for cultural reasons. The bus found it very difficult to find a park and we had to walk a long way to the gardens we were supposed to visit. There was no time to do a tour of the gardens as it would have made us too far behind schedule. However, we all found the parade itself very interesting. Photos on my Instagram. See: butterworth.marg

Ochaya Shima

Where I sat down to rest on the tatami mat.

Drums in the entertainment area of the geisha house.

Lookin 

Looking down on the courtyard garden of the geisha house.

After a quick lunch of clam chowder (small portion, but delicious), we jumped back on the bus to drive to the geisha district. We had a booking for Ochaya Shima, which used to be a geisha house but is now a museum. It’s a bit too popular. Upstairs everyone was packed into a very small room to hear a talk about the life of a geisha. Standing room only! I came out as it was so hot and sat down on a tatami mat in the adjoining area. I’ve read about geisha life in novels in any case.

Geisha district.

Gold leaf tableware next door.

Kanazawa

General view of the castle.

Moat.

Stone-dropping window.

Construction techniques.

We all loved the atmosphere of this city on the east coast. After a late (for us) breakfast, we set off in the bus to Kenrokuen, a famously beautiful landscape garden, where we had plenty of free time to wander around on our own.

I was more interested in seeing Kanazawa Castle and spent a long time inside, looking at all the displays about construction techniques, mainly in wood. There was a video in Japanese, which showed how beams were fastened together with pegs of wood. This enabled high floors to be erected, but the material made it susceptible to fire ( which occurred a lot in Japanese castles!). I liked the holes in the floors of corner turrets, designed for rolling heavy stones onto enemies attempting to scale the walls.

Stone-dropping windows from outside.

Archaeological excavations going on outside.
The archaeologists were all at lunch and got back to work at 1.00 pm exactly.

Roof construction using timber and lead.

Scale model of the castle.

Paper Making

After our hour in Gokayama we drove a short distance in our bus to a well-organised place specially set up for tourists to try their hand at paper making:

Making 3 postcards.

Japan East West

Thatched houses in Gokayama.

Bundles of thatch for sale.

The Shinkansen took us back to Tokyo (a brief view of Mt Fuji for those lucky people on the left hand side of the train - not me!) and then a change at Tokyo Station for the Eastbound Kanazawa line.

Gokayama photos follow:

Local woman tending her garden.

House with carved doorway.