Kinkaku, Ryoanji, and Fushimiinari-taisha
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Day 11 (Saturday): More new photos added here. I’ve often said I’ll try anything once, but when it came down to trying yakitori chicken ovaries for dinner, I decided that some things I’ll only try once with considerably more alcohol in me than I had. So, no chicken ovaries for dinner, and we also chose to pass on liver, gizzard, heart, and other internal organs. I did, however, try the cartilage yakitori. I can’t say I’ll try it a second time, though; cooked meat should not be both crunchy and chewy at the same time. The pork, duck, and other skewers were fantastic, however.
We started the morning more typically, however, with a visit to the fabulous Kinkaku, or Golden Pavilion, more properly known as Rukuon-ji Temple. We had to swim through swarms of school children to get our photographs; it’s school-trip time in Japan! Then a hike over to the big Buddhist temple complex that contains Ryoanji Temple’s famous Zen rock garden and a wander through its gardens. This complex contains a famous celestial dragon screen painting, but unfortunately it isn’t open to the public.
After a quick noodle lunch (I had cold soba; it’s warm right now), we walked a little farther to the Shunko-in Temple, again one temple in a much larger Buddhist complex. This one offers Zen meditation lessons and temple tours in English — the son of its high priest, who currently works as second-in-command and led our lesson, is extremely fluent in English, traveling around the world to speak at human rights conferences.
Learning Zen meditation in a Buddhist temple in Kyoto was another priceless experience; there’s nothing quite as peaceful as the sound of a cool breeze rattling through the shoji screens from the Zen garden outside the meditation hall. The tour was also quite interesting; this temple was affiliated with “hidden Christians” during a time of Christian persecution in Japan, so a careful eye can spot Christian symbols in the wall panel paintings (three sparrows, white lilies, white roses) and it secretly hid the bell from a Catholic Church that had been condemned; when the bell was demanded during WWII for its metal content, the temple’s high priest gave the government a fake!
We had free time after that, and I stumbled across two students in the hotel hall who were planning to go to “this place with a lot of torii” (gates). Well, I’m game to go along to new places, so I went with them and was grateful I did, because the Fushimiinari-taisha Shrine at sunset must be one of the most magical places in the world. It’s absolutely enchanting; stone steps winding up a heavily forested mountain under endless corridors of red torii, pausing here and there for steep, tightly build graveyards covered with statues of the sacred foxes of the mountain, incense, candles, and even occasional food or drink offerings. The hike up and down the mountain is about two hours long and fairly steep, and we took it slowly, snapping photos until our camera batteries went out! We were all but alone on the mountain; at one point we stood in the darkness and I audiorecorded one of the nightbirds calling. The visit will be one of the most striking memories I’ll carry away from the trip, and I fully intend to build a mountain of graves into my Carnifex novel.
drupagliassotti @ May 29, 2010