Janie booked us in to a late night Friday slot for the Klimt/Schiele exhibition ages ago – it seemed like a good idea for a show we wanted to see as soon after our return from Japan as possible.
The following little video explains the thinking behind the show.
What we had both forgotten, of course, is that the days of “late night Friday at the RA” being one of the best kept secrets in London are now over. Instead of it being an opportunity to see the exhibitions in a relatively relaxed and congestion-free atmosphere, late night Fridays are now “a thing” and the place is more crowded than at other times.
Before we went to Japan, I had spotted that the RA also had the Oceania exhibition on still in November and had made a mental note that it would be good to see that show on the same evening…
…but I didn’t make a pen or pencil note and had plain forgotten about it…
…until Janie, helpfully, sent me a message on the morning of our visit, suggesting that we get to the RA early enough to take in the Oceania exhibition ahead of the Klimt/Schiele.
In many ways I enjoyed the Oceania more than I enjoyed the Klimt/Schiele. I have long been fascinated by people of the South Sea Islands, not least the Melanesian archipelago. That fascination dates back at least as far as 1974:
Daisy became convinced, quite early in the visit, that I resemble some of the figures depicted in the Oceania exhibition and took several pictures in an attempt to prove it. Don’t see it, myself:
Probably the highlight for us was the panoramic, sort-of 3-D, sort of CGI film, In Pursuit of Venus – the still in the link cannot do justice to the clever effect of this filmscape.
Between Oceania and Klimt/Schiele we still had a bit of time and I was in need of a sit down after two hours on the tennis court this morning. We attempted to go to the members bar, but it was heaving with people – including my real tennis friend Bill Taylor and his entourage. Coincidentally, Bill, comfortably seated, was also still aching after two hours on the tennis court the day before.
We then tried the public bar, which was less crowded (yes there was seating) but Janie observed both servers coughing and sneezing. When they both admitted that they were poorly with flu, we thought best to forego refreshments on their patch. Ironic, given that, we learnt later at the Klimt/Schiele, that Egon Sciele and his wife both died tragically young, in 1918, of flu.
The Klimt/Schiele was a little disappointing in truth. You cannot really look at drawings easily when a gallery is that crowded – you’re almost better off looking at the best of them in the on-line gallery – click here.
Also, I think such work makes more sense when you can also see the major works that were inspired by or started their life as such drawings. This exhibition is all drawings which, especially in the case of Klimt’s work, does not make all that much sense in isolation.
Schiele’s work on paper is more complete/stark and thus makes more sense:
We had hoped to eat in The Senate Room after the Klimt/Schiele but had been misinformed about the availability of food in that space in the evening; so we had a quick drink there and returned home for some Chinese food which we took back to Noddyland.
In short, I think it was well worth a trip to the RA to see these two exhibitions on one day, but we’ll almost certainly be avoiding late night Fridays from now on.
To some extent I was still basking in the glory of last night’s real tennis match, in which I had played a small but decisive part in the MCC’s recovery from near defeat to eventual victory against Middlesex University by three rubbers to two. In truth it was the incredibly exciting fourth rubber which turned the contest – our pair had some five match points against them in their rubber before turning it around. I played in the deciding fifth rubber.
The original plan for this SJSS lunchtime concert had been to go with John Random, but he had to pull out of this one. So I even considered missing out myself.
Wild Gypsy fiddling, Jewish and Greek music, and tango, alongside interpretations of Japanese, Polish and Sephardic songs…
…was just what I needed before going to the office on a Thursday afternoon. Not least because we have just returned from Japan, where we came across very little actual Japanese music…
Anyway, I’m very glad I made the decision to go to SJSS that lunchtime and see the Kosmos Ensemble perform.
They are three very talented young musicians who met while studying at the Royal Academy of Music and formed this ensemble as a vehicle for their shared interest in world music.
Actually I don’t think we got any “Sephardic Songs” as promised, but we did instead get a Serbian lament and some Scandinavian music, plus even some Scottish and English themed music.
Some pieces worked better to my ears than others – one or two of the pieces inserted phrases from well-known works at a level of subtlety that might even make PDQ Bach blush. I sense that all three of them are most at home with Eastern-European melodies and rhythms – but their virtuosity and curiosity help compensate for those elements of the programme that were not quite to my taste – I pretty much enjoyed the whole set.
For me the highlights were:
the Japanese-style piece Sakura (Cherry Blossom):
a version of Piazolla’s Libertango with a sort-of Klezmer cadenza at the end, which they have nicknamed “Liberklezmango”:
All three of the musicians: Harriet Mackenzie, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton and Miloš Milivojević are clearly embarking on highly successful careers and I wish them well individually and as an ensemble.
While in no way wanting to detract from Ian Theodoresen’s concise and important point about heated toilet seats, I feel bound to describe Japanese toilet technology in more detail.
Because every toilet seat Janie and I encountered was more than just heated; every toilet seat was, to a greater or lesser extent, smart.
The simplest, smart toilets had an array of coloured and lettered buttons, which we knew to be flushing and bidet functions of various sorts, enabling the user to clean up after themselves in various ways.
In the absence of labelling which we could understand…and having both lived many decades each without such functions…we felt loathe to experiment with such buttons for a good while.
we were blessed, at the Hyatt, with an especially smart loo, upon which the buttons were more elegantly labelled, with descriptive symbols leaving both of us in little or no doubt as to the function of each button.
Seriously smart loo – control panel rarely needs using.
Also, we had a bit more time in Kyoto than we’d had in other places, so we had the luxury of some additional experimentation time. Thus we both tried the various bidet buttons.
We both agreed that the sensations provided by the bidet functions were quite pleasurable, once we got over the over-riding senses of amusement and novelty.
We also both agreed that, in the functional matter of cleaning up after oneself, we suspected that such “automated bideting” was only of limited use – perhaps even lulling the user into a false sense of hygiene security.
In short – we were remaining old school in the matter of such personal hygiene for the time being.
…that our toilet got really smart. I think the idea of “luxury pilgrims lodgings” with en-suite facilities is quite new at Ekoin, so we had the very latest stuff. More utilitarian in look than the posh Hyatt loo, but seriously smart.
The control panel enabled you to do all manner of things – we barely touched the surface of those possibilities – but the smartness of this loo included a sensor that recognised that one of us was in the vicinity and lifted the loo seat up for us.
Once we were done, the sensors seemed to recognise what we had done, so it would short flush or long flush accordingly (manual over-ride was an option of course) once we had moved away from the loo – then it would sloosh around the bowl for a while, then it eventually would close the lid again.
In short, this loo seemed to know what we wanted to do…as well, if not better than we did ourselves.
Now, as many readers will know, I’m all in favour of augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence in theory…
…but in practice, we found this level of smartness emanating from the loo just a little creepy…
…also had these ultra-modern, ultra-smart loos and we are now both totally into it. We conversed with our loos, instructed them orally just in case they aren’t quite as smart as they like to think they are…
…and of course we thanked our loos for their comprehensive efforts. After all, courtesy costs nothing.
And comprehensive those efforts really can be; as Janie put it on one occasion:
I’ve just had a complete wash and blow dry on my bum.
I fear that we might have adjusted so comprehensively to our new loo environment, we’ll no doubt find it difficult to adjust back; remembering to do our own flushing and to lift/close the toilet seat for ourselves might prove tricky for us.
Predictably hilarious results might ensue unless Janie and I pay close attention to “sharpening our own smarts” again in the matter of toilet use on our return to the UK, where the loos are still so very 20th century.
It was pouring with rain on the morning we left the Amanemu. I told several of the staff that we were crying and that the sky was crying because we were leaving. One Japanese member of staff said he found that thought, “so poetic”. Perhaps I have picked up a little of the Japanese culture along the way.
We went through some brighter spots on the rail journey back to Tokyo and hoped that the weather there might be better – the forecasts I had looked at suggested that the rain might stop in Tokyo mid-afternoon – but in fact it was bucketing down when we emerged at Asakusa, to such an extent that we got fairly drenched just walking the two to three minutes from the station to the Gate Hotel.
We resolved to go out if the weather improved and not to do so if it didn’t.
It didn’t.
The Gate restaurant was fairly heavily booked for the evening, with the big main room booked out for a function. But the maître-d took us, as residents, under his wing and said we could either eat at the bar straight away or wait until about 19:30 at which point he was sure he could have a nice table for us. He even arranged for us to be called in our room once the table came free.
The food at The Gate is western style but clearly a fashionable place for Japanese people to try western food. Wouldn’t have been my first choice but certainly preferable to the risk of that drowned rat feeling just before you fly. Also a fashionable place because the skyline views are so good…when it isn’t pouring with rain…the above pictures look interesting in the wet but hardly show the skyline.
Come the morning, the weather was much improved and I was able to take some good pictures of the skyline from the terrace.
Then we were chauffeured to the airport for a pretty event-free journey home.
I’ll let the photos tell most of the tale of the ANA flight, but here are the details of our last multi-course Japanese meal of this holiday.
Amuse:
Cheese stick brown pepper flavour;
Fois gras mousse with apricot gelee;
Pickled small red pimento with cheese in herb oil
Sashimi:
Konfu kelp-cured alfonsino
Poached big-fin reef squid
Konfu kelp-cured red sea bream
Kobachi (Tasty titbits):
Marinated snow crab, mushrooms and garland chrysanthemum
Shabu-shabu bolied beef and grilled eggplant in seseame cream
Main course: Grilled barracuda rolled with Daikoku Hon Shimaji mushroom
…nursing several glasses of alcoholic beverage at the same time throughout the main meal…
A bit of product placement here for my friend Rohan Candappa – a great book btw
…Daisy even doubled up on deserts and chocolates…
No wonder Daisy slept for much of the remainder of the flight – not that the sleep seemed to prevent her from getting jet lag far worse than mine for several days after our return. Oh well.
We left Osaka feeling just a little the worse for wear and in my case a little sheepish for my terrible faux pas in the breakfast room, not knowing that the “thou shalt wear slippers” rule in communal rooms in rayokans becomes a “thou shalt not wear slippers” in the breakfast room of the Ritz-Carlton Osaka. My grungy trainers (the only shoes I had, since the rest of my kit had been mailed ahead to the Amanemu), were apparently perfectly acceptable and indeed several other punters were donning well grungy clobber in that opulent setting.
Daisy was starting to lose all confidence in my judgment generally, but I insisted that I was totally on top of the task of getting to JR Osaka station on time and from there to the right station to pick up the train to Shima, where five days of bliss awaits us at the Amanemu. I was indeed well up to that task.
The long haul express train (this was to be a two-and-a-half hour ride) was pretty full when we started in Osaka, but it started to empty station by station and about an hour shy of Shima it was virtually empty, so we were able to spread out and enjoy a very relaxing ride.
At Shima we were met and whisked away to the uber-up-market property that is the Amanemu. We were told that high tea is served between 15:30 and 17:00 and the staff wondered whether we would like a buggy to take us to the bar where tea is served. So we called when we were ready and were whisked all 60 or 70 meters to the reception. We’ll walk that one next time and thereafter.
Before that whisking, we were visited by a large, majestic black kite – which seemed to be welcoming us and making absolutely sure that we knew that he was there and that we were visiting his patch.
In truth, we will need the buggy service for tennis and the spa, both of which are quite long hikes from our room, but the restaurant, library and bar are too close by for us to trouble the buggy-dudes – or indeed ourselves to get in and out of a buggy rather than walk.
We mentioned on arrival that we love the taste of Kakuni and were told that the chef would prepare some for us, but we didn’t realise that chef would be willing and able to implement that request on the very day of our arrival.
We were told the good news re this evening’s Kakuni before tea and eventually were also told the good news that we could play tennis early – at 8:00, tomorrow. On reflection, I had been wondering whether later (like lunchtime) would be better for tennis, given the autumnal weather – it was hardly going to be too hot at any time of day, but our request for an early slot had been met, so we would see it through.
The Kakuni meal was good. We tasted a couple of interesting starters ahead of the Kakuni; a seseame tofu and fish concoction plus a rather interesting fishy starter with conger pike. An interesting Italian Traminer to wash it down too.
2 November 2018
We played tennis at 8:00 in glorious sunshine, but even so it was a bit chilly and we realised that lunchtime will be better for us, especially if it was not to be so sunny every morning, which indeed it wasn’t. Our majestic black kite visited us at the tennis court and let us know in no uncertain terms that the big tree beside the pavilion in front of Court Number One is also his patch.
We had a craving for some western food, so we had the American Breakfast this morning. Then we took advantage of the sun on our beautiful terrace overlooking the stunning bay.
Our next door neighbours were playing some rather naff music, so we played some early music, performed by the Savall family, further to calm the atmosphere.
We took tea again today. While Daisy was fiddling with her WhatsApp, alarms went off and an emergency alert popped up on her screen. Then there was a tiny little jolt, which turned out to be the earthquake for which we were being alerted. Daisy was relieved, because she thought she had set off the alarm by pressing the wrong button on her gadget; we’d be getting alerts every five minutes if that were the case.
We satisfied our crazy craving for western food this evening – I had a very tasty seafood linguini and Daisy had a giant club sandwich with fries. In truth, this place is far better geared up for Japanese food than western food, but crazy cravings occasionally need to be satisfied, We tried the Riesling this evening, which was nice, but not quite as interesting as the Gewurtztraminer.
3 November 2018
Before we went down to breakfast this morning, I was reading in our splendid room (we’d arranged to play tennis at lunchtime today), when I heard a thump on the front window and then saw a little bird – a sparrow – struggling on the front terrace and then lying very still.
Perhaps it had got disoriented (perhaps it was being chased), saw the lush greenery through the back window and didn’t sense the glass. It was more than disoriented now – it looked out for the count.
Daisy gently put out some water for it and we kept an eye on the little bird for a while. Then when we went off to breakfast, we alerted the maid and signalled to her that she should not disturb the bird.
We had Japanese breakfast this morning – a splendid feast of a Japanese breakfast it is too, with some sashimi, some roe and three types of grill as well as pickles, rice and miso, all brilliantly done.
When we returned to our room, the little sparrow looked much revived, tweeted at us and flew away. It really felt as though the bird had waited for us to return to thank us and let us know it was OK before leaving. I don’t think the sparrow should play cricket or even tennis for a few days though, in accordance with the modern concussion protocols.
Tennis worked much better at 13:00 than it had the previous day at 8:00 – at least as far as the score line was concerned from my point of view. Actually both days the contest had been quite close and could have gone either way before one of us (Daisy the previous day) or the other of us (me on this day) took control. There are enormous carrion crows around here and at one stage, when I lost a point in ungainly fashion, I’m sure the watching crow was crowing with laughter at me.
Our return buggy didn’t show up today, so we wandered over to the Nemu Hotel and asked them to alert the Amenemu people to come and rescue us. This gave us the opportunity to check out the Nemu restaurant, but we concluded that the Amanemu was offering a much better choice of food and that the Nemu prices, while lower, were in a surprisingly similar bracket.
We also checked out the spa after tennis and resolved to take advantage of that facility over the next couple of days, while also picking up one or two gifts.
We also still had time to freshen up and take tea, which is a very pleasurable ritual at this property.
We got more reading done and the like before dinner, which we have now resolved to make Japanese food affairs here. We chose some wonderful seared tuna skewers, a grilled chicken dish and a soba noodle dish which made for a very delicious and satisfying dinner to end another most enjoyable day.
4 November 2018
It was misty and peeing down with rain when we woke up this morning. The poor weather for this morning had been threatened, but it looked well grim and all of the weather forecasts we could find suggested that it might simply rain on and off all day, which would be a bit of a dampener.
We managed to stay dry by timing our move to breakfast pretty much perfectly. We’d barely sat down in the breakfast room when it started heaving down again. Daisy went for American breakfast today, while I plugged for Japanese.
Towards the end of breakfast, Daisy remarked that the sky seemed to be brightening, which reminded me of my own hopelessly-optimistic assessments at more cricket matches than I’d care to remember. But when we got back to the room and I checked the radar pattern for the past half hour, I had to admit that it did look as though the rain belt was moving relentlessly to the east and that we should be spared the rain for several hours at least, despite the forecasts all still suggesting that we should expect showers all day.
So, as the weather really did brighten, we arranged to play tennis again at 13:00 and an epic battle ensued, starting under brightening skies and ending in fully-fledged sunshine. The battle ended an hour later as an honourable 5-5 draw.
We asked our buggy-dude to take us straight to the spa, as we had brought our bathing costumes with us for that purpose. He kindly offered to drop our tennis gear back at the room – now there’s service for you.
Meanwhile we got to enjoy the delights of the spa – the largest onsen you’ll ever see – beautifully laid out in several pools like a sort-of steamy, mineral springy Zen garden. Inauthentic, in that you wear costumes and it is dual-sex, but all the lovelier for that, enabling us to enjoy such a setting together.
We met a very charming young couple from Indonesia, the only other people in the onsen at the time, so we took pictures for each other and swapped tales about our travels etc.
Then back to our room before tea and then some more rest…just in case we are not well enough rested…ahead of dinner.
We decided to try shabu-shabu tonight – something that neither of us have ever tried. At the Amanemu we were able to try it with the local Ige beef. Very delicious and we were given more help for this “cook yourself meal” than we had been given at Fukinomori or the Hide beef place in Takayama.
Not sure I’ll be rushing to try shabu-shabu again – certainly not at those prices – but it was very delicious and we were both glad to have tried it once. The seseame sauce is quite a highlight.
5 November 2018
Rose early and packed out big bags for dispatch to Tokyo. Then the wonderful breakfast – again Janie went American and I stuck with Japanese.
The weather was much brighter so we were able to enjoy our lovely terrace in the sunshine after breakfast. Then it clouded over a bit, but when it brightened up a little we tried the swimming pool for the first and last time. The pool was quite warm despite the ambient temperature being a little cool, so we didn’t swim for too long.
We chose to use the mini but private onsen in our room rather than the massive but potentially shared onsen at the spa for our mineral bath that afternoon (such choices!)…
…in amongst rest and reading and getting ready for dinner. It started to rain soon after we got to our room, so the indoor onsen call had been the right one.
Dinner comprised two starters – lobster ones – two very different ways – both delicious. Also braised eel with turnip and a braised pork with vegetables in a rich dark soy, with rice. All excellent.
Then a buggy back to our room for an early night ahead of our journey to Tokyo the next day – a step en route to London the day after.
All the pictures from our five day stay at the Amanemu can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below:
We chose to leave Koyasan on an earlier train than that recommended and get to Osaka over an hour before the suggested time – after all we only had one day in Osaka and the place sounded like fun by all accounts.
The cunning plan worked brilliantly until we got to JR Osaka station, where Mr Googlemap’s walking instructions wanted to take us through a building site and where the taxi driver (when I decided to solve the problem that time-honoured way) was incredulous at my request to take us to the Ritz-Carlton.
Whether the taxi dude simply couldn’t believe that we were Ritz-Carlton material (we probably looked a bit back-packerish on our way back from our “pilgrimage”) or whether his vexation was the ludicrous proximity of the hotel by foot (about 500-600 meters as the crow flies) compared with the loop he had to drive in order to drive us there for a fairly meagre fee, I have no idea. But for less than a Lady Godiva we got to the Ritz-Carlton, at which point the taxi driver seemed to be apologising profusely to the doormen for our intrusion.
Conversely, the doorman and then the receptionist, Seri Lee, looked after us with great charm. Yet Seri displayed far more inquisitiveness and front than we have been used to in Japan, enquiring about our trip to the mountains and questioning what it was like up there at this time of year. It turns out that she is from South Korea and has only been in Osaka a short while.
As luck would have it, despite us being so early, Seri did have a room available for us straight away which, although not exactly the specification we had requested, was on the top floor (37th) with magnificent views and was absolutely suitable for our sole night in Osaka.
So we were able to freshen up and get out around Osaka a good hour or more earlier than suggested…
…which was a good thing, because we really did use that hour and indeed all our other hours in Osaka to great effect.
We set off through the maze of subways underneath the Osaka Station/Umeyda area, seeking and finding the M line. It is far easier to find your way to railway and subway stations down there than it is to find your way to the right exit for anything else.
A helpful member of staff at the subway station made me question whether subway day passes was really the right answer for us, as there are so many choices, before I decided that my original thought (to buy the simple day passes) was correct – so I parted with £10-£12 for the two of us – the helper seemed delighted – and we had “the freedom of Osaka”…just for one day.
To Namba, which is a short walk from Dotonburi and Shinsaibashi, where we wanted to check out the eating and also the American Mura (American Village) area which is sort-of Osaka’s second hand fashion / Carnaby Street-type area. Dotonburi looked great fun and we resolved to return.
We has a good stroll and look around Shinsaibashi and even did a bit of gift shopping there.
We were quite hungry, but it was only about quarter-past-three by the time we were dunshoppin and we realised that all the best restaurants don’t open until 17:00-18:00. Anyway we just about had enough time to leg it to the Castle/Park area to see Osaka Castle, which was the next thing on our reserve list.
In truth the Castle was probably a hike too far for us in our state of tiredness – especially given what was yet to come, but we’re pleased we’ve been there and seen it. The park is pleasant, but the Castle area was heaving with people and the Osaka Castle Museum exhibition inside was only of limited interest to us. Osaka’s history is explained in detail with wall panels, pictures and models, but there are few genuine exhibits in the Castle Museum itself. The other museum (across the way in a modern building) might be better for those with the time and interest in the historic relics. The views from the viewing gallery at the top of the Castle are quite stunning, though.
Then we planned dinner. After much debate (about five minutes-worth), we chose a highly recommended restaurant near Namba/ Dotonburi, named Tsuki no Odori.
On the way, we walked past the Osaka Dome and saw a young baseball team at practice.
Hungry, we took the very front carriage of the subway…
…and we hastened our step as we started to see the lights of Dotonburi again and Mr Googlemap said we were close…only to find the place closed. Whether it had simply chosen to close for Halloween night or whether this is a more permanent closure it was hard to tell. Google said the place was open…but it was closed. How can such a thing happen?
Still, part of our reason for choosing that place over one or two other highly recommended yakitori/teppanyaki restaurants was that “Sucki no Dooropeni” was very close to other well-received places.
A quick request to Mr Google for “best yakitori restaurant near me” yielded Teppanjinja Dotomburi a full 150 meters away, a little deeper into Dotonburi and also highly recommended.
What a great place. The staff were really friendly and helpful – not brilliant English but more than enough for our purposes, as they have a menu with pictures and a choosing card in English. Highlights were the pork on ginger sticks, the giant shrimp sticks and the eel omelette ones.
The shittake mushroom, chicken neck and pork with leek ones came a very close second. In fact everything we ate there was terrific. Washed down with sake (in my case) and a mixture of beer and plum wine (in Daisy’s case).
Daisy felt that yakitori/teppanyaki chef Yukinaga deserves a named mention.
Then out onto the streets of Dotomburi around 19:30 as the Halloween celebrations really were starting to hot up. What fun we had, illustrated far better by pictures than by me waffling on about it.
Eventually we realised that we were both exhausted and set off for home…
…which worked absolutely fine until we got to the Y-line Umeda station and got confused by the subway system again. In no mood for over-extending my analogue GPS skills in an environment where the electronic one seems to get confused along with us, we surfaced and grabbed a cab which again solved our problem for a small fee.
That night my brain went into total overdrive with the contrasting sensory effects of the last 2-3 days and the over-stimulation of the previous few hours…
We rose early at Ekoin – well, we did go to bed early the night before and we were trying to sleep on floor futons.
In any case, we needed to be up early for the morning service at 6:30. So after a quick slug or two of coffee from the excellent communal coffee machine, we shuffled along to the Ekoin Temple. Unlike the meditation, which is a sort-of service for the tourists, this morning service is the real Shingon monk macoy and had started bang on time. So we were a tad late, but not the very latest of the visitors to show up.
Very hypnotic chanting – one of the young trainee monks seemed to be very good at it. The senior monk, who looks the part in every way, not least his Buddha-like shape, was not quite so pleasing on the ear, chant-wise.
I discreetly (in accordance with the rules of etiquette provided) videoed a short clip, which is hard to see but you can hear the sound of the mantra chanting and bell ringing quite clearly:
Then we attended the 7:00 Fire Ritual in the adjoining chapel, which appears to be used solely for that purpose. Again our fellow visitors seemed exceptionally eager. We reckon that we did well to be tardier and therefore nearer the door because it wasn’t half carcinogenically smokey in there. Again I discreetly videoed a short clip so you can see what it was like – the clip gets more visible as the flames rise some 30 seconds in:
Janie also took a discreet, rather evocative photo or ten in the fire ritual:
Then breakfast – a modest vegetarian meal along similar lines to, but much smaller than the late afternoon feast. The highlight was the seaweed wafers which enabled me make rice only sushi rolls.
Yes, that’s right folks. High on a mountain I was rolling my own weed. But this breakfast did not make either of us feel high.
After breakfast, but before going off for our walks, we sneaked back into the temple to take some pictures of that rather stunning space and the Ekoin monastery surrounds in good light.
We wanted to see the town and we were told that there is an excellent hiking trail up a peak, Bentsen Dake, near the town, where you can leave the town at the western gate, Daimon, re-entering through the northern, Nyonindo and back to Ekoin.
So, to get to the Daimon Gate, we first needed to stroll the length of the town, which in itself would be about 25-30 minutes walk without stopping.
But we did stop a few times; to buy some tuck in an attempt to sweeten the austerity of our diet. Also to pick up a few interesting little gifts and the like. This pilgrimage town is for sure touristic, but more oriented to local tourists and it seemed less tourist-trap like than, say, Takayama.
We also looked briefly at the largest temple complex in town, Danjo Garan, before heading for the Daimon Gate and up into the “mountain” – really just a good rigorous peak walk than a mountain.
It was glorious up there.
In the words of Kobo-Daishi:
I never tire of admiring the old pine trees and moss-covered stones of Mount Koyasan. Clear streams on the mountain never cease flowing with compassion. Beware taking pride in the superficial poisons of secular fame and profit.
So there.
As for our walk, pictures probably tell most of the story better than I can with words.
We encountered hardly anyone up there. While we stopped at a resting point, just before we reached the peak of Bentsen Dake, we heard beautiful operating singing, which seemed to be getting nearer. It was – a young Japanese woman, with a glorious voice, stopped singing when she realised we were there and seemed most embarrassed. She explained in broken English that she likes to practice her singing while walking up there.
I think we only saw one other person the whole walk, although we did hear a choir singing in the distance (down in the town) later on during our walk – perhaps that chorus was the reason the young woman was practicing earlier.
The very top of Bentsen Dake has a small shrine and not the best views – but there’s only one trail so you need to go all the way up if you want to come down the other side and see those views; also glorious.
It was much easier going down – who knew?
Back through the town, quite tired but we were keen also to stroll the graveyard by light. So we retreated to Ekoin for a while to take some tea, rest, take stock on the photos and then set off again for the graveyard.
The graveyard has a totally different look and vibe during the day. Very photogenic and far fewer people on the walking trail from the town. However, once we got over the second (of the three) bridges, we were diverted (due to restoration works) to pick up the road and the more heavily populated and commercialised route from the bus & coach stops.
In a way this was a good thing, because we might not have seen that side of the cemetery at all had the regular trail been open all the way.
There are some really weird graves and mini-mauselia there. Some with the names and logos of companies to honour. One, presumably erected by an aeronautical company or in honour of an engineer, looks like a rocket. Some are stunning in design, some garishly so.
Anyway, we had a good look around, took some interesting photos and then return to our pilgrims quarters just too late to attend meditation this afternoon. What a pity.
Still, we meditated in our own way, by reviewing our photos, then soon enough it was time for our late afternoon meal. I tucked in more heartily than Daisy, as indeed had been the case throughout our stay. Again the centrepiece was vegetables and noodles in broth, but when that broth and sesame tofu in a blandish daishi sauce are the highlights, you know you don’t want me to tell you about the lowlights.
A bit more photo-reviewing and the like after the meal – we’d done the night cemetery walk yesterday after all and there isn’t anything else to do in that town at night. We raided our tuck rations, sufficient of which remained from earlier in the day – Daisy’s acquired skills from boarding school coming in useful at last, all these years later.
Then an early night on that floor futon for the last time. Strangely – perhaps through increasing familiarity or perhaps through tiredness from so much walking – I slept well that last night on the futon, as did Daisy.
It was a fairly complicated journey to get from Kyoto to Koyasan. So rather than bore your with the details, I have decided to explain the physical and spiritual journey of a few hours in the form of 10 haikus.
furtive morning
journey planned to excess
tickets hiding
Kyoto heaving
rail passengers queuing
without us
kind travellers
assist our passage
Osaka bound
Osaka heaving
towards Shin-Imamaya
train looping
farewell throng
Gokurakubashi
beckons calmly
guard advises
carriage change needed
train uncoupling
climbing slowly
motionless waiting
Nippon Chigley
sunny hillsides
glorious images
serene smiling
Gokurakubashi
peace briefly suspended
cable car
speedy taxi
Ekoin shukubo
welcoming
Not that haikus have anything specifically to do with Shingon or Esoteric Buddhism, which is centred at Koyasan. Although the 9th century founder of this sect, Kukai aka Kobo-Daishi, wrote some mean poems before transferring to “a state of eternal meditation” in the year 835.
For those who prefer pictures to haikus, here is the latter stage of the story in pictures.
We stayed in the Ekoin shukubo, or pilgrims dwellings, where relatively wimpish and well-to-do tourists, like ourselves, can enjoy the austerity of monastic life in comparative luxury. So we had heating in the form of a mobile air-conditioning unit and en-suite toilet and bathroom of surprisingly high quality, albeit somewhat utilitarian in look.
An especially smiley trainee monk, Nori, looked after us on arrival and to some extent thereafter. Most of the trainee monks were less smiley than Nori, as were most of the guests, especially the Western visitors (it seemed to be about 50%/50% at Ekoin between Japanese and Western “pilgrims”), who seemed to be taking the experience very seriously indeed.
Not that Janie and I were being facetious or disrespectful towards our hosts – far from it – but we suspected that some of our fellow Western visitors wanted to flaunt their “more spiritual than thou” credentials. We were relieved that this shukubo went for the “dine in your own room” tradition rather than the communal dining which is the tradition in some.
But before our modest late afternoon/early evening meal (temporally misnamed by almost anyone’s standards as “dinner”), we participated in the afternoon 30 minute meditation, which (as with all the activities) is voluntary for guests.
I enquired about the floor sitting requirement for the meditation and was informed that there are chairs available for those who, like me, want to have a go but fear the consequences of trying to meditate in the floor-sitting posture for that long.
As it turned out, I was the only meditator that afternoon who wimped out for the chair – everyone else tried to follow all of the instructions, including the sitting bit. Although, as Daisy pointed out, with the possible exception of herself (on the floor) and me (sitting in a comfortable chair-seated position), all of the Western meditators started to fidget and ended up fidgeting like crazy by the end of the session.
I found the breathing element fine – I usually do – but the mind-emptying side of things is a struggle for me, as was the strange injunction to keep our eyes half open – half shut.
Soon after meditation came the late afternoon meal referred to as dinner, an ornate-looking feast of fruit, vegetables, tofu (multiple types), noodles, rice…but no meat, no fish and very little that was “full of flavour” in the way we have become accustomed to in Japan. Daisy wondered whether she could survive two whole days on such rations. I wondered if I could survive two whole minutes eating on the floor and decided that i could not – moving relevant bits of my grub onto the small table and chair provided on our covered terrace/viewing deck.
After the meal, the monks removed the food and made up our floor-futon beds. But we didn’t see that room transformation, as we had booked to do the cemetery walk that evening.
The Okunoin Cemetery night walk seems to be organised through our shukubo, which is right at the Okunoin end of Koyasan. Okunoin is the largest cemetery in Japan and is the location where Kobo-Daishi is “eternally meditating”. It is the done thing to walk the cemetery at night, apparently. As Kobo-Daishi himself said:
Why, you ask, do I compare human nature and the moon?
It is because the round and clear shape of the full moon is not unlike a mind aspiring towards enlightenment.
It should be a profound experience, but the enormous group of us, perhaps 40 in our English language group and perhaps 20 more on the Japanese tour behind us, not just from our shukubo but tourists from all over the town, made for a rather regimented event. Not least, perhaps because it was so cold at night, people were stomping along at speed and with purpose that seemed, to us, to detract from the peaceful cemetery atmosphere. The Zen lot might ask, “what is the sound of 50 or 60 space cadets peacefully marching?”…Or some such koan.
Anyway, stomp to the mausoleum we did, then the larger group split off to walk a shorter distance to the bus stop and ride home, while we and a handful of hardier folk walked back across the bridges to the town entrance. The walk back was more in keeping with the atmosphere we had hoped for.
We walked a bit deeper into town, in the hope of finding the convenience store that is said to stay open “late” – it was 21:00ish – but that place is a little deeper into the town than Daisy wanted to go to satisfy her craving for something sweet to stave off the absence of her coveted meat and fish.
So we returned to our room and the futon beds on the floor. For one reason or another or indeed for several reasons, I don’t think either of us is cut out for the monastic life. Who knew?
Having unintentionally done so much touring yesterday, we really did take it easy in the morning. I wanted to do some write ups and organise the ludicrous number of photos we’re generating; both of us wanted to rest/spa a little and be ready in good time for today’s tour and for tomorrow’s off.
So we sat in the main restaurant/grill/bar area for some while after breakfast while I fiddled around, then both returned to the room for some spa and (in my case) more writing up.
How those hours flew by goodness only knows, but we still ended up rushing to be on time for our guide, Eiji Hiraki, who had sent us a reminder note by fax asking us to be punctual.
Eiji turned out to be a quite extraordinary character. He had headed up sales for Panasonic in the Americas for most of his career until, a few years ago, (in my words, not his) retiring and taking up guiding for fun. His other avocations include mountain walking and playing Beatles songs on the guitar.
He is remarkably fit for a seventy-year-old and kept striding ahead of us, while we (surely fit enough) wanted to dwell over some things – but not others. He seemed to think that we would want to spend time and money in gimcrack shops, for example, until we showed no interest in those. But we did want to try black sesame ice cream which slowed him down a little.
Along the way, I learnt that Eiji broke all sales records for Panasonic in the Americas in his time, that Sony was his main competitor and that he spent every night dreaming of how to beat Sony. I concluded that it was far more fun being his client than it would have been to be his employee or, even worse, his competitor.
Eiji seemed a little edgy throughout, in as much as he was insistent that the highlight of our afternoon would be some drinks and snacks in a bar with/on him. Frankly, we were happy to whizz through much of the itinerary, as long as we could see the highlights and linger on the bits that interested us, which we did.
To speed up proceedings, Eiji had produced his own visual aids to explain Kyoto’s history, the way the geisha/maiko system works and so on. Those visual aids really did work, for both of us and especially for Daisy who hates guides who lecture at length, which Eiji didn’t.
So we saw the Gion district north and south, including Hanami-koji’s tea shops. We wandered around the Yasaka Shrine, we crossed the Tatsumi Bashi Bridge and thus the Shirakawa Canal.
We saw no real geishas or maikos – tourists rarely do, it seems. The streets are thronging with young women who have hired kimonos for the day – mostly Chinese tourists according to Eiji – making the area look very attractive but the geishas are going about their business far more privately.
We have long been fascinated by geishas and how all of that stuff works. When Janie and I first started to go out with each other, my mother seemed to be under the misapprehension that Janie herself was a geisha girl…at least I think that’s what mum said.
Anyway, apparently, these days, the going rate for a well-trained maiko (i.e. a trainee geisha) is about £700 per hour, which is almost enough to make a Big Four Accountancy Partner or Magic Circle Solicitor blush,,,
…I said ALMOST enough.
Once we had ascertained that there were no geishas to be seen, we jumped in a cab downtown to the junction of Shijo Street and Kawaramachi Street, where several big department stores reside and the busiest pedestrian junction in Kyoto. Eiji pointed out a couple of stores, including Takashimaya, where he rated the restaurants, especially the tempura one, if we wanted to eat straight after our drinks and snacks.
Then Eiji took us down a side street to a new bar he was keen to patronise. An extensive drinks menu and snacks list might have been the draw. Plus the spanking newness of the rest rooms etc. perhaps.
So we chatted, drank sake, plum wine and (in Eiji’s case) highballs. We also snacked on edamame beans, salmon sashimi and cucumber with a delicious sweet miso paste – we also at that juncture handed over our respective gifts and sang “All My Loving” a-capella in three part “harmony”.
A very nice, lively fellow drinker took our picture for us and then told us in painfully broken English that his daughter is in London studying fashion while working in a ramen shop and that he hoped to visit London next summer. You have no idea how difficult it was to discern that content, nor how much effort this keen chap was putting in to trying to make us understand his English. It reminded me of a Two Ronnies sketch.
I think we could have carried on drinking with Eiji had we wished, but Janie and I have no real head or stomach for boozing, especially when we have an early start and a long journey the next day. In any case, I had visions of waking up the next morning to discover that I have signed an order for several thousand Panasonic rice cookers and tens of thousands of Panasonic video recorders, so we thought best to thank Eiji and bring an end to proceedings. We headed back to the junction, said goodbye to Eiji and sort-of intended to head back to Gion for the yakitori meal we had half-promised ourselves…
…except we hadn’t tried tempura in the city of tempura and Eiji had said that the yakitori is excellent in Osaka…
…so we relented and did as the master salesman suggested – we ate in the Tsunahachi Tempura restaurant in Takashimaya, which was an excellent meal and great fun.
I managed to blob a piece of tempura squid onto my shirt early in the meal, much to the hilarity of a lady diner at the counter, who was trying to be a polite lady by missing my gaze, but clearly couldn’t stop watching us and finding us a mixture of fascinating and hilarious. The restaurant should have paid us a fee for entertaining the customers. £700 per hour would secure our services as entertainers, eh, Daisy?
We retired to the hotel by cab, tired but exhilarated by another truly fun day.
Both of us were feeling just a little below par first thing this morning; nothing specific but probably the sensory excesses of the last week or so, combined with the slight over-indulgence of last night’s wonderful meal.
We agreed that we’d make it a light touring day after the short morning activity we had pre-arranged – a tea ceremony.
We had quite a long list of things we fancied seeing, but most or even all of them could wait until tomorrow if we didn’t feel like doing much, which we didn’t.
That was the plan.
But then, we all know what can happen to plans.
The tea ceremony was very interesting and great fun. A courier with the unconventional Japanese name Jim took us to the venue, then disappeared. Nine of us in a group, hosted by the Women’s Association of Kyoto – WAK. And what a “waky” experience it was too.
Daisy and I had done a tea ceremony before, at Yaohan Plaza “back in the day”, but it wasn’t then explained as comprehensively as this and frankly I recall not much liking the taste of the matcha – i.e. powdered green tea, when I tasted it at Yaohan.
The Kyoto style demonstrated by the charming WAK lady is a frothy style of matcha, far less bitter than the stuff I recall from Yaohan. Daisy still didn’t like it much, but I am now a bit of a green tea aficionado and really enjoyed the Kyoto tea ceremony tea – slurp slurp.
Of course, the ceremony requires everyone to bow and follow a strict ritual of manners in an environment that has been very specifically set out to be a tea room – the explanatory leaflet we were given at the end of the visit runs to 16 pages for goodness sake. Most importantly, if you like the tea you slurp the last drop.
One couple in our group were relatively young honeymooners from London who, it transpired afterwards, are great fans of Atari-Ya – our Japanese fishmonger and supermarket, but they use the Finchley branch. Daisy also spoke at some length with an Irish lady from Waterford who was there on her own. There was another couple, in their case from Yorkshire. The final pair was from France (a grandmother and grandson combination I guessed, but perhaps a wealthy lady taking the current French Presidential age difference fashion to an illogical extreme.)
Revived by our cuppa and inspired by the improved weather, we decided to go to the Kyoto Botanical Garden, as Daisy wanted to see bonzai trees and we knew there was a regular exhibit of many of them.
We were near a subway line and I had worked out that the mere two subway lines could nevertheless whisk us to a few of the remaining places we wanted to see for the small investment of 600 Yen (if you were prepared to forego the right to suffer on the buses).
That subway pass investment paid a dividend almost immediately when, as I ventured to procure our entry tickets to the Botanical Garden, the nice ticket lady spotted my pass and announced a small discount on our entry tickets as a result. The sums involved are trifling yet I’m sure I looked pleased to have scored a few dozen Yen and she looked delighted to have helped me.
The Botanical Garden is a very charming place and was a great opportunity to see all manner of plants and flowers which especially interests Janie but also (in such a pleasant setting) also pleased me.
We spent quite a while there, meandering around the various well-labelled and well set out exhibits, also looking at many small show gardens which were getting ready to be judged in a competition. Some were a bit gimmicky (e.g. the Halloween and dinosaur themed ones) but many were very beautiful and tastefully symbolic.
We took some ice cream (chestnut again, I thought not quite as nutty and whippy as Tsumago, but Janie thought just as good) at the cafe in front of the central lawn. I pondered the possibilities for said lawn as a cricket pitch – you know what I’m like.
Then we looked at the bonzai trees and then felt replete with gardens. Except we still hadn’t seen the sky walk and sky garden at Kyoto Station, of course. That was a simple few stops away on the subway. So we went on there.
It still took some finding – it’s not exactly signposted but once you start going up escalators it is obvious what you should do next, whereas wandering round at ground level with our baggage the previous day looking for signs had been hopeless.
Up we went and of course the architecture of the place is stunning and some of the views of Kyoto also worth the effort. Mostly it’s the place itself, though.
Then we thought we might try to find spare batteries for our LUMIX cameras, as our models, which suit us fine, are becoming dated and/but the bit that is most likely to go first is the batteries, which are already displaying signs of holding less charge than they once did.
Almost miraculously, while I was trying to navigate around the station to get to the “camera shop near me” recommended by Mr Google to the west side of the station, we quite by chance spotted a promotional stand with what looked like Yayoi Kusama pumpkins on it.
It transpires that the Kyoto Contemporary Art Museum is showing a retrospective on her and it is open until 18:00. That museum was on my “possibles list”, although I had discounted the possibility that we might see many, if any Kusama pieces there.
We resolved to head for that place after sorting out the LUMIX battery business. We found the camera shop but sadly were informed that our particular LUMIX batteries can no longer be found in Kyoto. We should have more luck in Osaka.
The camera shop – more like an electronics and chemist department store – was able to supply us with some nice mineral bath salts and one or two other chemist-type products, so we hadn’t completely wasted our time there.
Next stop, Sanjo Kehan station, on the fringes of the shopping district and the Gion district. The shopping side looked dull whereas the lure of the Forever Modern Art Museum was greater, especially when Mr Google told us it was a mere 15 minutes walk away…
…or rather, it would have been a mere 15 minutes had we not bumped into Martin and Jane, with whom we had done the food and culture stroll around Takayama only a couple of days ago. It was really nice to see them again and to swap stories from our different adventures of the last 48 hours or so.
Soon we realised that we would need to stride with purpose if we were to be sure of getting to the Yayoi Kusama in time. We did make it and were astonished to find that it was a substantial retrospective exhibition – basically the Forever Modern has been entirely purposed for this exhibition. After all that fuss in Tokyo and knowledge that Kusama’s London show is also sold out – this excellent one in Kyoto we just walked up and paid to get in on the door. Daisy was like a proverbial pig in shit.
I also enjoyed the exhibition but my goodness we were both tired when we came out of that place. We had meant it to be a light day of touring.
We resolved to eat at the hotel, intending it to be a light evening of eating too – we both had a crazy craving for some Western food. But the set menu looked so tempting, both in terms of the dishes on offer and relative price (exceptionally expensive place for food, the Hyatt), that we relented and enjoyed Caesar salad, clam chowder, ribs’n’beef with mash/veg and an “apple pie” which was in truth a cross between Grandma Jenny’s apple pie and mum’s apple strudel. Nice wines too.
