Kyoto day 3: Gion

We finished our cereal and bananas for breakfast this morning. That’s one bag of cereal in 4 servings between us. Proper sized large bowls, lovely. We wandered through the narrow Kyoto’n streets over to the Gion area, where we had briefly sallied into yesterday. Our destination was the Kiyomizu temple, a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s got a very large gate, and several other buildings, including a three storey pagoda, up a hill from which you can view across Kyoto. All very impressive, but we’ve seen quite a few temples and shrines now and, for want of sounding extraordinarily ignorant, they all seem very similar. Obviously apart from the Golden temple and Todaiji with the massive Buddha et cetra. They’re amazing buildings and have so much meaning behind them, but we’ve seen a lot of them now, we perhaps need a bit of a break from all the culture.

With this in mind we headed down the Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka streets towards the centre of Gion. These are narrow, steep, stepped streets with traditional buildings either size selling souvenirs, food and artesian wares which is all very pretty. Along the way here we stumbled upon the Kongoji shrine which has thousands of colourful balls with wishes written on them hung from the rooves of the shrines. An amazing little find that really stands out as you turn the corner of the tiny, traditional street. We also stumbled upon the Ryosen Kannon memorial statue, which is a massive (15m high but seemed like more) figure depicting the zodiac built from what looks like stone but on closer inspection is concrete. We came across this at the base of Ninenzaka, her head poking out above the surrounding buildings. The whole complex is a memorial to those soldiers who died in WWII from all nations. A very impressive, and different, experience.

From there we wandered through Maruyama Park and happened across a number of monks (I think, potentially) lined up at the roadside in front of the massive Chion-in Sanmon gate, when a funeral procession drove past they all bowed and sort of hummed a melancholy tune. A pretty beautiful sight to behold. We had a tea ceremony booked for 2pm so we ran over to a nearby 7-eleven which actually has pretty great food options. I got a delicious sushi and pork steamed bun and Amelia finally found something she actually really enjoys in a chicken curry. 

The tea ceremony was amazing. We had booked onto a group one as they’re so much cheaper, however nobody else turned up so it was actually a private session. We had an hour where we started by learning about the ceremony itself, then it was performed in front of us where she made the tea, which doesn’t sound particularly interesting but was actually amazing, then we made some tea and tasted it the proper way. Full tea ceremonies that Japanese families would do are hours long affairs where they would have a traditional kaiseki meal, then break, then the tea ceremony itself which can take a very long time with all the formalities and has a thick and thin tea, then sweets. We only partook in the thin tea portion, which entailed an incredibly precise process of creating the matcha tea (which is actually just ground green tea, I thought it was something different). The ceremony embodies 4 key concepts of harmony, peace, purity and tranquillity. You must be silent throughout the tea making process, then when the host has given out the tea in bowls and it has been drunk they begin the conversation with the main guest, at which time the other guests can listen and learn before joining in the conversation when the host turns to them. The bowl you drink the tea from even has a front and back, and a full procedure of how you drink it and place it on the floor. One little nugget of information both of us loved was the use of their folded up fan. Upon entering the tearoom they place the fan in front of them before bowing, and moving it behind themselves, this symbolises moving the personal boundaries of the individuals in the group from in front, to behind themselves so the group can all be included in the dialogue. A simple and beautiful action. It’s a brilliant experience I would recommend to anyone, I really want to do a full team ceremony with the meal at some point (when money is no object).

Once we were finished here we headed back to the hotel for a bit of rest before returning to downtown for dinner in a food hall where Amelia had spied an omelette place she wanted to try. They’re not ordinary omelettes though, they’re very large, pasty shaped and filled with the flavouring of your choice. I had a duck one and Amelia had cheesy chicken. They’re her favourite dish in Japan so far. A much improved food day for her (finally). Getting back we booked a few exciting activities for Tokyo and headed to bed. Again absolutely shattered.