Day 6: An Appoggiatura on Hiei-zan

Hiei-zan at last...

Friday morning we got up early, and it looked like the weather was going to work in our favor. (Mostly sunny, according to weather.com.) We took a few buses to reach the the base of Hiei-zan and waited at the cable car station for it to come back down.

The view of Kyoto going up the mountain in the cable cars was pretty breathtaking.

It was a much less laborious than the climb up Kurama-yama was the day before. And the walk back down the mountain was much less damp. Although it precipitated slightly less than the day before--only a little bit, mostly in the afternoon. And when it did, it snowed. Which is strange, for almost-April. But then, it still gets pretty frigid here in Kyoto, especially at night.




It even left some ice crystals on the ground.

A graveyard overlooking quite a spectacular view...

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we're approaching the Jodo-in temple en route to Enryaku-ji's main grounds...

Biology interlude! I can't help it. Fugus (perhaps lichen) is exciting. Orange fungus, doubly so.

 A peek inside Jodo-in

And here we met Jogyo-do and Hokke-do. The sort-of-bridge between them was once lifted by a monk. Clearly a very strong monk. I don't know why he did it yet.

Going down the stairs past these temples was Shaka-do, where it began to snow while the sun were still out. We took refuge inside for a few minutes, where a bikuni signed the nokyo-cho. When we came back out, it had stopped snowing, for then at least.

The belfry at Shaka-do

 

It's a little hard to see the snow here...

Then we turned back the way we came, walked back up to the main road, and continued on towards Toudou, the East Pagoda, where the main buildings of Enryaku-ji stand. As we approached Amida Hall, it began to snow again, pretty hard this time.

 

A long time ago, Enryaku-ji was an enormous complex of temples, whose warrior monks were used as mercenaries; sometimes they protected the old capital of Kyoto, sometimes they invaded to enforce their own demands. They became such a powerful and influential institution that eventually Oda Nobunaga, a warlord, decided they were a significant rival and threat. His forces destroyed most of the Enryaku-ji and its monks. The buildings that stand today were rebuilt in the 1500-1600s.

Ben showed us how to pray at the belfry...

 

Another stunning view of Kyoto from near the belfry

 

Looking down a looong steep set of stairs towards one of the main temples

Enryaku-ji is the center of Tendai Buddhism, and Hiei-zan is famous for its "marathon monks." These monks practice and extreme form of ascetic training called Kaihougyou. One of the challenges involves a 1000-day marathon: over the course of seven years, they must walk a certain number of kilometers. During the last few years, the number of kilometers and the number of days they must walk are increased. In their fifth year, they also have Doiri, a nine-day period of fasting (including water) and no rest--only praying. Many monks in training die attempting the 1000-day challenge, and less than 50 monks have completed this training since the 1580s.

On a much lighter note, Robert and I went back to the Kyoto Handicrafts center that evening, after a little rest, to pick up a few things he'd been eying when we visited earlier. On the way were a few interesting sights...When crossing the bridge from the bus stop, we saw a ton of eagles by the river.
...I suppose the people were out fishing that evening as well.
Also saw an older lady with slate-blue hair. (Since then I've seen quite a few older ladies with strange colors faded in their hair. Nick, another student from the home university, told me he thought they probably messed up their dye jobs.)

Day 5: Apotheosis, Tengu, and Kodama

I just wanted to start by sharing this incredible hand-drawn map of the area surrounding the guesthouse. How awesome is it? Very awesome.

Originally, we had planned for Ben to take us up to Mt. Hiei (or Hiei-zan) Thursday, but we opted to try for Friday instead since the weather was still kind of crappy. All that rain we were getting in the valley--probably snow on Hiei-zan.

We did still go to the Kitano Tenman-guu shrine flea market that morning, another market that's held on a certain day of every month like the one at Tou-ji. Apparently there is a Kyoto saying that "Fair weather at the Touji market means rainy weather at the Tenjin market." This market had a little less in the way of traditional crafts, I think, but there were a couple of vendors selling second-hand, possibly vintage, kimono for 1000 yen each. (That's about $10.) You girls who have ever been to a vintage clothing store--kind of like that, but a booth, and with kimono and obi. None that I came across had any real damage, no holes or tears or anything, but they were all clearly second-hand. I picked up a couple that were really lovely. Now I'll have to find obi that match them at some point--adventure!

A lot of students come to Kitano Tenman-guu to pray for success, since the shrine is dedicated to a deified scholar, Sugawara no Michizane. The shrine has a nice little garden,
and is filled with images of cattle. (I'm not entirely sure why-- about the cattle.)
Robert and Ben bought these massive burgers, with probably everything anyone could ever want on a burger, and perhaps more than a person might want.


Not quite paradise, but double-decker, with cabbage, meat patty, bacon, egg, onions, and sauces (maybe ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise?)
One of the vendors on our way out actually gave us a few free slices of deliciously sweet oranges. I also made the mistake of buying ridiculously overpriced dried strawberries...I'm not really sure why. I did want the dried strawberries--the one I tried was very very good--but I should have asked for a smaller amount. Fruit tends to be a tad bit expensive here, since so much is imported...

The rest of the day was pretty much devoted to visiting temples. The first we visited was Kinkakuji, the famous Golden Pavilion. Kinkakuji is just a name for one of the main buildings of the Rokuonji temple. It was originally a villa, and much later it became a Zen temple. It exemplifies three different types of architectures: Shinden-zukuri or the palace style on the first floor, Buke-zukuri, the samurai house style, on the second floor, and finally the Zen temple style Karayou on the third floor. Kinkakuji was pretty crowded with tourists that day--but I think it's still worth at least one visit, even if it's a huge tourist attraction.

The second temple of the day was Ryouanji, the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon. It is most famous for its Zen rock garden, which isn't quite as big as it seems in the photographs, but also still worth consideration. There's a sitting area along one side of it on the porch of one of the main buildings.

I apparently missed an object of interest that I recently discovered on Wikipedia, an amazingly clever thing: the Ryouanji tsukubai stone basin. Check out the Ryouanji article on Wiki, but here's the gist: The hole in the basin is square-shaped, like the kanji 口 (kuchi/guchi=mouth.) Next to the four sides of the square on the basin are four kanji, which are random and meaningless unless you combine 口 with them: to the bottom of the topmost kanji, to the right of the left kanji, to the left of the right kanji, and to the top of the bottommost kanji. Then, going clockwise from the top the characters become:

吾 (ware is I),
唯 (tada is only),
足 (taru is plenty), and
知 (shiru is to know);
the message is literally
"I know only plenty."



















**Writer's note: Robert generously gave his consent for me to use his photos since my camera died halfway through the day. All the following pictures in this post are his.

A ryokan: traditional Japanese inn

The last temple visit required a train to find--Kuramadera is a bit up in the mountains, on Kurama-yama. (Also near an onsen. I'm trying not to drool.) It is also the mountain upon which the king of tengu, Soujoubou, resides, and where he reportedly taught Minomoto no Yoshitsune swordsmanship.

It was a long, long hike up many stairs winding up the side of the mountain to Kuramadera (especially when carrying 2 kimono), but the temple itself and the view at the top are very serene and beautiful. And climbing up made you really appreciate the precarious stairway down the other side of the mountain--although we had the aid of nifty walking sticks. You take them at the temple on top of the mountain, and leave them at the end of the path at the bottom of the mountain.

We see faces everywhere...here's an owl.

Personally, I think there was a kodama in this one tree. There were ropes called shimenawa wrapped around a few of the trees indicating kodama inhabited them, but not around this one...

The walk back down the road towards the train station was also rather nice, even though it was still pretty wet and humid outside. The road ran along a river, and on the other side of the road were many small waterfalls flowing into the stream.

We also came across a few hilarious caution signs: forest fires, and more importantly, monkeys.
(We think the monkey started the fire--he's kind of winking...)

After our long hike, Ben took us to his favorite bar somewhere between the Koukusaikan bus stop and the university...Well, it wasn't just a bar. We sat on pillows on tatami floors at a traditional low table and had dinner: for me, rice with chicken. The guys ordered warm sake and I had a couple of glasses of iced umeshuu, with a little plum at the bottom. The gentlemen who runs the place actually makes the umeshuu himself. He was rather nice--didn't know a lot of English--but I could understand some of what he was saying to Ben. Ben explained where we were from, what we did...They discussed the dinner Ben was going to bring Robert Saturday night, at which there would be a bunch of Judo guys; on of the gentleman's friends was a something-time world Judo champion. (The dinner/party was reportedly very fun, even though they were the only gaijin there. Robert was still feeling rather genki when he came back to the guesthouse Saturday night. One of the older Judo masters there had inherited some land in Mississippi and didn't know what to do with it, so he told them they could take care of it. He was also a bit drunk though....Who knows? Maybe he'll be emailing them next year expecting their help with managing the estate or something.)
XD

And to top it all off, here's what we saw going to and fro ze temples. (Again, compliments of Robert: thanks for the lovely photos from his shiny new camera!)