My acceptance to awesome bulldogs was accepted and I read their Facebook page, but a lot of it seemed to be about their bulldogs dying and it made me cry. And then I felt sleepy and I went back to bed at 6.30am.
Sam woke me up and he was surprised that it was 11am. Neither of us have slept in that late, well, ever really.
“It’s 11am?”
“Really? 11am?”
Into the plastic shower module, which I quite like really. It doesn’t matter where you stand, all the water just drains away. There is a drain all the way around the base of the plastic room.
It’s warm in there, but it is cold getting out though but, you know, I wonder if feeling different temperatures is, actually, good for you? Rather than being cossetted in the same benign temperature all your life, have your senses feel different things. I don’t know, just something I think in the shower. I think it is.
We got dressed and headed out for food. We’re off to see the big, orange sticks today. A couple of stops from Kyoto station.
The sun is shining. The sky is blue. Sam ate beef and eel and salad, I ate pork and rice and silken tofu and miso soup. We eat on the corner of the big intersection, a block from our place.
Sitting at breakfast I saw a silver XK8, a blue Rolls Royce Phantom and a blue Peugeot 208GTI all heading across the intersection in a relatively short time frame.
We head to Kyoto Station, changing trains to go to Inari Station to go see the big temple with all the orange sticks.
We drink coffee at Kyoto Station. Got to get a decent coffee in when the chance presents itself, before we venture out.
Sam goes to the toilet at Kyoto Station before we catch the train, and he tells me to look in the shops, so I buy chiffon cake. What else is there to do?
We caught the train to an above ground station, which is almost village-like. There are, of course, many, many people there heading to the same place we are. It is only a few short steps from the station, up a wending path. The sign at the gate says not outside food, but I think that is just to make you buy food inside the temple. No Buddhist objection, just a capitalist one.
We ate the chiffon cake at the gate of the temple before we head in, even if there was no one there policing it, I don’t think, and people were eating from the stalls inside.
1.30pm. We’re watching a Buddhist christening, possibly, at the big shrine as soon as one walks in. A bit weird having a christening as all the tourists watch, but whatever. We were standing at the side and suddenly it was even stranger when we were surrounded by a bunch of Italian noonas who were all prattling away in Italian.
Shake of the head? Where are we?
We walked the entire orange stick track, up the hill to the top. Correction, we nearly got to the top of the orange stick thingy, the last stop before the top, but I wanted ice cream to go that last little bit (it was hot) and he who is a mean bean said no and so we headed down again.
The big orange sticks are amazing really. The path wound its way through them all like giant crochet hoops.
There were lots of shrines along the way. The fox was the messenger of buddha, I guess, (I read something about it, but I can’t really remember the details) so there were lots of fox images. There was a gorgeous lake, as pretty as a picture, a gorgeous lake picture.
It was hot. There were lots of people. It was all up hill and then back down. Lots of forest. The grounds were really quite nice.
Sam wanted to buy a selection of 3 foxes that would have cost $65. They were on sale for people to leave as offerings to the gods, some of the shrines had many of them.
As we walked down through the stalls at the front of the shrine looking for singular foxes that were cheaper. We didn’t find one.
We walked through the little village-like area which was bulging with shops and souvenir stalls.
There was an intersection in which I took a 360 video (do we still call them video?) of all the people.
We walked to the other train station across the town, which is really just another part of Kyoto, which had a direct train to a metro station near our place, which would be just a short walk away from home.
4pm. We got off at Jingu-Marutamachi train station and started to walk home. It was a bit of a walk, but nice.
We crossed the river, The Kamo River, Kamo-gawa, duck river, it is the first time we see it. There seemed to be groups doing sporting things. Maybe school kids practising martial arts, Taiichi, exercise on the banks of the river. I immediately think of China, or Vietnam, or even North Korea and their adherence to communist party dictates on exercise. I wonder if it is the same thing?
We stopped at the supermarket, Fresco, and bought juice and tomatoes and a cucumber. Sam is made on tomatoes and cucumber.
“We’re not getting enough greens,” he says.
I question if tomato’s, or cucumbers are classified as greens.
“What colour are cucumbers?” he asks.
“You know what I mean.”
Japan is big ginger, tiny snow peas. Their citrus never seem that fresh. Everything is individually wrapped in plastic. The anti packaging message seems to have miss them altogether.
We stopped at the Shimagoryo Shrine which is in our neighbourhood. So many shrines in so many neighbourhoods. Not far from our place.
We walked through old Kyoto, I am assuming, where the houses seemed a lot more traditional, which seems to be our part of Kyoto, so that seems convenient. Small houses made of wood fronting right onto the street.
Kyoto is so beautiful, they said. You will love Kyoto, they said. Kyoto is the historic part of Japan, they said.
When I hear historic, I think Europe kind of historic. I guess it just isn’t the same thing?
5pm. We get home, get changed, get our bikes and ride to the Golden Pavilion. (Have to cross those tourist attractions off) Since 1397, so I am guessing that is old. The streets of Kyoto are so bike friendly. But the sign said closed, and the man said, "No, no, no, no shrine for you," to the boy tourist of the Italian couple, who’d walked up the long drive way to investigate. They laughed about it.
So, we rode our bikes home again.
6.30pm. We stopped at a skewer place and eat grilled meat for diner. We ate skewers of beef and chicken and liver and offal and we drank beer and green tea, because the nice smiley waitress said they required us to buy a drink, and although she was smiling we could tell she meant it. The food was good. The offal was tough and indeterminate as to what part of the animal it was.
We rode home, it is getting dark. We stop at two street shops and buy sweeties at both. Open right onto the street, we didn’t even have to get off our bikes. Some skewered sweeties at one, and a chocolate bun and a custard bun at the other.
7.24pm. We’re in a supermarket, again. One we just happened to ride passed. We parked our bikes in the bike park out the front.
“I need rice, I need rice, I’ll die without rice,” says Sam. We bought fruit and white bait and some veggies. He wanted those rice triangle things of which he has become so fond.
It was now dark.
We stopped at the pet shop, which had a wall of kittens and puppies, in clear Perspex boxes. Bengal, Ragdoll, English Short Hair Blue, cats. Yorkshire Terrier, Shiba Inu, and a bunch of oodles, oh, and some white hairy thing you just know was going to grow up to be fluffy and yappy dogs. There was a French Bulldog, so naturally we gravitated to it. We were going ask if he could be taken out so we could play with him, as there were two young Japanese girls playing with the white fluffy thing, but it had got dark by that stage and we still had to ride the rest of the way home, so I wished the Frenchie a happy life and off we toddled home.
8pm. And we are home. Back in our small, paper house, with low ceilings and sliding doors and no windows.
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