day four - kyoto continued!

Day four:

This morning we were LATE FOR BREAKFAST oh dear oh dear. We had asked for breakfast at 7:30, and we were still in our room getting ourselves sorted at 7:31 and the phone rang, and it was the front desk lady saying, where are you we are waiting for you for breakfast, so we hurried downstairs and if you can imagine the horror, started our breakfast a full three minutes after the appointed time. If they spit in our food to punish us for our tardiness, you couldn’t tell, however, since it was the most aesthetically beautiful breakfast I have ever eaten. After the hot hand towel thing (which I love), we got a lacquer tray with nine little lacquer bowls each with a different exciting thing (fava beans, tiny little mini fried fish, lotus stem, pickled mystery vegetable, etc.), followed by a big still-bubbling thing of rice porridge with two raw eggs and a yuzu citrus fruit in it that they mixed up in front of us to cook the eggs and infuse the whole thing with citrus flavour), and then a little plate of the most gorgeous perfectly cooked cod ever, and finished up with green tea.

After breakfast we headed out to the imperial palace complex, where the emperors of Japan lived for nearly a thousand years until the capital was moved to Tokyo. Despite the fact that it is a UNESCO world heritage site blah blah blah I didn’t honestly think it was anything all that special (except for the gardens and the few painted screens that you could see through the open doors (you are not actually allowed in the palace buildings, just around the grounds). I found the architectural style a bit bleak and austere, especially set in acres of flat white gravel, and with the exception of a few ornate carved bits along the roofline, it did not give the impression of antiquity at all; it looked to me for the most part as if it could have been constructed in the 1970’s. (Jonathan was totally blown away about it, and said that was the point, it was timeless, and reflected the philosophical ideals of simplicity) and we ended up getting quite cross, arguing over aesthetics and what makes things beautiful and form vs. function etc., J. being passionately pro modern minimalism, and me preferring a more organic antique lumpiness (I don’t think it’s a simplicity vs. gaudiness, quite; for instance I much prefer plain stone early Romanesque churches to later cathedrals that are all gilted up with enormous chunks of gold everywhere, although I will admit that I was ready to move in to the Bangkok Royal Temple when I saw all the crazy colored glass and detailed mural paintings and elephant statues everywhere.) My theory is that a lot of it is gender difference - I can think of an awful lot more men than women who go for the very clean, spare, cool, rectilinear look, and a lot more women than men who prefer bright rich colours, curves, warmth, soft edges, elaborate detail. I will continue to collect data, in any case.

After that, we took the train out to Arashiyama, on the outskirts of Kyoto, and had okonomiyaki omelets at a little sit-at-the-counter grill place (egg, cabbage, pork, squid, green onion fried into a patty in front of you, and then topped with mayonnaise, seaweed flakes, and mystery spicy powder). After lunch we walked along the river in the misty (slight) rain, which was very pretty, through a gardeny foresty area to the estate of an old Japanese silver screen movie star who had designed this rural retreat for himself and then bequeathed it to be used as a park after he died. Narrow stone paths led through little hidden gardens, all beautifully kept, and we had the entire place more or less to ourselves because of the rain. I think that might have been my favourite thing that we have seen so far. At the end of the walk through the gardens there is a teahouse place where you get given a cup of green tea and a rice cookie by a nice lady, (again, with beautiful peaceful view out the open screen window to the bamboo forest) and I sat and tried to sketch the beautiful peaceful view but it is HARD when there are a million leaves everywhere and not a lot in the way of definite lines to help you plan the drawing.

Anyway. After that to the costume museum (J. complained, I insisted, only took half an hour, beautiful little doll’s houses w/ dolls in authentic period imperial costumes), back to hotel to pick up bag, bus to train station, and now on the train back to Tokyo, having consumed our train ’snack’ of a bento box of beef sushi, a plum roll, a raisin scone, and a sugar bun…