Neighborhood joint

Click on this map of the Obaku District.  I live about 50 yards from the red "You Are Here" arrow; this is my neighborhood   All the grey squares represent temples and shrines in this small district, part of the prefecture of Kyoto.  There are approximately 2,000 of these across Kyoto.

I live just a 10 minute walk from the Obaku-san Manpuku-ji Temple built in 1661 by a Chinese monk named Yinyuan Longqi and his disciple Muyan.  I'm not trying to be cheeky, but walk out your front door and see if you can find anything from even 1961.  This is incredible, even overwhelming.  1661!  Around the corner.  Yep.  The ol' neighborhood temple from SIXTEEN SIXTY ONE.

I like this temple a lot.  It is immense.  It is grand.  It is quiet.  It doesn't command respect, but invites it, gently.  The grounds are well kept, but have a lovely maturity, like a wise old man or woman.  These are not gardens that were planted in the spring; they will not be refreshed before winter.  They are there, they've been there, they know.

I like to think that entering Manpuku-ji now, in 2013 is not any different than entering it in 1661, that the purpose of the beautiful architecture and pristine landscape, to inspire tranquility, has not changed.

...wa doko desu ka?

You have to keep digging and "wa doko desu ka"-ing.  Eventually you'll find what you're looking for.  A major difference I've found between New York and Kyoto (or Tokyo) is that people here often don't know where specific streets are.  In New York you can ask anyone where any street is and they will get you within a block of your destination.  I think it has something to do with the very vague and puzzling postal system in Japan.  House numbers and street names seem to be general information for the neighborhood or quarter rather than exact locations.  I think even the locals find it befuddling.
I had been on the hunt for an art store since I arrived.  I had passed many traditional calligraphy shops with beautiful and expensive art materials - brushes, ink, paper.  I had passed many stationery stores with basic office supplies - pens, notebooks, envelopes.  I had even passed a couple of proper art stores that specialize in watercolor pigment.  Amazing places.  But I was looking for the Pearl Paint of Kyoto - some place with a large selection of art supplies at reasonable prices.  I was walking down Karasuma Dori when I saw some people in the windows at Takashimaya painting a giant mural on the wall.  Ah-ha!  My people: artists doing visual display, cool cats with matching yellow jumpsuits.  I asked them, "Bijutsu mise wa doko des ka?"  A girl wrote down Gwasen Do in Kanji on a slip of paper and gave me vague directions in English.  A day later I found it.  Victory!

Ephemera

The Dish

I can walk around, observe what I observe, make notes of what I note, photograph what I picture.  But the insider perspective will always take me places physically, emotionally and mentally I'd never go.  A proper Japanese meal is something an American will probably never understand.  Even the French, with their glorious culinary history, can't really compete with the Japanese.  Now I'm not talking a katsudon breakfast or even shabu-shabu.  I'm talking kaiseki, even a simplified lunchtime version.  I learned over a long lunch in a restaurant on a side street in Downtown Kyoto with kazoku Ito that not only are the cuisine and ingredients seasonal, but so is the tableware.  It is a distinctly European custom that all the dishware should be matching, with the same design from the same manufacturer.  This concept is totally bizarre, maybe abhorrent to the Japanese who feel every course, every alimentary morsel within the course should have its own special and unique dish or bowl; AND that these dishes should change with the seasons.  This means that the soup you drink in the autumn will be different from the winter, spring and summer soups based not only on the seasonally appropriate ingredients, but also on the bowl in which it is served.  All this gorgeous attention to detail means even a very simple restaurant has to have an enormous collection of unmatched tableware.  I will not even dip my toes into the subject of Japanese culinary presentation here - a true art form.  This is for another time, another meal and discussion with the Itos.

The Japanese Garden

A morning spent gardening, and oh the things you see in a slightly neglected Japanese garden: an army of pill bugs, spiders - long, elegant ones, green and yellow with webs that might ensnare small aircraft, black jumping spiders, brown wolf spiders that race towards you, rather than away, believing you may be very large prey, a lizard the color and texture of a newborn baby, a black spotted salamander, brilliantly colored centipedes, millipedes and other too-many-to-counti-pedes, moths, little lightweight beetle-like bugs that don't sing or play guitar.  It was an ambitious project to be sure, clearing what might have been 10 or 15 years of leaves and twigs.  I was disturbing a whole ecosystem, a micro world that was dependent on this ordered chaos.  I had been inspired by the grounds at the Obakusan-manpukuji Temple and wanted a more zen garden at 12-19 Shinkai Gokanosho.  As the little garbage bags began to pile up I worried that they might not be collected, that I'd exceeded the collectable limit.  I abandoned the project around 1P when I had filled 7 bags.  I would wait to see if the garbagemen took these before I continued.  The weird and colorful little world of insects and other crawling things would remain in tact for another week. 

Beautiful Age

Feeling lucky

It's a good day when, without trying, you find a vintage Japanese photography mag from 1975 in a flea market for ¥100.  It's a good day when, without trying, you find a museum with a film series on featuring legendary actress Hideko Takamine.  It's a good day when, without trying, you find a tiny art store that sells watercolor pigment from jars by the gram.  It's a good day when, without trying, you find a small, beat cafe with good music and Sapporo beer in 633ml bottles.  It's a good day when the afternoon sun is raining down on you and you are alive.

Koshoji Temple (興聖寺)

I started walking, as I am apt to do, in the direction of Uji.  The main road was rather boring - long, wide, straight, without anything to see - like so many streets in Los Angeles.  I was about to give up and turn back when I saw a pointed rooftop in the distance, that signature architectural detail of centuries old Japan.  Then the great Uji River came into view.  My day was about to take a turn toward the beautiful and serene.

I had by chance (and with some determination) stumbled upon historic Uji.  I only had to follow the markers through the twisty streets lined with traditional machiya wood houses.  I followed some stairs leading from the Uji Shrine down to the river.  There were some men fishing.  I walked along an impossibly narrow road that hugged the bank of the river listening to the fast moving water.  I came to a large stone gate, the sort of noble structure that leads to something big and important.

Up the hill on the edge of a forest was the magnificent Koshoji Temple.  For better or worse, a lot of what we know about other cultures comes from film.  This looked like something out of a samurai film.  I wondered if I hadn't stepped through some sort of time portal when I crossed under that stone gate.

I was wonderfully alone there, no tourists swarming over the place, just me and 3 or 4 other people.  I wandered around in quiet awe.  I climbed some stairs up through the ancient graveyard and found a woman weeping by a tombstone, as if she were visiting the grave of a recently deceased relative.  So odd I thought.  Then I realized I don't know anything.

Uji (宇治)

"Uji" from "ushi" meaning melancholy or sorrow, referring to the buddhist concept of transience.

Uji offered a comforting refuge for the forsaken and the forlorn. 

What's inside

I love the places with no indication outside of what lies inside.  A passage from the street leads to a slatted wood sliding door.  This opens to a narrow room glowing in warm yellow light.  It is empty.  It is clean and stylish without trying too hard.  Sake bottles and carafes line the cubed shelving behind the bar.  There is back-lighting.  Why does it feel like 1955?  The music.  Jazz, always jazz here in Japan.  

A man with a long, weathered face wearing a bow-tie greets me.
"Chu-sho ku?" I ask hesitantly.
"Yes, of course," he answers and shows me to a table.

Musing

Stray from the beaten path.  Look for what you are looking for, but don't be afraid to make a wrong turn.  Down these little streets are the wonders, the smiles.

Uji-City (宇治市)

So after a whirlwind few days in Tokyo which included a proper whirlwind (aka typhoon) and a national holiday I arrived at my destination - Kyoto.

The house, "my" house, was described to me by my dear friend Mineko some months ago as "a very old house".  This being Japan, I thought, hmm, 12th Century, 17th Century?  It is in fact a wonderful example of mid-20th-Century Japanese modern design, which I adore.  Clean lines with both modern and traditional Japanese details.  I knew, I could see it even as I walked down the street with my hundred pounds of luggage - this place was cool.

The garden was perhaps a little unkempt by Japanese standards, but it set the mood with a large sculpted/un-sculpted pine.  Her parents gave me the key and asked me to open the lightweight door with two slender, rectangular inset glass pains.  The door opened onto a tiny foyer of black river rock and concrete.  We left our shoes there and moved through the house opening windows and letting out more than 6 months of warm, stale air.

I couldn't believe this place.  As an American, or anyone from the Western world, we have certain ideas about what a Japanese house should look like.  For me this has been fed almost exclusively by Ozu and Kurasawa films.  We want to see tatami mats in the rooms.  We want to see sliding wood-paned doors and windows.  We want to see bamboo.  We want to see a hanging scroll.  We want to duck slightly when we pass from room to room to avoid banging our heads.  All here.

There is an incredible weightlessness to Japanese architecture of this period, an ease of movement from indoor to outdoor.  Everything has a function, or in some cases multiple functions.  There is no unnecessary ornamentation or bulk.  The space feels almost transient, as if it could be lifted up and relocated without much effort.  It is easy to see how American and European architects of the 1950s were in awe and greatly influenced by the buildings here.

But yeah, this is my home for the moment.  Domo arigato Ito-san!

                                   

Shinkansen

Tokyo and its tangled modernity disappeared somewhere behind me.  In an instant I was deep into the green countryside of Japan.  I'd left something that is Japanese for something that seemed somehow more Japanese.  The Nozomi 113 train bound for Kyoto and points beyond was moving so fast that if I looked from the window down to the page in my journal, whatever it was I wanted to note was well out of sight by the time I returned my gaze out the window.  This was topographic speed - villages, mountains, a river, industry, roads, cemeteries blurring by.  It was almost painful to look, my eyes registering, adjusting, going out of focus, re-adjusting, registering again.  Japan at 285 km per hour - yeah!

Shibuya Crossing 21:09 Tuesday

Musing

The jazz soundtrack in the cafes and bars.  I feel like I'm in an Ozu film, or a Jean-Luc Godard flic, if he had shot in Japan in the 1960s.  Cool.  Transporting.

Tokyo girls

There was a girl at the massive Kinokuniya Bookstore.  Her job was to drive the elevator, a position most retailers in most countries abandoned in 1960.  She had a uniform: crisp white blouse, cardigan, black English schoolgirl hat with a Houndstooth ribbon that matched her skirt, and white mesh gloves.  She announced the floor number, what could be found there and advised everyone to watch their step.  Or this is what I guessed she said as it was all in Japanese.  Her voice was pitched unreasonably high, like a 33rpm record played at 45rpm.  She sounded like a talking doll.  In fact her whole demeanor including her outfit gave one that impression.  But there was a real joy and enthusiasm in what she did; she liked her job.  And she moved with such grace, sliding her gloved hand across the elevator door just as it opened, coaxing it gently from the pocket.  What an incredible and unique gesture.

Where it's at

You wander around and around for hours looking for that bar or cafe that speaks to you.  Then you find a narrow alley near the Shinjuku train station, a bright tangled mess of a street, almost under the railroad tracks.  The bar is small, old and greasy.  It may have even survived the war.  The countertop is a long, single-cut, curving piece of timber worn smooth by years of elbows and sweat.  The walls are covered with menu specials, beautiful handwritten signs on pink, yellow, blue and green paper.  Nothing has moved in here in several decades, everything caramel tinted with age, smoke and grease. The place almost glows.  Golden.  Outside a typhoon gasps and blows a last blast of moist, cool air.

Konnichiwa

You get on a plane and fly to the other side of the planet.  You're not there for a couple days on business; you're not there on holiday.  You're THERE.  You know where you are, you know the joys and struggles of your day.  But people in other places on different continents, in different time zones...they want to know too.  For this reason I have created the Super Big Japan Style blog, to keep those that are interested in my adventures informed.  I make no guarantees as to the frequency or quality of posts.
So, here's to it and dig!