Picture this for contrast:
A demure Japanese woman wearing a pale blue brocade kimono bound with a lovely earth-toned obi (sash) gazes pensively at Kyoto’s massive Kiyomizu Temple, which teems with crowds of neatly uniformed school children.
Along Teramachi, an arcaded shopping street, two Kyoto teenagers pause near a row of garish photo booths, their dress an aberration. Both wear miniskirts, tight T-shirts and wigs–one blond and short, the other red with twin pony tails. And then there are the shoes. The blond’s are squeaky clean platformed sneakers topped with white leg warmers. The redhead balances on six-inch red platformed sandals set off with white knee socks. They smile and flash peace signs as I take a photo.
Like every place else, Kyoto lives in two worlds–yesterday’s and today’s. But because of its historical significance to Japan, Kyoto, a city of 1.5 million, is a special treasure. Once Japan’s capital, and still its spiritual heart, Kyoto dates to 794 A.D. Today it embraces its past–manifest in thousands of elegant temples, shrines and gardens, old neighborhoods and a coterie of fine craftspeople–and its present–the new city with its low-rise modern buildings, small but efficient subway system, stores and restaurants.
For visitors new to Japan and interested in gaining a cultural foothold, Kyoto is the place to begin. It is calm and green compared to sprawling, frenetic Tokyo, thus much less intimidating and easier to navigate. Many signs are in English. People are courteous to a fault.
Ringed on three sides by foothills and mountains and split by two rivers, Kyoto was laid out in an easy-to-manage grid pattern centuries ago based on Chinese Tang Dynasty plans. Because of its sacred places, it was spared from bombing during World War II.
The main challenge to visitors, besides dealing with hefty prices (the exchange rate was 103-104 yen to the dollar when we were there in April), is penetrating an enigmatic culture. Also, a lot depends on one’s mindset, whether one is a pilgrim or a shopper, as a Kyoto observer explained.
“Literally thousands of tourists visit Kyoto every day from different parts of Japan as well as from the far corners of the globe, and they mostly visit temples and gardens–sacred places,” wrote Preston L. Houser in his forward to “Japanese Garden Design” by Marc P. Keane. “The pilgrims come to gain a sense of artistic heritage…. They temporarily occupy spaces that artisans, aristocrats and Zen masters of prior ages have occupied, as if, by sharing the same `view,’ a more enlightened perspective of the soul and the world will be achieved.
“For the shoppers,” he says, “traveling is a kind of consumption called `doing,’ such as doing New York or doing the Louvre, as if cultures can be done as one would do an amusement park or a shopping mall–profane places. The shoppers seem to revel in the hollowness of such misadventure, and their proclamation of experience invariably betrays an exaggerated sense of mal de siecle: “Been there, done that.”
Houser, who has written about Kyoto culture, notes that most tourists who come to Kyoto, however, are pilgrims. “For them, the rewards of travel are more profound than simply being there and doing that–or so they would prefer to think. For pilgrims, Kyoto remains the city of choice for its cultural wealth and its abundance of tourist destinations–again mostly temples and gardens.”
My wife and I recently spent six days in Kyoto, my third visit, her first. In the course of our stay, we visited about 10 of the 1,600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines and scores of serene gardens–a couple of them twice. Our goal in Kyoto was to contemplate, meditate, not to race, and thus quietly absorb the bold, but graceful architecture and the elegant gardens created over many centuries.
On our first morning we cabbed to Kiyomizu Temple, one of the most beloved sights in Japan. Hundreds of uniformed school children, all on class pilgrimages, flooded the hilly, shop-lined street to the entrance.
In the soft, spring sunlight, schoolkids and other visitors swarmed the complex of temples, which sit atop lush hills and in shallow valleys, and paused to sip water from a sacred spring. Kiyomizu (mizu means water), founded in 805 and renovated in 1633, is best known for its main hall with an impressive veranda supported by 139 stout wooden pillars.
The following morning we strolled to Nanzenji, a Zen Buddhist complex founded in 1291, now covering 27 acres amid pines in the foothills of the Higashiyama mountains. We were enthralled by the massive two-story Dragon Gate entrance with its six huge wooden columns, the serene dry garden of artfully raked gravel and the lovely forested landscape garden, where bamboo rustled in the wind and orange and gold carp glided near the surface of a large, shade pond.
We also visited Heian Shrine, noted for its vermilion, green and white buildings and its large garden of weeping cherry trees whose petals fall and cover the ground like pale pink snow; Kinkakuji, with its Golden Pavilion built in the 1390s; nearby Ryoanji Temple, with the most famous dry garden in Japan, a meditative masterpiece when visitors are quiet, and Nijo Castle, a remarkable moated complex built by a shogun in 1569 and planted with gorgeous flowering trees–Japanese apricot, common camellia, cherry, weeping peach, azalea, jasmine, lilac.
We visited Toji Temple, not so much to see it, which is worth seeing, but to shop the famous flea market–some 1,500 vendors selling food, textiles, baskets, ceramics, antiques–that takes place there on the 21st of every month.
There were few bargains to be had, but my wife found a length of indigo fabric for $15 and three old pilgrimage books for $60. (Visitors often purchase pilgrimage books and have them elaborately inscribed at each temple.)
We also strolled the Philosophers’ Path, a pleasant hillside walk bordering a small tree-lined canal and linking Ginkakuji (the Silver Pavilion) and Nanzenji, which we had visited earlier.
We interspersed temple visits with walks along the narrow streets of the Gion district lined with one-story wooden buildings. The one-time geisha district is not as colorful as it once was, but is still dotted with inviting restaurants. And sometimes you see a traditional geisha on her way to work. At Gion Corner, tourists were lined up to see demonstrations of a geisha tea service and other aspects of Japanese arts and culture.
Along Shijodori, a street that borders the Gion, you’ll find the elegant Kyoto Craft Center, many specialty shops selling paper goods, candy and ceramics, and the famous Takashimaya Department Store, an upscale version of Marshall Field’s/Nordstrom, with an amazing food department in the basement.
Just a block or two north of Shijodori and near Teramachi, we poked around several blocks of fine antiques stores selling calligraphy scrolls, traditional Japanese textiles and furniture. Farther north, near Heian Temple on the west side of the narrow Kamogawa River, we toured the Kyoto Handicraft Center, a good place to buy reproductions of Hiroshige woodblock prints made by artists on the spot, cloisonne, scrolls, kimonos, calligraphy and myriad souvenirs.
A word about prices. It costs a minimum of $6.30 to step into a taxi. Admissions to temples and shrines are about $6. At a snack shop frequented by Japanese, coffee costs about $2.80, an egg salad sandwich, $3.40; a plate of pasta, about $6. At McDonald’s, two Big Macs, large fries and two soft drinks cost about $12.
One night we went to a restaurant in the colorful Pontocho nightlife area for shabu-shabu (a kind of beef fondue with vegetables and noodles): The cost including two beers was $93. A room in the better hotels starts in the $225 range. So be forewarned and appropriately armed with a debit card, credit card and travelers checks.
To a person, shopkeepers, restaurant and hotel staff, and subway personnel were polite and helpful. So were taxi drivers, who always wear white gloves and keep their cabs spotless inside and out.
In a culture known for reserve toward foreigners, one local woman at the Toji market asked my wife where she was from. “Chicago,” my wife said. The woman smiled warmly at her and replied, “You are welcome here.”
Kyoto. It’s one of the world’s greatest treasures and a unique window on the wonders of traditional Japanese culture. It’s also a place I advise you to be a pilgrim.
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Alfred Borcover’s e-mail address is aborcover@aol.com.
