As we walked to the castle and the garden, the humidity was horrible. Unfortunately, it only got unbearably worse as the day developed. The castle was very nice, traditional Japanese, but it drew less of my attention. We headed to the garden and as we entered, we were offered a free personal guided tour in English. Throughout the tour, we found out a little about our guide. He was probably some big shot general in the army running tours for the past seven years. Funny thing is that it took him a few minutes to warm up. And in those few minutes, I could feel Ori's slight frustration at agreeing for the tour. "Oy, what did we get into with this guy who doesnt know English. We're never going to get out of here within an hour." No, he didnt say any of this, but i could practically hear him say it in his head. But I'm glad we took him up on the offer of the tour as he quickly picked up the pace. He was full of interesting information and regarding the timing - he was right on. We walked through the entire garden, with visits to hidden little corners and were back at the gate within 60 minutes sharp. The Swiss ain't got nothing on the Japanese in terms of punctuality.
I don't know what the other two (of the three best gardens in Japan) are like, but this one was beautiful. Amazingly maintained, full of history, functionality, practicality, serenity and just plain beautiful. 
Train to cablecar. Cablecar to bus. 
And finally - walk to the temple at which we were to stay the night. We were greeted by a lovely young monk in training who spok great English. He showed us our room (Ori's name was printed on a piece of paper above the sliding door. The room, or I should say rooms, or suite, was huge. We had a living room, a bedroom, and a little room with a table and chairs to enjoy the internal garden. Across the hall from our room entrance was another beautiful garden. 
We dropped our bags and ran out to tour Koyasan during the few remaining day light hours. We had to be back by 6pm for dinner, which was to be served in our tatami area (the living room).
After the gardens we quickly went back to the hotel, found that the laundry had finally dried, packed everything in and went to the train station. Koyasan here we come.
But not so fast.
Subway to train. Train to another train.
Koyasan is not what Ori and I imagined. I thought it was a tiny little temple in the middle of the forest to which we get to by a cable car (as thats what they call it, when in fact its actually a fenicular). Ori's imgine was alittle closer to reality, in such that he didnt realize how advanced and populated the area was. There were tour buses and souvenier shops and restaurants. Wifi in one cafe that we know of (made the mistake of going there the next morning - overpriced and bad coffee, not to mention the green tea - oy! 1000 Yen for coffee and tea - Starbucks costs less here), but probably more, seeing how many tourists there were. Its not that it was crowded, actually we didnt really feel the presense of too many people, but I imagine that during weekends and holidays there is the ability to host many more.
We crossed the street to the Garan complex and did not expect what we saw.
Huge temples. Massive shrines. Colours everywhere. Trees hundreds of years old. We even saw an old cherry tree which was over one thousand years old!
The tree leaves were starting to change colours and the mix of green, red and orange just added to the special attmosphere of the place. People didn't shout, or whisper, but still, everything was quiet. As we go to some of the sites where tourists tend to go, I am happy we didn't take this trip in the spring. While I am sure I would have enjoyed seeing the cherry trees in bloom, I know I would have quickly become frustrated with the endless lines that people talk about when they speak of the spring. We are enjoying the exact oposite everywhere we go. Luckily.
We got back to the temple just in time to take off our shoes at the temple entrance and get to the room for dinner. As we were relaxing in our room, there was a lght tap on the door - excuse me, may we serve dinner? Two monks walked in with a tower of red trays piled up. One moved the coffee table aside, set up two pillows on which to sit. They then set up two red trays in front of Ori and two in front of me. And a fifth tray on the side with a pot of tea and a covered bowl of rice. I can't properly describe how impressed and suprised Ori and I were with the beauty, colour, and quantity of food there was. There was Miso soup, Koyasan tofu in soya sauce with a bit of wasabi, vegetable tempura, something that sounds like cognac but is actually fake meat, three different relishes, different types of tofu, red beans, raw vegetables, cabbage and carrot salad with sesame sauce, and Japanese pears and grapes. And the presentation was unlike anything I had seen before. On of one of the vegetable dishes was a colourful shape of a maple leaf in something tofu like. The monk who served us went over the meal explaining each impressive dish and went as far as to explain that you eat the rice out of the rice bowl and then drink the green tea from the same bowl afterwards.
There was so much food, even without the rice, that we couldn't finish it all. We only hope we didnt insult anyone by not finishing it. We both laid backwards for a bit after the meal as we couldn't move.
After recovering from the meal, it was bath time. Temples dont have individual showers but shared ones. I had no idea was to expect. I took the cotton robe and belt supplied by the temple and walked to the women's bath. I had comicly referred to it as a mikveh in the past, and now, having been in both a mikveh and a Japanese bath, I can say that the Japanese take their bathing even more seriously than we do Jews. I walked in and stripped, putting my clothing in a straw basket happy to be alone in the room. Walk into the next room (sliding door) to see a big jaccuzzi at the other end of the room and before it shower heads, bowels, shampoo, body soap and upside down buckets along the two sides of the room. One is supposed to thorouly scrub and wash the body before entering the bath. There is to be no soap in the bath itself. Having done that, I tried stepping into the bath only to find the water BOILING! It took a long time to actually get into the water up to my shoulders. But once I succeeded, it felt wonderful. Think jaccuzzi inside a sauna. If it gets too hot, you step out, cool off a little with a cold shower and step back in. I don't know for how long I was in there, but when I came back to the room, I felt exhausted, red faced, but totally relaxed. I sent Ori off to do it as well.
By 9 pm the entire temple was dark and quiet. Unbelievable that we went to bed so early, but thats exactly what happened. Not that it was such a problem. We were exhausted and had to be up to see the morning prayer at 6:30. Ori, worried we would miss it, put on the alarm clock and an alarm on his phone. We figured it wouldnt bother anyone as they would be up anyways for the prayer as well.
Little did we know that we would be up with the hitting of the gong at 6am!
No comments:
Post a Comment