The Last Bit

With the rail pass bit out of the way, there’s still plenty to explore in the Kansai region, between Madam’s home town, the Osaka conurbation and the old Imperial capital in Kyoto.

We started in Osaka...

Saturday, 10 November 2012

After two weeks on the road, Madam had designated the two-day stay in Osaka as a rest and recreation spell.

After the previous night's indulgences, rest and recreation were what I needed. It started with a long soak in a warm bath, which did some good, but it was never going to be enough to overcome the after-effects.

After breakfast at the hotel coffee shop, I would have been happy to roll the rock across the door and hibernate. But we had an eleven o'clock checkout and a move to new quarters.

This hotel was chosen with an eye to convenience (and exceptionally convenient it was), but it had one major drawback.

It didn't, as far as Madam's initial research could make out, offer a coin laundry. After the two weeks on the road, we'd have a pile of washing that would need to be done.

That prompted the relocation. Neither of us was happy when we found that the first stop did, indeed, offer such a service.

Had it been evident when the bookings were made we'd have stayed put. In that scenario, I could have taken further recuperative baths. The washing could have been started much earlier, and that would have given Madam a more extended rest before we set out to dinner with The Principal.

As it was, we left the checkout as late as possible and took ourselves out for a walk. We left the baggage in the cloakroom at the old hotel, located the new one and attempted to kill time before we could check-in.

We headed to the middle of the business section of Osaka, an area that would have been much busier during the week.

While things were pleasantly quiet, my head throbbed after the overnight overindulgence.

My right knee was doing something similar. That was the result of something I'd presumably done just before we'd shipped the Black Monster back to Kōbe.

The knee had been troubling me for a couple of days, not to any great extent, just enough to make things uncomfortable.

Now, when a long walk might have served to remove toxic elements from the system, the knee was saying, Hang on there buddy, I need some rest.

So I rested in a park on the banks of a river. Meanwhile, the knee delivered constant reminders that it was there, and the head pleaded for somewhere to lie down and quietly expire.

Eventually, on the off chance that we might be able to check in early, we headed over to the new hotel and made polite inquiries.

A stroke of good luck or astute management saw us into the room well before the regular time.

I slept.

Madam ran the laundry routine and still managed a spell before the evening appointment.

That proved to be a much more restrained affair than the previous night's exercise. A rendezvous took us straight into Japan's longest shopping arcade, Tenjinbashi-suji shopping street.

I've seen an arcade or two in my time, but not many stretch over two and a half kilometres.

The roofed arcade grew out of a vegetable market associated with the Tenmangu shrine during the Edo Period, and today contains six hundred stores selling day to day items including groceries, clothes, snacks, used books, medicine, and assorted odds and ends. It's not high-end shopping and, by all accounts, prices tend to be low, and goods are of average quality.

Not the place to go looking for Gucci handbags and the like.

But since it's an everyday shopping environment for ordinary people, it offers a range of eateries and cafes. There are plenty in the arcade itself, and there are more in the streets and alleys that open off the main thoroughfare.

You might be inclined to question Hughesy's description of a shopping arcade that’s packed with a bewildering variety of eateries. In a common or garden arcade, you might have a point in any other society, but a stroll through the eating and drinking quarter in a Japanese city would sort that issue once and for all.

Many of them are izakaya, small bars that offer food to accompany whatever you're drinking, casual places often based on after-work drinking. An Izakaya was originally a saké shop where customers could drink on the premises.

They were sometimes called akachōchin (red lantern) since paper lanterns are traditionally placed in front of such establishments. Nowadays the term usually refers to a small, non-chain izakaya.

As the astute reader might suspect, Hughesy is a big fan of this concept. I would be a bigger fan if I could read the language and decipher the captions underneath the picture menus you find outside.

Somehow we never managed to find ourselves in nomi-hōdai (all you can drink) or tabe-hōdai (all you can eat) places. There, for a set price per person, you can order as much food or drink as you can hold.

They do, however, tend to be careful to impose a time limit of two or three hours.

On arriving you'll invariably find yourself being given an oshibori (wet towel) to clean your hands. There'll possibly be an otōshi (in the Kanto region) or tsukidashi (in Kansai) snack or appetiser charged to the bill instead of an entry fee.

From there, the food quotient will vary according to the particular establishment. Food and drink are ordered throughout the session. Food items are usually shared by everyone at the table.

It took a while to get used to the fact that the closest platter wasn't specifically mine, but the practice allows you to pick and choose.

One thing you will notice is that such places tend to be light on for rice. That threw me until I learned that you're getting your rice quota through the saké, which is, of course, rice wine.

Even if you're drinking beer.

Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers, often grilled in front of you) go particularly well with Japanese beer. I'm also quite partial to the cook it yourself Korean barbecue places

The Principal guided us into a Korean place of the cook it yourself on the hot plate in the middle of the table variety.

We put several platters of marinated meats through the cooking process as various matters were discussed, and a couple of quiet beers were indulged in. Then we wandered off to a Chinese place in a side alley.

The food there was excellent, a pleasant change from the seasoned Korean meats and the combination as a whole worked rather well.

Given busy schedules for Japanese high school principals and the need for weary travellers to rest, we weren't up too late.

A farewell two stops on the return train journey saw us head back through the dark, semi-deserted quite tranquil streets to the hotel. This time, it wasn't quite as conveniently located as far as the railway station was concerned.

Sunday, 11 November 2012

There were no breakfast arrangements in place for Day Two in Osaka and in a way that was just as well.

Given the past thirty-six hours, sleeping in, a late checkout, a move to a third hotel and a rendezvous with The Sister at a French restaurant provided a painless way of filling in the morning.

We'd planned to catch up with The Former Secretary sometime during the day. So when it transpired she didn't have anything else on her plate, we suggested she join us for lunch at the Bistrot des Mauvais Garçons.

There was a slight degree of confusion regarding the actual location of the Bad Boys' Bistro, but we arrived more or less on time, just before The Sister lobbed on the scene.

There was no sign of Former Secretary, it was drizzling, and we were standing in front of the door of another establishment (Bad Boys go upstairs). So we decided to follow the Bad Boys and head up, expecting Former Secretary to find us upstairs.

As it turned out, FS had done been there and gone to check on something when we weren't there well before time. She made it back late, by which time we were upstairs, and she was scratching her head, wondering where we'd got to.

A quick text message, one of a couple she sent without Someone noticing, sorted that out. So we were set for a lengthy, leisurely lunch, with a bottle of Pinot Noir from your actual Burgundy.

The wine went down well. The lunch (salad, cream of pumpkin soup, squid in a tomato sauce, beef slowly cooked in red wine, dessert and petit fours) delivered a pleasant combination of tastes though the portions weren't over-generous.

The conversation kept things rolling along, and although we'd been the first customers to arrive, we were the last to leave.

The attempt to find the lunchtime venue had delivered us onto the famous Ebisubashi bridge across the Dōtonbori canal, just underneath the legendary Glico Man billboard. The bridge was initially built to provide access to the nearby Ebisu shrine and is associated with a legendary curse on the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's baseball team.

Given the familiarity of the Glico Man and the fact that it lies between the Shinsaibashisuji and Ebisubashisuji shopping districts, the bridge is a popular meeting place.

It's known as nanpabashi (by foreigners) and hikkakebashi (by native Japanese). Both translate as the pulling bridge due to the alleged ease with which girls can be picked up in the vicinity.

We went back and forth across the bridge several times through the course of the afternoon and evening, which was spent mainly in the Ebisubashisuji shopping district.

The district opens off the street that takes its name from the Dōtonbori canal, which means it's time for another excursion into the realms of history.

While it's the foremost destination for food travel in Osaka, Dōtonbori owes its origins to a decision back in 1612. Entrepreneur, Dōton Yasui, decided to connect the two branches of the Yohori River, which run north to south, with a canal to increase trade and commerce in the region.

Before the canal was finished, Dōton became caught up in the Siege of Osaka and died helping to defend Toyotomi Hideyori.

His cousins finished the project in 1615. Tadaki Matsudaira, the new ruler in Osaka Castle, named the canal and avenue beside it Dōtonbori (Dōton's canal) even though he'd been on the wrong side of the result in the siege.

Six years later the Tokugawa Shōgunate designated Dōtonbori as Osaka's entertainment district. By 1662 the street had six Kabuki (classical Japanese dance-drama) and five Bunraku (traditional puppet) theatres, and the Takeda Karakuri mechanical puppet theatre.

The theatres were so popular they encouraged numerous restaurants and cafes to open, catering to the flood of tourists and entertainment-seekers who poured into Dōtonbori.

While there has been a decline in support for traditional forms of entertainment and Dōtonbori's five remaining theatres were destroyed during World War Two the district remains a prime attraction for culinary tourists.

Today Dōtonbori is famous for shops, restaurants, and the neon and mechanised signs that line the canal and feature in the shopping areas. For a start, there's snack and candy manufacturer Glico's runner crossing the finish line.

He's just one part of a formidable barrage of electronic advertising.

In Ebisubashisuji, a six and a half metre crab that dates back to 1960 moves legs and eyestalks to promote a crab restaurant called Kani Doraku. It spawned a string of similar creations, including a squid that puffs steam.

We took a leisurely ramble along the arcade that leads to Namba station, where The Sister bade us farewell.

The remaining trio headed back through an electronics store and Tower Records, looping into the hotel to check-in and looping straight back out to chase up WiFi hotspots and dinner.

The pursuit of WiFi and the need to contact the Kyoto-based Sponge meant we neglected to book seats at the preferred destination (Pieno, just off the arcade-type thoroughfare).

We'd planned to land on their doorstep around five. WiFi matters delayed things to the point where we could either spend a lengthy wait in the drizzle waiting for space to become available or look elsewhere.

Predictably, we looked elsewhere, but only as far as the Mar Bar, which was conveniently celebrating its fourth birthday. The wait staff supplied us with complimentary Cava as we surveyed the menu.

That's not entirely accurate, of course.

The two girls surveyed the menu, passing comments and requests for guidance across the table.

I wasn't particularly concerned about the actual dishes involved. We were in tapas territory, and if I didn't like one platter, I'd be right with the next as long as no one headed off into anything too radical.

Everything proved quite toothsome, and while the glass of white that followed the Cava was sweeter than I'd prefer. An unidentified fuller-bodied red was quite tasty, to the point where I ended up with a third glass.

Having seen Former Secretary off at Namba we made our way o the hotel, making a final pass past the psychedelia alongside the canal.

Along the way, we made a diversion to take a look at Hozenji temple, all that's left of a significant 17th-century site after the main hall was demolished during World War Two.

Decorated with paper lanterns and tucked away in a quiet neighbourhood in an alley paved with stones and lined with old-style restaurants and bars.

It's one of those places that's worth a revisit, preferably when tiredness is removed from the equation.

Monday, 12 November 2012

Tired. That was the keyword about two-thirds of the way around the day's exercise routine. With one final day's exertion to go, as I sit typing on a Tuesday morning where the forecast says cloudy, later turning to rain, that's just as well.

The day's assignment was straightforward on the surface.

A late rise after a big sleep made sense since we wanted to avoid the morning press of salarymen and other workers making their way into central Osaka.

A morning transfer to Kyoto made sense since it would leave the afternoon free for sightseeing. An evening without appointments would probably leave us fresh to face a more adventurous schedule on Tuesday.

After that, it was all a downhill run, so to speak, with Wednesday taking us back to Kōbe and Thursday devoted to preparations and packing before the return Down Under. That's pretty much downhill all the way from here, folks.

Of course, there were complications along the way.

The first came when The Mother's Phone started making buzzing noises. Given the linguistic issues involved, I passed the Incoming message to Madam, who was otherwise (naturally, in an expression of Murphy's Law) engaged in the bathroom.

Equally, given the fact that it was probably a text rather than a voice call, it wasn't that urgent, so Someone had time to complete the morning ablutions.

Checking, she established it was a message from a concerned Sponge. His communications had been overwhelmed by spam, and he had been waiting to hear from us.

We had been away from email access for the best part of a week, so there wasn't much we could do regarding contacting him.

In any case, the flurry of texts following that initial contact established that he was off to Himeji early on Tuesday morning. That ruled out Monday night. Whatever happens on Tuesday is going to depend on how he feels at the end of a longish working day.

Still, that meant we 'd managed to shine a bit of light on the last issue that we needed to resolve, so we duly packed up and set off for Kyoto.

That wasn't such a major operation after the transition from lugging the Black Monster to carrying the Little Red Travelling Bag. But we were reminded of the way things could have been as we made our up and down staircases and in and out of subway carriages.

Around ten in the morning, things weren't quite as hectic as they would have been an hour and a half earlier. We made the subway transition to Umeda and the Hankyu connection to Kyoto without too much difficulty.

I hadn't quite been on the ball the night before when we were headed into the Spanish eatery, and the party space across the road was operational. We passed that particular side street on the way to the subway station, so I grabbed a quick photographic record of an in-joke along the way….

Things got a little messy once we'd made our way out of the railway station and set off for the hotel, which turned out to be a bit further than expected, and on the opposite side of the street.

Still, things could have been worse.

The initial influence that brought things unstuck was lunch.

That might seem like a minor matter, but, for some reason, The Supervisor set her mind on a particular Italian option that came highly rated and wasn't that far from the hotel.

It was a bit further than expected (there's an emerging theme here) and was, when we eventually found it, booked out.

I wasn't particularly concerned about lunch, provided it was conveniently close. We'd already passed some places I thought might have been perfectly acceptable.

When a decision was called for, I pushed us towards a curry place that wasn't that far from the booked out place.

The meals, while they weren't anything to rave over, were perfectly adequate and reasonably cheap.

With lunch out of the way, we set off for the afternoon's sightseeing.

That involved a visit to Kiyomizu temple, which is, and I really should have picked up on this earlier, Kyoto's major temple attraction.

As a result, it is almost invariably packed.

As it happens, it's on the same side of the same river as the places we'd visited on the Sakura Sunday four and a half years before. I really should have been looking at a map before I ventured an opinion on walking as opposed to catching a bus.

Given a slightly better grasp of the geography, I would have voted to go as far as possible by bus.

Given a slightly better grasp of our current location vis a vis the river and the city's principal transport axes, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.

Given an awareness of the number of steps and uphill paths involved, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.

From which the astute reader will no doubt have inferred, we walked.

Now, it doesn't really matter whether you catch a bus or not.

The bus doesn't get you that close to the actual temple, so you're going to be doing a fair bit of walking. Walking wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that it was a bit further than either of us expected.

We'd made our way across town to the river, crossed the appropriate bridge and started the gradual ascent towards the temple precinct when I looked ahead. At that point, I realized that we were headed for them there hills and them there hills weren't as close as you'd have liked.

Still, the walk wasn't too bad in the first bit.

The footpath wasn't that crowded, but as we headed uphill all roads, it seemed, lead to the temple.

Each road was delivering its share of pilgrims and sightseers.

Founded in 798, Kiyomizudera (Pure Water Temple) isn't the only temple in Japan operating under that title.

There's also a Kiyomizudera in Yasugi in Shimane Prefecture, on the 33-temple route of the Chūgoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage through western Japan.

The one under consideration here gets its name from the Otowa waterfall, which runs off nearby hills and splits into three streams. The waters are supposed to bring long life, ensure success at school and guarantee a successful love life.

Visitors use cups attached to long poles to drink the water, but drinking from all three is considered greedy. You can't have everything, but if you could manage two of them, you'd be singing along with the Meatloaf song.

Kiyomizudera dates back to the early Heian Period, but the main structures on the site, built in 1633 when the capital moved to Kyoto, were constructed without the use of nails.

Given the size of the Hondo (Main Hall) and the veranda that opens off it, that's a remarkable achievement.

The veranda, supported by thirteen-metre pillars, juts out above a precipice, offering impressive views across the city, and cherry and maple trees on the surrounding hills in spring and autumn.

Similar structures were erected at many sites visited by pilgrims during the Edo Period.

According to tradition, jump off the verandah and survive the fall and your wish will be granted.

That explains the Japanese equivalent of the English expression "taking the plunge". In Japanese, you jump off the stage at Kiyomizu.

Two hundred and thirty-four people are supposed to have tried it during the Edo Period, and, allegedly, 85.4% survived.

I did the maths to figure out an actual number and came up with a figure of 199.836, which probably shows how rounding off affects your calculations. Multiplying by 85.5 comes to a tad over 200.

In any case, you're not allowed to do that anymore.

The temple precinct contains fifteen buildings classified as Important Cultural Properties, including the inner Temple (Okunoin) a smaller scale version of the Hondo, Amida Buddha Hall (Amidado), and a vermilion three-tiered pagoda and several other shrines including Jishujinja, dedicated to Ōkuninushi, the god of love and suitable matches.

Visitors who manage to walk between a pair of stones with eyes closed are supposedly guaranteed to find love or their perfect match.

Attempt to do so with a bit of help, and you'll still find it, but will need the assistance of a go-between or matchmaker. There is also a hall dedicated to the historical Buddha. Another contains close to two hundred statues of Jizo, the protector of children and travellers.

A visit to a structure at the southern end of the temple grounds is said to bring about safe, uncomplicated childbirth.

Like most of its peers, the complex has an assortment of talismans, incense, and omikuji (paper fortunes) for sale. When I spotted one that's supposed to protect travellers on the road I thought of the inimitable Staggster and bought it.

We'd seen our share of temples and religious sites over two and a bit weeks, and there's a possibility that I was more or less templed out. Still, Kiyomizu struck me as a bit of a disappointment.

There's no denying there's a great view across the city.

The verandah, with its sheer drop, is impressive when you're up there, and very impressive when you're standing on the bottom looking up. But the crowds were getting to me, and a significant section of the complex was closed and undergoing repairs.

With the temple out of the way, it was time to make our way back to the hotel. That should have been a matter of making our way down to a bus stop and proceeding from there.

Unfortunately, the way down from the temple takes you through the steep, busy lanes of Higashiyama, winding streets lined with shops and stalls. This is where the failure to take the bus on the way up kicked in big time.

The actual Higashiyama District (Higashiyamaku, or east mountain) covers the eastern part of Kyoto's city centre along the lower slopes of the Higashiyama mountain range. It extends a fair bit further than the section we traversed, as far as the Philosopher's Path and Ginkakuji temple, one of the sakura season highlights last time around.

Fortunately, it's the sort of place we’ll be heading back to, hopefully with tiredness taken out of the equation.

It is one of the best-preserved historic districts and a genuine reflection of traditional Kyoto.

That’s especially true of the section that lies between Kiyomizudera and Yasaka Shrine.

Narrow lanes, wooden buildings and traditional shops invoke a feeling of the old capital.

They've even removed telephone poles, done away with the spider web of cables and wires you find above most Japanese streets and repaved the roadway to maintain the traditional feel of the district.

Streets in Higashiyama are lined by shops, cafes and restaurants that have been catering to tourists and pilgrims since the 14th century. They sell local specialities such as Kiyomizuyaki pottery, as well as gift culture staples like sweets, pickles, crafts and other souvenirs.

The distance from Kiyomizudera to Yasaka shrine is around two kilometres. While that might be done in half an hour or so, you could easily spend much longer visiting the temples, shrines, shops, cafes and restaurants along the way.

Maybe next time around we'll be walking beyond Yasaka past Chionin and Shorenin temples to Heian shrine, and possibly even further via Nanzenji temple, with a collection of architecture and artwork from the late 16th century Momoyama Period.

The area also contains the Kyoto National Museum. I expect we'll be back, but next time we'll be getting there by bus, won't we?

The businesses along the way gradually morph from establishments catering to the temple visitor/sightseer trade into a network of charming streets in a neighbourhood that slowly, in turn, morphs into the Gion District.

The further we got away from the temple, the more the crowding eased though there’s rarely any danger of finding tranquillity and solitude in any Japanese city.

That's particularly the case when you're in one of the must-visit areas of Kyoto.

Kyoto's most famous geisha district, Gion dates back to the Middle Ages.

Shops, restaurants and ochaya (teahouses) around Shijo Avenue between Yasaka Shrine and the Kamo River initially catered for travellers and visitors to the shrine. But by the mid-18th century, the area was Kyoto’s premier pleasure district.

From there, the district evolved to become one of the most exclusive and well-known geisha districts in the whole of Japan.

There are actually five geisha districts in Kyoto where geiko (Kyoto dialect for geisha) and maiko (geiko apprentices) entertain clients. Since geisha are entertainers, not prostitutes, Gion is not, despite popular misconceptions, a red-light district.

If that sort of thing floats your boat research suggests you head for Shimabara instead.

Traditional wooden houses called machiya (townhouse) are a significant drawcard in Gion. Since property taxes were based on the width of the street frontage, they tend to have narrow facades but stretch up to twenty metres in from the street.

Some of them are ochaya (tea houses) where patrons have been entertained for centuries.

As expert hostesses, maiko and geiko engage in conversation, serve drinks, conduct drinking games and perform traditional music and dance. Preserved machiya houses now function as restaurants, serving Kyoto-style kaiseki ryori (Japanese haute cuisine).

Having made my way through Gion, I was ready to get away from the crowd. Boots that had seemed so comfortable back when we'd bought them before the Cooktown trip were starting to squeeze the feet.

That was probably the result of having been worn solidly for a fortnight, with a pinch of prolonged exposure to wet weather thrown in for good measure.

I suspect that after they got wet, the outer layers didn't dry out completely and had shrunk marginally. Hopefully further wear will push things back into shape, but it's very much a case of wait and see.

Having made our way through Gion, we were off to the hotel. Those factors involving unfamiliarity with the public transport system and lack of knowledge of the local geography kicked in again.

And they kicked in big time, along with a pigheaded reluctance to say. That's enough, my feet need a rest.

After all, I figured, it wasn't that far. Of course, following up on that emerging theme, it was a bit more than we expected. May as well walk, as I recall were my exact words, it's only a few blocks).

But it was considerably further than I'd bargained for.

Back at the hotel where any sane man would have had the boots off and laid back for a well-earned rest, someone had to check out the WiFi situation in the lobby.

While it was there, it was painfully slow until Madam joined me with her iPad and ventured into the territory of the bleeding obvious. She went over to the Front Desk to ask about minor administrative details like passwords.

Things sped up considerably after that.

A spell upstairs after that gave the feet a welcome respite. Around six-thirty, we started making Dinner noises. At that point lunchtime's failure to get in where she'd wanted, along with Hughesy's suggestion we opt for a curry place kicked in big time.

Madam had located another French/Italian wine bar sort of place and pointed us in that direction.

It wasn't as highly rated as the first one, but that, hopefully, meant it wouldn't be full either.

There were two (actually, three) significant surprises when we arrived on the doorstep of another basement eating and drinking establishment, which meant signage above the steps going down.

The first surprise came in the business name. Cheers isn't the first name that springs to mind when you're looking for a French/Italian wine bar, but maybe the American sitcom never made it to Japan. They probably serve beer, but given the quality of the wine I sampled, I don't think I'd be bothering.

Surprise #1 had a significant addendum since Cheers seems to be aimed pretty solidly at the female market. That mightn't be entirely accurate, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion based on the signage, and a Girls set section of the menu.

Surprise #2 kicked in when we walked inside to find the place was practically deserted.

Maybe Monday nights are quiet, perhaps the crowds arrive later, but when we walked in there were two tables occupied. One emptied while we were there, and no one else came in. Strange.

Because the food and wine quotients there were rather good.

We did the sharing a variety of small plates thing. Everything was very good, from the oyster and shallot gratin that arrived with the salad to the pizza that finished the main courses side of things.

Madam finished with a chocolate mousse that was very tasty and had me wishing I'd done the same. Full marks on that front.

Even better was the wine selection.

There were other by the glass options that didn't appear in the by the glass section of the menu, but I limited myself to the official version, and the results were very satisfactory.

There was a Prosecco that might have been a tad on the sweet side but worked nicely as an aperitif. A Sauvignon Blanc from Touraine was obviously SB, obviously, in the mould the Kiwi exponents of the variety are seeking.

A Chardonnay from Burgundy would have got ticks of approval from the New Wave Oz Chardy crew, and an Italian Primitivo (a.k.a. Zinfandel) wrapped things up nicely.

Madam limited herself to the SB while I had the other three. But glasses were passed back and forth, and if she'd weakened the result would have been another interesting wine and an excuse for Hughesy to go one more beyond that.

All in all, an enjoyable little evening, and the perfect prelude to a good night's sleep before an early start in the morning.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Anyone familiar with the standard Japanese operating procedure where sites of national significance and coloured leaves are concerned knows to get in early before the crowds arrive.

The two sites Madam had pencilled in for our only full day in Kyoto lay nine and a half kilometres from the CBD. As a result, we were queuing for the Number 8 bus outside Karasuma Station well before the scheduled 7:22 departure.

The crowds were going to increase as the day went on, and it seemed logical to assume a fair swag of them would be travelling out on following services on the same route.

The journey out through the regulation urban landscape was mostly uneventful though it took a while to pass through a particularly notorious intersection. Shortly after that, we were winding our way up into the foothills, alighting from the bus around 8:15 and turning our thoughts towards the morning's route march.

Madam has had plenty of time to figure out the paths down which Hughesy's mind is likely to wander. We landed close to the temple at Jingoji. It's a venue that would involve an unspecified degree of climbing. So the first thing on her list was to determine whether a walk to the other option (Kozanji) was doable.

The maps and other data available on the ground weren't particularly helpful as far as administrative details like distances were concerned, so she went for the nearest human source. That was a middle-aged woman, obviously a local, sweeping up leaves.

No problem, she was told. It's a fifteen-minute walk. At least, that's the version I was given.

Since the conversation was in Japanese, she could have decided to recast any information that had been given, and I would have been none the wiser.

A fifteen-minute walk certainly seemed doable. While there were concerns about the state of my feet, I was determined to soldier on and cover whatever distance was required.

It was, after all, the last bit of sightseeing for the trip.

We set out along a relatively deserted back road that provided a pleasant and surprisingly tranquil stroll through autumn tones across the river and up and down the slopes on either side of the stream.

Eight-thirty was a trifle early for people who operated the various sightseer-oriented businesses along the way to be starting the day's business. But there were signs along the way that they'd be starting to set up in the not too distant future.

As I walked, in between stopping to enjoy the views while Someone lagged along behind capturing the interplay between light and leaves, I meditated on something approximating Zen and the art of walking with sore feet.

If you walk long enough, I figured, you're going to end up with sore feet. It's part of the deal.

The more you think about your feet, the worse they'll feel, particularly in situations where you can use them as an excuse to get out of walking any further.

So the answer is to avoid thinking about the feet at all. Focus on the walk, the act of walking and the scenery you're walking through.

So I did and had a thoroughly enjoyable time up to the point where the riverside back road joined the main road just before Kozanji.

That meant a few minutes' careful treading along the side of the road while the traffic moved past within arm's length.

That sort of thing worried me four and a half years ago when I'd been heading to and from the hotel in Hakone.

This time around, after two weeks of negotiating backstreets where the traffic comes and goes, I merely exercised a bit of caution and waited for a break in the traffic if things were getting too close for comfort.

In any case, it was only a couple of hundred metres before we hit the entrance to Kozanji, another of those uphill tree-lined avenues completely bereft of vehicular traffic.

I'd just settled back into Zen and the art of walking when a god almighty racket from over on my right cut into the tranquillity.

A bus full of elderly Japanese sightseers had pulled into the car park and was busily disgorging its load.

Fortunately, I thought, they'd have to go down to the entrance we'd used to get us off the road. That meant I'd be able to maintain a comfortable degree of separation between myself and the racket.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. I rounded a curve that brought me within sight of the booth where you pay your ¥500 admission fee and looked to my right. There they were, heading towards the same point along a converging track.

I was pretty quick about paying the admission fee once Madam had caught up, and was pretty smart about getting comfortably ahead of the chattering mass.

The walk up to the temple complex itself, once they'd been left behind, was a pleasant ramble.

Once I got there, and we were comfortably removed from the clamouring crowd we were right into the full Zen monks in the forest ambience.

That's hardly surprising. The mountains around Togano, which are justly famous for their autumn foliage, have a tradition of mountain asceticism. There are many small temples among the ancient cedar and maple trees in the backwoods.

Temples in the area are said to date back to imperial orders issued by Emperor Kōnin in 774. Kōzanji (formally Toganōsan Kōsanji) was officially founded by scholar and monk Myōe (1173 – 1232). He served at nearby Jingoji before he was granted the land to construct a temple by Emperor Go-Toba in 1206.

There may already have been a temple on the site with Myōe doing a restoration job, but a diagram housed at Jingoji drawn in 1230 shows the thirteenth-century layout of the temple.

It shows a large gate, the main hall, a three-storied pagoda, buildings dedicated to Amitabha and Lohan, a bell tower, a scripture hall (formerly the residence of a member of the Imperial family), and a Shinto shrine.

Structures on the site have been destroyed numerous times by fire and war. The oldest buildings standing today are the scripture hall, now known as Sekisuiin and Myōe's residence, two of the few remaining examples of Kamakura Era architecture, with roofs of thatch and shingles.

The grounds also hold the oldest tea field in Japan, planted by Myōe with seeds brought from China by the Zen priest Eisai. Tea helped monks stay awake during late-night meditation.

Kōzanji is home to numerous national treasures and important cultural properties though most of them are currently on loan to museums in Kyoto and Tokyo.

The Chōjūjinbutsugiga (Scroll of Frolicking Animals and Humans), four picture scrolls of ink paintings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sometimes described as Japan's first comic, takes the mickey out of human foibles by showing frogs, monkeys, birds, and rabbits engaged in worldly pursuits.

The original is housed in Tokyo National Museum, but apparently, there are precise replicas on display on the site.

I say apparently because I was more interested in the ambience among the towering cedar trees and moss-covered ground than checking out areas that were likely to attract a crowd.

Heading back down the hill, I wasn't exactly looking forward to our other temple visit.

The morning was getting on, and there were apparent expectations of substantial crowds among the roadside merchandisers.

Most of the stallholders had just about finished setting up as we retraced our tracks along the riverside side road. When we made it back to the original starting point, it looked like we were in for another experience in crowded sightseeing.

Fortunately, the monks who set about establishing these temples were careful to locate them in places where visitors would need to make a bit of an effort.

Whoever founded Jingoji must have liked his peace and quiet because he positioned the place at the top of a series of fairly steep climbs.

The first one was enough to sort out the sheep from the mountain goats and would, I thought around the halfway point, be enough to deter most of the Kozanji chatterers.

Those that weren't put off by the incline would be having issues with breathlessness by the time they made it to the top of that particular climb.

The top of that climb featured a little eatery affair where sightseers could stop for refreshment.

There was another fairly steep set of steps after that, with refreshment stops thoughtfully provided along the way. Then a sharp turn revealed another set of steps that needed to be negotiated.

Sore feet and straining leg muscles are likely to kick in with a vengeance in such circumstances. Combining Zen and the art of walking and a conscious decision to focus on the mechanics of the stride pattern kept those issues in the background.

Along the way, I passed a TV camera crew filming an elderly woman in a yellow top and black tights and a much younger female. They were making their way up the final incline to the temple complex.

This, questioning revealed once The Photographer had caught up, was a Japanese actress from the generation before mine making a filmgrimage around the best spots in the country for coloured leaves on one of those holiday shows.

That means there's a very slight possibility of a black-capped hairy foreigner, head down in Zen and the art of monitoring your stride pattern mode turning up on Japanese network TV.

There's the equally absurd possibility of a sighting as he cowers beside the ticket booth waiting for his native-speaking accomplice to catch up.

From there, I must admit the presence of the crew dampened my enthusiasm as I tried to stay out of shot.

I worked around where they were filming, passing impressively weather-beaten structures before I found myself at the foot of another set of steps. They lead up to the Kondo, where the main attraction is an image of Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of Healing.

Sitting on top of Mount Takao, Jingoji dates back to 824, when Wake no Kiyomaro instituted the merger of two temples. One was Jinganji from Kiyomaro's home province in present-day Osaka Prefecture, with the other being Takaosanji, founded on this site in 781.

The new temple was Jingokokusoshingonji (Shingon temple for divine protection of the country) and Kukai (774-835), the founder of the Shingon sect, was named as the head priest.

Like most other significant sites, buildings at Jingoji have been destroyed by fire and war over the years.

The original structures were rebuilt in 1184 after they had been burnt down, but most were destroyed again in the Onin War. Only the Daishido survived.

Several of the buildings date from reconstruction ordered by Itakura Katsushige, Kyoto shoshidai in the Tokugawa Shōgunate, in 1623.

Another reconstruction took place in the 1930s.

Madam was having the time of her life, clicking away at the coloured leaves,.

By the time she'd caught up with me the camera crew, who'd skipped the structures I'd just passed, were making their way up the stairs before me.

Madam was all for heading up that way herself. The prospect of further climbing along with camera-dodging had me deciding to make my way back to the approaches to the temple and spend the time gazing at the multicoloured hillsides.

If you're calling me a sook on the strength of that last decision, it's Mister Sook, thank you very much.

If I’d done some research, I would have taken myself to the Jizo hall, located above the Kiyotaki River. That's where you can buy clay cups (kawarakenage) to throw off the adjacent cliff (kin'unkei) and rid yourself of bad karma.

At ¥100 for two, that seems a rather economical way to do it, but it only works (or so the on-line research suggests) if you can get the disk all the way down to the river. Flick the discs gently, convex side up, like a Frisbee.

If only I'd known...

It took a while, but eventually, Madam made her way back to where I was standing, and we began the descent.

Predictably, that was quicker than the uphill journey, though there were delays along the way as images worth capturing presented themselves in the changing light.

In a couple of places, the conformation of stairs permitted a rapid descent. A single stride covered a step that needed a stride and a bit on the way up.

Things were tempered by the frequent need to stop, look around and ascertain how far Someone Else had progressed.

Back at the bottom, I paused yet again. When the touring party had again attained a quorum inquired whether there was anything else on the agenda.

No, I was told, there wasn't unless I was inclined to eat.

Since we'd set out before breakfast and hadn't managed to find it along the way, the prospect of food was definitely tempting. But there was one more ascent needed to get us back up to the bus stop, and I wasn't sure how frequently the buses ran.

We had a packet of raisin bread rolls we'd bought the night before in the backpack. They would, I figured, have to be eaten sometime. So my take on the situation was to get ourselves up the hill, check, out the bus times, and eat if possible.

That packet of raisin rolls would have to be eaten somewhere. It was highly likely we'd have a long wait once the ascent had been made.

That was, as it turned out, close to the situation we found when we arrived.

There was about half an hour until the next Kyoto Bus, but a JR Bus would be heading up from Kozanji in about five minutes.

There was a fair-sized queue for that one. Since it had started elsewhere, there was no guarantee we'd get a seat on the forty-five-minute trip back into the city.

That was the way it turned out once the bus arrived, so we headed over to the rival stop, positioned ourselves at the front of the queue and lunched on the packet of raisin rolls.

Once the bus arrived, we picked up the same Hughesy's legs friendly seats we'd had on the way up and sailed straight through the intersection that slowed things down on the way up.

The bus dropped us off just past the hotel, and once we were there, the thoughts, predictably, turned to lunch.

It was around one by this stage, and updates on the Sponge situation suggested we'd be eating late when it came to the evening meal. So lunch was a matter of some urgency.

A packet of raisin bread rolls is all very well, but after significant exercise, with the prospect of a night on the turps, you need something substantial in the way of lunch.

There was a ramen place marked on the Eateries around the neighbourhood map Madam procured from the Front Desk, so we headed off in that direction.

There was, however, a perfectly acceptable alternative just around the corner that did what was required.

Back at the hotel, Madam needed to head off to do a bit of shopping. I sat in the lobby, doing what needed to be done online before heading back upstairs for further Travelogue tapping.

We weren't expecting any Sponge updates until well after six-thirty since the day's show in Himeji had involved road, rather than rail transport. That, in turn, meant they had to drive back, unpack the van, head home and make subsequent arrangements once they'd touched base there.

Eventually, the rendezvous was arranged for the East Gate at Karasuma station, so we headed along there around eight.

By twenty past were headed off for a return visit to the place we'd spent the equivalent evening four and a half years earlier.

This time around the dramatis personae were the inimitable Sponge, the young lass we'd christened Double Sponge, and an enthusiastic young bloke who announced himself as Triple Sponge. He didn't quite manage to live up to the self-proclaimed status.

Mind you, given the capacity of his colleagues, most people would experience a degree of difficulty in that department.

By the same token, it was a late start, and with the regulation array of platters on the table, things flowed along nicely without hitting any great heights in the alcoholic consumption department.

The trio's need to catch the final train for the evening meant most of us probably ended up in much better shape than would otherwise have been the case.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Anyone familiar with Japanese people, sites of national significance and coloured leaves will know it's a good idea to get in early before the crowds arrive.

Since the two sites Madam had pencilled in for our only full day in Kyoto lay around nine and a half kilometres from the CBD we were queuing for the Number 8 bus outside Karasuma Station well before the scheduled 7:22 departure.

The crowds were going to increase as the day went on, and it seemed logical to assume a fair swag of them would be travelling out on following services on the same route.

Madam has had plenty of time to figure out the paths down which Hughesy's mind is likely to wander. The bus dropped us close to Jingoji, a temple that would require an unspecified degree of climbing. So the first thing on Madam's agenda was to determine whether a walk to the other option (Kozanji) was doable beforehand.

The maps and other data available on the ground weren't particularly helpful as far as administrative details like distances were concerned. The nearest available human source was a middle-aged woman, obviously a local, sweeping up leaves.

No problem, she was told. It's a fifteen-minute walk. At least, that's the version I was given.

Since the conversation was in Japanese, she could have decided to recast any information that had been given, and I would have been none the wiser.

A fifteen-minute walk certainly seemed doable. While there were concerns expressed about my feet, I was determined to soldier on and cover whatever distance was required.

It was, after all, the last bit of sightseeing for the trip.

Eight-thirty was a trifle early for people who operated the various sightseer-oriented businesses along the way to be starting the day's business. There were signs along the way that they'd be starting to set up in the not too distant future.

If you walk long enough, I figured, you're going to end up with sore feet. It's part of the deal.

The more you think about your feet, the worse they'll feel, particularly in situations where you can use them as an excuse to get out of walking any further.

So the answer is to avoid thinking about the feet at all. Focus on the walk, the act of walking and the scenery you're walking through.

So I did and had a thoroughly enjoyable time up to the point where the riverside back road joined the main road just before Kozanji.

That meant a few minutes' careful treading along the side of the road while the traffic moved past within arm's length.

That sort of thing worried me four and a half years ago when I'd been heading to and from the hotel in Hakone.

After two weeks of negotiating backstreets where the traffic comes and goes this time around, I merely exercised a bit of caution and waited for a break in the traffic flow if it looked like things were getting a little too close for comfort.

In any case, it was only a couple of hundred metres before we hit the entrance to Kozanji, another of those uphill tree-lined avenues completely bereft of vehicular traffic.

I'd just settled back into Zen and the art of walking when a god almighty racket from over on my right cut into the tranquillity.

A bus full of elderly Japanese sightseers had pulled into the car park and was busily disgorging its load.

Fortunately, I thought, this would mean they'd have to go down to the entrance we'd used to get us off the road. That meant I should be able to maintain a comfortable degree of separation between myself and the racket.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. I rounded a curve that brought me within sight of the booth where you pay your ¥500 admission fee. When I looked to my right, there they were, heading towards the same point along a converging track.

I was pretty quick about paying the admission fee once Madam had caught up, and was pretty smart about getting comfortably ahead of the chattering mass.

The walk up to the temple complex itself, once they'd been left behind, was a pleasant ramble.

Once I got there, and we were comfortably removed from the clamouring crowd we were right into the full Zen monks in the forest ambience.

Temples in the area are said to date back to imperial orders issued by Emperor Kōnin in 774. Kōzanji (formally Toganōsan Kōsanji) was officially founded by scholar and monk Myōe (1173 – 1232). He served at nearby Jingoji before he was granted land to construct a temple by Emperor Go-Toba in 1206.

There may already have been a temple on the site with Myōe doing a restoration job, but a diagram housed at Jingoji drawn in 1230 shows the thirteenth-century layout of the temple.

Structures on the site have been destroyed numerous times by fire and war. The oldest buildings standing today are the scripture hall, now known as Sekisuiin and Myōe's residence. They are two of the few remaining examples of Kamakura Era architecture, with roofs of thatch and shingles.

The grounds also hold the oldest tea field in Japan, planted by Myōe with seeds brought from China by the Zen priest Eisai. Tea helped monks stay awake during late-night meditation.

Kōzanji is home to numerous national treasures and important cultural properties though most of them are currently on loan to museums in Kyoto and Tokyo.

The original is housed in Tokyo National Museum, but, apparently, there are precise replicas on display on the site.