Thursday, 17 April 2008
When we headed downstairs in the morning we were surprised to find the breakfast room contained a much higher foreigner quotient than we’d become used to sighting, which gave us something to discuss once the final run-through of the plans for the day had been completed.
I suspect the phenomenon had something to do with the fact that the hotel was part of a Western-style chain (Comfort Inn) rather than one of the privately owned Japanese business hotels we'd previously found ourselves in.
It was difficult, given the overall level of ambient background noise to detect where all these westerners had come from.
The couple at the next table were definitely speaking French, and there was a young American woman on the other side of the room expressing very definite opinions about the relative virtues of the different sight-seeing options on offer around Nara in a voice that carried right round the room.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a possibility that Miss America had formal qualifications that entitled her to express the fairly forthright opinions she was putting forward, but as I listened I couldn’t help contrasting her with the group of older Americans we’d passed during our wanderings around the picture garden at Ryoanji.
Their expressions of joy, pleasure and wonder had made me half-inclined to approach them to inquire whether they’d been to Toriimoto (our destination the day before) and suggest if they hadn’t a trip there would probably be something they’d find enjoyable.
But, for some reason I didn’t, and as I listened (not that I had much choice in the matter) to the advice being dispensed from the other side of the room I was glad, in a way, I hadn’t foisted my ultra-novice opinions on an unsuspecting audience.
The reader might, of course, suggest that I’m doing exactly that right here and now, but anyone who’s actually read this far can hardly be described as an unsuspecting audience.
With the now-familiar we're leaving the hotel ritual (pack, check out, obtain cloak room ticket) negotiated, we headed off to Todaiji Temple, home of the eighth-century Virocana Buddha.
Once we’d boarded the bus, the presence of significant numbers of vaguely familiar-looking high school students suggested that a repeat of the Kyoto crowd scenes was on the cards, which is more or less how things panned out once we’d alighted and joined the throng moving through the drizzle down the tree-lined avenue towards the temple.