living-writing: Kyoto - the city of thousand temples

Rock Garden, Ryoanji Temple

Kyoto, the old Capital city of Japan until 1868, contains over 2000 temples and shrines, 17 of which are listed as Historical Monuments by UNESCO World Heritage Site. These ancient temples are interwoven into the fabric of modern day Kyoto, many of which are separated simply by tall walls from their mundane neighbors of commercial buildings, apartment complexes, shops, and traffic noise. In our brief stay at Kyoto, we only managed to visit four of them, Ginkaku-ji, Honenin Temple, Kiyomizu-dera, and Ryoan-ji.

I had hoped to experience these temples in their peaceful, zen-like settings but to my great dismay, everywhere we went we were met with teeming crowds of school children, tourists, souvenir hawkers, and refreshment vendors. Apparently this happened to be the annual field trip time for the graduating classes of Japanese schools, and as Tokyo was still under the cloud of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, many of the them chose to come to Kyoto instead. You should not be fooled by the disarmingly tranquil scene of my picture of the famous Rock Garden in Ryoanji Temple - it was a center of stillness amidst the din of loud chatter, laughter, and the clicking of cameras!

Costly meal in authentic setting

Food in Japan is considerably more expensive than in the States. A tall coffee at Starbucks costs 340 Yen, about $4.25, a subway ride, $2, a bus ride, $2.75. Shin took us to a traditional Japanese restaurant on our first night in Kyoto. We had a private room and were served by a middle-age woman in a Kimono. We had a fix-priced menu meal consisting of several small plates of local delicacies and a couple bottles of beer. The bill came to a whopping 19,000 Yen, approximately $240 for three. Luckily, not all restaurants in Kyoto were that expensive. We found a hole in the wall place near our hotel called Sushi Express, which serves up single plates of sushi (two pieces each) on a conveyor belt. All the diners sit on stools in front of the circular counter around the conveyor belt while a couple of sushi chefs stationed inside the ring continuously put new plates on the belt. There is a spigot of hot water in front of each customer to make tea and each grabs what looks good to him or her as the plates move by like model trains on a track. You eat till you're full, then a waiter counts up the number of empty plates in front of you and writes up a ticket for you to pay on your way out; each plate costs 137 Yen, about $1.75. We got pretty stuffed after 10 plates or so, for a total about $20 for both of us. Apparently a lot of foreign travelers like us knew about this kind of places, for there were several around the counter while we were there. To give you a cost of living comparison between Japan and Taiwan, for similar Sushi Express places in Taipei, the cost for each plate is NT$30, about $1.10, while a subway token costs about $0.75 and the bus fare is $0.55.

Here are some pictures of the temples we visited. Mind you, notwithstanding the crowd and noise, they are magnificent in their carefully landscaped gardens surrounded by lush vegetation.