Heian Jingu and Surrounds

Day 13 & 14: 07 July and 08 July 2012

On Saturday, 07 July, I spent the day in. The tearoom was crumby for all the breakfasts and tea snacks and I desperately disliked sitting on the tatami only to find my legs covered in leftover crumbs. I learned to clean the tatami, which a bucket of water and a cloth. Tatami is alarmingly resilient. As long as you work along the grain, the mats keep together nicely. If spilled, liquids usually rest on the surface. I accidentally spilled a small bit of my body oil and wiped it off with my hand with no ill effects and no visible evidence of the mishap.

 Heian Jingu

 By Sunday, I had to get away. I wanted to be away from the temple and everyone around. It struck me, quite suddenly, how unbearable the constant company of others can be. I've always cherished my privacy and enjoyed solitude, neither of which exists at Daishin-in. Even though it was late in the afternoon, I hopped on a bus and visited Heian Jingu, the garden I studied last spring.
Heian Jingu is near Okezaki Park, and it has become a sort of cultural districts with many museums, a library, and concert hall in the area. MomaK, designed by Fumihiko Maki is also nearby. I was glad to be able to check it out (though I did not go inside).

Momak from the rear

The front entrance

The Kyoto Prefectural Library with its more modern addition.

The shrine gate. Originally made of wood. Reconstructed out of ferroconcrete.

Unfortunately, my visit did not coincide with the blooming of any of the flowers in the garden, so things were quite sparse. Despite this, it was still wonderful to see the garden I had spent so much time trying to understand. I'm a bit distressed that I could not find the 8-planked Yatsuhashi bridge that I thought was so lovely in photographs. After I told my instructor of my visit he suggested that sometimes areas are closed off to visitors due to danger or restoration. Since I had noticed many blocked paths while I was touring, I consider this a likelihood.

 

A day for Architects!

Day 12: July 6th we went to Awaji Yumebutai and Honpukuji or Water Temple, both designed by Tadao Ando.

In addition, Tadao Ando happened to be at Awaji Yumebutai on the same day that we visited! There is a photograph circulating of him with my program-mates.

Both of Ando-san's buildings are amazing. He's a master at making built structure that mimics and weaves into the natural landscape.

Hyakuden-en terrace garden

Honpukuji:

Unfortunately, in the process of completing this blog post,  I accidentally deleted the photos of both Awaji Yumebutai and Honpukuji that were on my iPhone (my camera died part way).  T_T

Kompon Daitou & Kongobuji

Day 10 & 11: More sites at Koyasan. First, Kompon Daitou and then the temple and gardens at Kongobuji.Unfortunately, the scratch on my camera lens was very pronounced in most of my Kompon photos. So only a few are blog worthy.

The Great Stupa (daitou) at Kompon Daitou.

More buildings at Kompon Daitou included one under restoration.

Someone said it would move if we pushed it. Lies!

Kongobuji. The garden at Kongobuji is my favorite of all the rock gardens I've seen in Japan. The whole building is surrounded by the rocks and gravel that suggest a dragon undulating through the water (or sky). In addition, the exquisitely painted screens of the building at Kongobuji tell the history of the founding of Koyasan.

Please excuse me for a moment of architectural freak-out. This beam is carved from a single piece of wood! Yes, even though it is curved and there are at least a dozen of them throughout! 

This was either a massive tree or the trees were grown to have a bend.

This tree is 1.5x my height in diameter (approx. 8 feet)

Amazing formations! And the rocks themselves are gorgeous.

Rocks and rain

 I dare anyone to say that these are just mere stones. My sister had the right idea, collecting rocks as a kid, I guess. Who knew they could look like this?

Incidentally, the beautiful painted screens had signs asking us to kindly refrain from photographing or sketching them. I didn't refrain, but my photos turned out terribly blurry. Must be some kind of karma?

Koyasan: Of Myth and Magic

Day 10 & 11: July 4th & 5th. Without internet, I attempted to keep my travel log by hand, which produced interesting effects. I seldom am able to write my thoughts immediately. This is probably a good thing, otherwise everything would be overly poetic and flowery.

There is a stillness at Koyasan that is interminably moving. On Thursday morning the rain fell in droves culminating in gurgles and plops and pitter-patters as it dropped off leaves, slid from balustrades, trickled down gutters and landed on the gravel beds of the garden below the room I share with three of my classmates.
 

View of the garden from our room.

The quiet of this little town of four thousand is one of the many manifestations of "Ma", where such silence or nothingness is vital. As with watercolor painting, I've learned that what you can't see or hear is just as important as what you can. The lack of traffic noise from the adjacent road allows the sounds of nature prominence.

In the small pond garden on the way to the girls' wing, small frogs call and respond in a chorus of croaks.

Garden on the way to the girls' wing.

Garden on the way to the guys' wing.

Garden in between the girls' and guys' wing.

I've begun to regret the sounds of human voices in such spaces. Jimyoin [the temple at Koyasan we stayed at] is a place that should not be easily dismissed. While Daishin-in is our home in Japan, Jimyo-in is like a visit to paradise.

Yesterday we walked the graves to the gateway of Kobo Diashi [Okunoin]. It is a mile stretch of woods steeped in history, mysticism, and ancestry. The old sits beside the new framed by an ancient landscape: monuments so old they are made more of moss than stone, their characters eroded to illegibility; the heart-tugging small stone carvings dressed in red aprons to represent the children who died young; the new modern mausoleums of the Panasonic Corporation.

Graves at Okunoin: old and new

Finally, at the main temple of Okunoin, like a gathering of fireflies, thousands of lanterns illuminate the ceilings. There is also a separate building filled to the rafters with shelves of glowing lanterns, the aisles so narrow in some spots that you have to turn sideways to pass alongside them. These lanterns represent the donors to the temple and their names are inscribed on the sides. It is both an honor and a blessing to donate to Okunoin. Visitors can find the lanterns of their relatives by following the maps posted intermittently on the walls. [I don't have any photographs of these lanterns because there were very polite signs posted prohibiting photography and I felt that I wanted to tread lightly in a place where the kami so clearly resides.]

Okunoin is considered to be the most sacred site in Japan. The spirit of Kobo Daishi (the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism) is said to reside beyond the gateway behind the main building, protecting the people and the land.

More of Jimyoin:

Delicious dinner in our nemaki (sleeping yukata)

Three of our futons laid out in one of our two rooms.

Nara: Deer, Deer, Deer, and Sexy Deer Baby Buddha

(Sometime over the weekend, my camera got a scratch in one of the interior lenses, so a small blurry spot started showing up in the center of all of my photos T_T)

In the second week, we traveled away from Kyoto to Nara and Koyasan. We spent day 8 & 9 (July 2nd and 3rd) at a youth hostel in Nara.

I'm convinced that there are more deer in Nara than people. The deer, for the most part, were adorable. We didn't see them stealing any lunches or flipping up any schoolgirl's skirts, though I've heard they do both.

The deer are very precious to Nara. So there are many signs warning people about them. Japanese signage is really funny! 

Watch out! Deer notoriously beat up grandmas and small children.

Deer

Deer

Deer

Sexy deer baby buddha: the local buddha of Nara.

 Like the patron saints of cities in Catholicism, it seems that every town has their own special buddha or mascot, if not a buddha.

More signage

We also went to Todai-ji. The temple is very old and quite beautiful. It's also the first time that I'd seen such open, manicured lawns in a temple area in Japan.

Todai-ji

Daibutsu: The great Buddha in the temple.

Bamboo and Rice Paddies

On Day 5 (Thursday June 28th) we went to Tenryu-ji, the reknown bamboo forest, and the Sagano rice paddies where we met a remarkable man who heads up a premier landscaping business.

Panorama of the main pond at Tenryu-ji.

Proof of life.

We did some watercolors at the rice paddies in Sagano.

Rice paddy in Sagano.

Beautiful garden at the landscape business.

We visited a landscape business that has been running of a long time (hundreds of years, I think). We met the most amazing little man, who told us that he studies trees for three years before pruning them. It seems that so much in Japan, craft-wise, is based on the apprenticeship system of old. Whether tea ceremony, traditional dance, ikebana (flower arrangement), temple-building, sword-making, gastronomy, or carpentry, the craftsmen study for years and years before becoming masters, if ever. In addition, businesses like the one we visited had generations of practice, since it is family run.

The very cool Sano-san

Tokai-an: Gardens of the Mind, Body, & Soul

On Day 4 (Thursday), we had the privilege of not only viewing the temple and gardens at Tokai-an but also we were allowed to watercolor there. Tokai-an is a temple within Myoshin-ji is not normally open to the public, so this was a real treat. There are three gardens here, that of the Mind, Body, and Soul.

In addition, the retired head priest of Myoshin-ji and the 6,000 temples under it, was present at the beginning of our visit. I was overwhelmed by Tokai-an, both the architecture and the gardens and definitely didn't take enough photos, if such a thing is even possible.

It was at Tokai-an that I discovered my passion for overlapping roofs.

The names of all of the temples under the Myoshin-ji school of Rinzai Zen Buddhism.