Above: Temple lanterns at night on Koya-san

This summer, I stayed overnight at a temple on Koya-san in the Wakayama mountains. Koya-san, or Mount Koya, is one of Japan's holiest mountains. It has over 100 temples and is the world center of Shingon Buddhism.

A friend and I went in mid-July and stayed at Eko-in temple, one of the oldest temples on Koya-san.

Lonely Planet described Eko-in as being run by “hip young monks.” The monks were indeed hip, friendly, and quite dashing, particularly since many of them walk around in sleeveless t-shirts and Crocs. But more on that later.

Part of the fun of going to Koya-san is the train ride there. Koya-san is 120 kilometers south of Kyoto, and requires quite a few train changes. Including time spent waiting for (and missing) trains, it took us well over three hours of train travel time to get to Gokurabashi station at the base of the mountain, where you take a cable car to the top.

The final train ride, from Hashimoto, Wakayama, to Gokurabashi, was absolutely beautiful. We passed by rural rice paddies, which are so green in the summer that, from far away, they look like cartoon grass.

Then, the train began to wind through the mountains—high, deep green mountains that are so densely full of trees that it’s hard to tell where one tree stops and another begins.

The view was hard to capture on my camera, but here's where the mountains started (they got much taller and harder to take pictures of as we progressed).

Once we got to Gokurabashi, we took a cable car up the mountain to Koya-san station. It was a fun, steep ride (think Lombard Street in San Francisco).

After arriving, we ate a quick lunch near the station—beef udon, which filled us up, but was nothing to call home about:

From the station, we took a 10-minute bus ride to town, where we walked to Eko-in. Although Eko-in is located on a busy main street of Koya-san (as, too, are many other temples on Koya-san), its temple buildings are set back from the street, so that our room was quiet and peaceful.

The room was a simple but comfortable tatami room, with a view of a garden outside.

Sinks, toilets, and baths were communal.

We arrived at Eko-in just in time for their afternoon meditation session, held in a separate wooden building set above the temple grounds, with a lovely view of the surrounding gardens and greenery.

The session was led in Japanese by one of the Eko-in monks; another (very handsome*) monk who spoke English sat in the back of the room with my friend and me, and he translated the monk’s instructions to us. After the initial instructions, the monks left and we meditated by ourselves in the room, for about fifteen minutes, before they returned to close the session.

I occasionally practice meditation, but it was my first time attending a meditation session in Japan; as I had expected and hoped, it was a peaceful and restorative experience.

One of my favorite parts of staying at the temple was eating its shojin ryori, or Buddhist vegetarian food. Most, if not all, temples on Koya-san will serve shojin ryori to their guests. Ours was served in our room, promptly at 5:30PM.

The dishes were elaborate and delicious, similar in look to the dishes I’ve eaten before at ryokan, or traditional Japanese inns, but without any meat, fish, garlic, or onions, which are thought to excite the system.

The Koya-san area is known for its sesame and sesame tofu, or goma dofu, which is tofu made with sesame paste (above, top left). The goma dofu we ate was delicious—soft and pliant to the teeth, with a sweet taste of sesame.

We also ate vinegared kelp (above, middle), which I’m not as big a fan of. Its combined fishy and vinegary flavors aren’t up my alley, although I’ve heard it’s very nutritious. We also ate tempura vegetables (above, top right)—including tempura seaweed, yum!

We each even got a second tray of dishes, with assorted tofu appetizers, cold somen noodles with a dipping sauce, and fresh fruit.

We also ate this miso soup with decorative floating rice puffs which looked like candy.

After dinner, we went to the nearby Oku-no-in cemetery, the most famous Buddhist cemetery in Japan. What’s it like to walk through a 1000-year-old graveyard at dusk? Find out about my creepy experience in the next post.

*Note: A bit of trivia--in Japan, monks and nuns are allowed to marry! This makes my checking out monks feel, well, less wrong.

 

 

A couple weeks ago, I went to the Yokaichi Giant Kite Festival in Shiga prefecture. Located in the Yokaichi district of Higashiomi, Shiga, east of Kyoto, the festival dates back to the 1800s and features—you guessed it—one of the world’s largest kites.

Weighing 700 kilograms (slightly more than a sumo wrestler)  and measuring 100 tatami mats wide (about 12 by 13 meters), this is one kite you don’t want to mess with.

The Yokaichi festival is held annually on the last Sunday of May, on a field near a riverbank in the outskirts of small-town Yokaichi. The highlight of the festival is the flying of the giant kite, which is flown twice during the day.

You can also bring your own kite to fly at the festival, or enter a kite competition for local teams. Teams make and decorate oversized giant kites, which are judged for their decorations and how well they fly.

Several teams—local clubs and schools—entered the contest.

The designs were colorful and cute. There were many tiger-themed ones (for the Year of the Tiger):

And this charming one was one of my favorites. It appears to depict what BP is doing to Mother Nature:

Like the kites in the competition, the giant kite is also handmade. It’s made from bamboo and rice paper, and a new one is built every three years. I assume that the reason they replace it so often is that the kite is actually pretty delicate—a few years ago, the giant kite broke apart mid-air and actually injured some festival goers. Fortunately, I didn’t find out about this until after the festival.

The kite is so big that it requires a team of people to assemble it (or whatever they need to do) on site, before they can fly it. I watched the afternoon flying of the giant kite (it's flown once in the morning, too). After a lengthy prep time, the kite took off after 2:00.

As you can imagine with a 700-kilogram kite, the kite requires a whole team of people to hold onto its line. This group controlled the flight of the kite by pumping the line up and down, like workers pumping an old handcar on a railroad.

Some years, if the wind isn't good, the kite only flies for a few seconds, or not at all. This year, we were lucky. The kite flew for a good few minutes, before dropping down for good (this is the third and final year for this kite to be used).

 

What surprised me most about this festival is how much it reminded me of a county fair in America. Because the Yokaichi festival is held on a rural field, it feels like a fairground in the US. Along with the requisite festival food stands, there were even live performances on a small soundstage—so county fair-like! It felt nice.

(Note: When we first got there, a local bluegrass band started playing on the soundstage. I'm no bluegrass connoisseur, but I thought they sounded good--they even sang with a down-home, country-American accent. By the time they had sung Take Me Home, Country Roads, and moved on to the Tennessee Waltz, I started feeling teary-eyed, and my fellow American friends and I admitted that we all felt a little homesick.)

Of course, there were many only-in-Japan touches to the festival—some sort of Miss Yokaichi contest, for one thing.

As well as the Japanese equivalent to the Red Hat Society. These ladies were adorable (and so well-coordinated)!

After the festival, the fun continued. My friends and I went to a cake buffet in downtown Yokaichi. Yes, a cake buffet. I didn’t know until recently that Japan has many cake buffets. And we aren’t talking about Costco-style carrot cake either (with all due respect to Costco), but incredibly delicious, French-patisserie-style cakes that made my heart weep with joy (and probably my cholesterol levels, too).

The cake buffet we went to is Club Harie, a bakery and buffet chain that is, apparently, pretty popular in Japan.

At Club Harie, you can order a cake set, which gives you three types of cakes of your choice, plus a drink. Or, you can order the cake buffet option, which gives you 90 minutes of all-you-can-eat cake, drinks, and appetizers for just 2205 yen (I swear, I don't work for them).

My friends and I opted for the cake buffet (of course), and it was absolutely delicious. There are pastries, small desserts, and appetizers (mini pizza slices, quiche, etc.) that you can get from self-serve tables.

The cakes themselves are located behind a display counter; you choose what you want, and a pastry chef cuts the slices for you. It’s basically every child’s (and adult’s) dream come true. The cakes were beautiful—tarts, mousses, cheesecake, tortes, crème brulee.

The ones I chose included a strawberry tart, a raspberry-and-white-chocolate mouse (complete with gold flakes—ah, the luxury), crème brulee, and the best cheesecake I’ve had yet in Japan.

I think I may have found the sport for me. While Japan’s national sport is most definitely baseball, with soccer a close second, sumo is one of the oldest sports in Japan, dating back 1500 years, with origins in the Shinto religion.

I went to my first sumo wrestling tournament in Osaka in March. I initially went for the novelty of it—who wants to see very large men in very large loincloths? I do!—and I left the tournament with newfound respect for the sport, as well as my own pick for my favorite sumo wrestler (everyone needs a favorite sumo wrestler).

Each year, there are six major sumo tournaments in Japan. The Osaka Grand Tournament lasts for 15 days, with prizes awarded on the last day. I went on the second-to-last day. The matches are held from 8:30 AM to 6:00PM, and you can show up at any time, until the doors close at 5PM. It’s a family event, and you can bring your own food to snack on.

Here we come to Sumo 101. The basics:

Sumo wrestlers wrestle on a platform called the dohyo, which is made of clay and covered with sand. A roof that resembles a Shinto shrine hangs over the dohyo. On top of the dohyo is a low circle of rice-straw bales, which form the wrestling ring. The object of the match is to either force the opponent to step outside of the straw circle, or to force him to touch any part of his body, besides the bottom of his feet, to the ground inside the circle.

Each day of a tournament, the lowest-ranking sumo wrestlers wrestle first, with the highest-ranking one, the yokozuna, wrestling at the end of the day. There is currently one yokozuna, a Mongolian wrestler named Hakuho. (Note: Until recently, there were two yokozuna, but the other yokozuna, Asashoryu, retired in February after a scandalous drunken brawl.)

As you might expect from a 1500-year-old sport, there are a lot of rituals to sumo. Here’s how a basic match works:

1) Before each match, the referee, who wears a traditional samurai-style kimono, calls off the names of the wrestlers. He actually sings their names, in a very drawn-out, old-school way, so drawn-out that it was often hard for me to understand which names he was calling.

2) After the wrestlers come to the dohyo, they rinse their mouths with water, to purify themselves. They also lift their legs up high on each side, and stamp down their feet. This is supposed to help drive evil spirits from the dohyo. It’s really quite amazing to see this in person—they are so big, but they do this ritual with such flexibility.

3) The last main ritual that wrestlers do before the match is to throw a handful of salt onto the dohyo. This ritual is reserved just for higher-ranking wrestlers, and it's done to purify the ring. Apparently, the more salt they throw, the more confidence they show against their opponent.

(Note: I saw one wrestler practically throw a huge fistful of salt towards his opponent’s face, which prompted my fellow companions and I to exclaim things like, “Damn, someone's feeling feisty!”)

4) After the initial rituals, the wrestlers face off in the middle of the ring. They squat and glare at each other, then leave their positions to throw more salt. They do this a few more times, building excitement in the audience (and, I’m sure, adrenaline in themselves), until they both finally feel ready to wrestle.

Then, they wrestle.

5) The most surprising thing to me about the actual wrestling is how fast it is. Just a lot of slapping and grappling, and it’s usually over in seconds—maybe a minute or two at the most.

It’s very satisfying, how quick the matches are, and what a simple sport it is—not in terms of skill, of course, but in terms of the lack of tools or complex rules. It’s really just two big men, trying to knock each other down.

My favorite sumo wrestler? His name is Baruto. At 6 feet, 6 inches tall, Baruto is ginormous. He towered over his opponent in the match that I saw (here he is, the big fellow on the left).

Young Baruto is 25-years-old and comes from Estonia. He won the match that I saw that day, of course. His overall score by the end of the Osaka Grand Tournament was 14-1, and he did so well that, after the tournament, he was promoted to the ozeki rank, which is the second-highest sumo rank after the yokozuna level.

I know how to pick them, don’t I?

Above: Kiyomizu-dera temple lit up for Hanatouro.

Sometimes, Japan is just magical.

Last month, I went to the Higashiyama district of Kyoto for its Hanatouro light-up. The Higashiyama Hanatouro is an annual light-up of several famous temples and winding streets in Higashiyama, a district in eastern Kyoto. It starts at dusk and ends at 9:30PM each night for one week in March.

I went to the Hanatouro on a Friday night, after work. It was a clear, cold night, with a new moon, and it wasn't as crowded as I had heard it can get.

Hanatouro means, literally, “flower and light road,” and it consists of lantern displays and elaborate, lit-up flower arrangements along the streets of Higashiyama, as well as the light-up of temples in the area.

There are about 2400 lanterns displayed (yes, here they either go big or go home), in seven different styles, ranging from wood to stone, all made from local Kyoto materials.

That night, I walked from Higashiyama train station through Jingu-michi and other winding streets towards Kiyomizu-dera, which is perched on a hillside and is the most famous of the temples in Higashiyama.

The walk to Kiyomizu-dera was fun and lively, with couples and families strolling together, and warmly lit shops still open and selling delicious-things-on-sticks. With the warm lighting, crisp night, and family atmosphere, it felt a bit like walking around Disneyland at night.

I loved this cheery group of cooks, who kept yelling, “Hot wine! Hot wine!” and ladling it out to customers.

By the time I reached Kiyomizu-dera, it was almost 9 o’clock, with not too many crowds. I had heard that the light-up of Kiyomizu-dera is not to be missed, and it’s true! The lit-up trees and pagodas were simply stunning.

Being there at night felt entirely different from my past daytime visit. Although there were a decent number of people there, there were also many hidden spots and shadowy places where I walked alone, and I was overwhelmed by the sense of history of the temple.

In the dark, alone, the usual busy-ness of one of the most popular tourist spots in Kyoto melts away, and it’s just you in a place with a 1200-year history.

Towards the end of my walk around Kiyomizu-dera, I came upon a tree that was lit-up with spotlights and had these gorgeous white flowers in bloom. They were huge flowers—practically the size of a pair of cupped hands—and looked exactly like the flowers from a book I used to read when I was a child.*

I have since found out from my reliable coworkers and Wikipedia that those flowers are called kobushi, and they are a species of magnolia that is native to Japan.

When I saw them, they reminded me so much of that story from my childhood, that my brain went, “A-Ha!” and I realized that seeing those beautiful flowers--which I had last seen in a picture book when I was about eight-years-old--blooming before my eyes is yet another reason I came here.

(*Note: The book was about a young squirrel whose mother always warns him not to eat the flowers of a certain tree, but the flowers captivate the little squirrel so much that he, of course, ends up eating some and gets very sick. Not that I'm accusing Kiyomizu-dera of growing poisonous flowers.)

Above: Cherry blossoms at a shrine light-up in Otsu.

Cherry blossom season is winding down in the Kyoto area, but I have many more pictures to share. In my last post, I blogged about the cherry blossoms I’ve seen during the day. I’ve also been exploring cherry blossoms by night.

During sakura season, at night, the Japanese like to light up their sakura at temples, shrines, and parks--it's kind of like Christmas in spring. I recently went to Miidera temple in Otsu, Shiga, just northeast of Kyoto, to see its nighttime light-up of cherry trees. The cherry blossoms, or sakura, were in full bloom, and it was a clear, not-too-cold night—perfect for seeing the sakura.

Miidera has many wooden buildings--over 40, in fact--spread out on different levels of the base of Mount Hiei, on the border between Kyoto and Shiga prefectures. For the first twenty days of April each year, Miidera lights up its many sakura trees and lets visitors roam around the complex for free (many, if not most, of the famous temples and shrines in Japan charge small admission fees).

When lit up at night, the sakura trees have a pinkish-silver, silent glow that I can only describe as other-worldly. At Miidera, the trees were so bright and vibrant in the dark night, and the grounds and visitors were so quiet and hushed, that it felt like I'd stumbled into another world.

The most impressive part of the light-up was the sakura trees that arched over a long set of stairs leading to a set of buildings called the Kannon-do. The branches of very old, very tall sakura trees arch over the stairway, creating a cloud cover of cherry blossoms overhead. When you gaze up at them at night, they look like massive stars (that, or lit-up popcorn).

The cherry blossoms overhead were so mesmerizing that, as I walked up the stairway--which, on the side walking up, has no rail between you and the mountainside--I had to remind myself to watch where I was walking and not fall over.

After our visit to Miidera, my Kyoto-native friend took me to the nearby Biwako canal, which carries water from Shiga’s Lake Biwa to Kyoto. The Biwako canal was lined with lit-up cherry trees, creating another out-of-this-world view. Seriously, with the water steadily flowing and the silver-pink tree branches draped over the canal, I felt like I'd walked into a scene from a fantasy movie. Or a computer screensaver.

And my favorite part of the night? A shrine in Otsu that my friend and I came across, on our way to dinner. The shrine was right across the street from our restaurant, and was a wonderland of lit-up cherry trees in full bloom. The branches of the cherry trees were so long and thick with cherry blossoms that walking around the shrine was like walking through a cloud of floating flowers.

There’s nothing quite like looking up into the branches of a soaring cherry blossom tree and seeing layers upon layers of blossom-laden branches, reaching from the tip of your nose to what may very well be the sky. It's actually pretty trippy.
 
Although it was nearly 10 o’clock by the time we went there, there were still a handful of visitors walking around the shrine, quietly looking at the blossoms. There was also a very jolly-looking group of older adults, enjoying a late-night hanami picnic under the cherry trees. That's the life, my friends.

I have to admit that, after my visit to Yoshino-yama, I thought that cherry blossoms, while pretty, are not quite as beautiful as autumn leaves. But after seeing the quiet, still beauty of cherry blossoms at night, I am now a believer.

Bravo, Japan.

It’s my first cherry blossom season in Japan! Cherry blossoms are in full bloom as I type, this very minute, and really are that beautiful. Here are the things that have surprised me about cherry blossoms:

1)    They often appear more white than pink, at least in the Kyoto area
2)    The Japanese like to light them up at night, especially in temples and shrines, which gives them an other-worldly beauty
3)    From far away, they look kind of like popcorn
4)    They only stay in bloom about a week at the most. Because they’re so fleeting, the Japanese think of them as a metaphor for life.
5)    Cherry blossom trees don’t actually produce cherries. (Am I the only one who didn't know this?)

This past weekend, I went to the mountains to see cherry blossoms. Yoshino-yama, or Mount Yoshino, is in Nara prefecture, about 2 hours south of Kyoto by train. It's the most famous spot in Japan for cherry blossoms, or sakura. It’s a whole mountain just bursting with 30,000 sakura trees. When I went, they weren’t in full bloom yet—maybe about 60% full—but were quite lovely.

To get to Yoshino-yama, you take a gondola up the mountain.

The town of Yoshino is like any other bustling Japanese tourist destination—full of shops selling pottery, tea, and famous local goods.

Yoshino appears to be famous for its mushrooms, as a lot of vendors sold a variety of fresh and dried mushrooms, including shiitake, one of my favorites.

My friends and I ate lunch in an udon and soba restaurant overlooking the nearby cherry trees.

I ate sansai udon, which contains “mountain vegetables,” including root vegetables and mushrooms. It was okay--the quality of the ingredients were so-so, with stale-tasting udon, alas.

Yoshino sells a variety of sakura-flavored goods, including sakura ice cream. I ate this adorable bowl of sakura ice cream in a café overlooking sakura. It tasted sweet and tart.

Like the udon and soba restaurant, the cafe was gorgeous--surrounded by sakura trees.

As we walked around Yoshino, we even found a restaurant that sells sakura soba!

During sakura season, the Japanese like to have picnics under the sakura trees, eat, drink, and drink some more. They call this ritual hanami. It was chilly the day we went to Yoshino-yama, but there were still some revelers hanami-ing it up under the trees.

The next day, I wandered around my neighborhood, east of Kyoto. It was a warm, sunny day, and the local park was full of hanami action, including even a handful of food stands and vendors, in case you wanted to celebrate sakura with your very own stuffed Care Bear.

Children were running around, some of the younger locals were playing impromptu music with bongos and rattles, and people like me wandered around taking pictures of it all.

I stopped by the local shrine, which also had sakura in full bloom, and a few people sitting on the plastic swing set, chatting and gazing at the sakura.

A lovely end to a lovely afternoon.

Next post: Cherry blossoms at night!

Above: Hiroshima at dusk, as seen from my room in the Rihga Royal Hotel

I recently spent a long weekend in Hiroshima prefecture, which is less than two hours by bullet train southwest of Kyoto. As I mentioned in my last post, I stayed for a night on the stunning island of Miyajima. I also stayed one night in Hiroshima city, the modern, bustling-but-not-too-crowded capital of Hiroshima prefecture.

After checking into our hotel around noon, my friend and I got right to the point, which was to eat lunch. We ate Hiroshima-yaki in Okonomi-mura, a collection of three floors of Hiroshima-yaki restaurants in the city center.

Hiroshima-yaki is Hiroshima's version of okonomiyaki, a kind of cross between a pancake and a crepe. The kind of okonomiyaki that I usually eat is Osaka-style okonomiyaki,—a mixture of an egg-and-flour-batter, with lettuce and other ingredients mixed in by preference (such as shrimp, mochi, and fatty slices of pork), poured onto a table-top grill and cooked into a thick, savory pancake. After it’s grilled, you add toppings to it, including okonomiyaki sauce (a tangy, savory, clearish-brown sauce), bonito flakes (smoked fish shavings), and seaweed powder.

Hiroshima-yaki contains a generous batch of noodles (with a little bit of batter), with seafood or other ingredients added by preference. Unlike Osaka-style okonomiyaki, the ingredients for Hiroshima-yaki are piled on top of each other instead of mixed together.

The kind we tried had egg noodles, sliced cabbage, and bean sprouts, with a thin wafer of fried dough on top, and strips of fatty pork, egg, and fresh shrimp mixed in. Hiroshima-yaki is typically cooked for you (instead of you cooking it at your own table-top grill, as is often the case with Osaka-style okonomiyaki).

The Hiroshima-yaki was very filling and tasted quite good, but was more greasy than Osaka-style okonomiyaki, which I decided I prefer more. I like the chewy richness of the Osaka-style okonomiyaki, while the Hiroshima-yaki tasted more oily and was also harder to eat—since the ingredients were just piled on top of each other, each slice of okonomiyaki kept falling apart while I was trying to eat it.

After lunch, we walked over to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, which is traversed by a series of bridges and the river.

It really does feel peaceful there, and the most surprising thing to me was how much the design of the park reminded me of Paris. The curve of the river, the curve of the bridges, the walking paths that paralleled the river, even the overcast sky that day—they all reminded me of walking along the Seine in autumn or winter.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the designers of the Peace Memorial Park deliberately imitated Paris in their design—Japan seems to be quite a nation of Francophiles, judging by the many French-inspired bakeries and French-inspired knickknacks they sell in stores around here.

The famous Atomic Dome building is also in the Peace Memorial Park. It has been left as is since the 1945 atomic bombing, and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

At the Peace Memorial Park, we visited the Children’s Peace Monument, which displays paper cranes made by schoolchildren around Japan. The monument is dedicated to the memory of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who developed leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima.

After her diagnosis, she decided to fold 1,000 paper cranes, which, according to Japanese tradition, can grant you one wish. Although she reached her goal of 1,000 cranes, young Sadako died at the age of twelve. Today, schoolchildren from around the world fold paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima to display at the memorial. The cranes are housed in display cases behind the monument.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is located at the southern end of the park. It contains displays about not just the Hiroshima bombing, but Japan’s involvement in wars leading up to World War II. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in the museum, because shortly after I went there, my stomach decided it wasn’t very happy with the Hiroshima-yaki, and I spent most of my time for the rest of my visit in the very peaceful restroom of the museum.

But with every stumble springs hope. After I got my stomach in order, we headed over to Hiroshima-jo, Hiroshima’s very own castle.

The castle itself wasn’t particularly impressive—it’s mostly an open-air structure that was partly rebuilt in 1958 after the bombing (with other parts left as they were, showing the ruins to the castle’s original foundation).

At the castle, though, was the first sign of spring—cherry blossoms!

It’s a shrine, and it floats!

I recently visited Hiroshima prefecture and stayed overnight on Miyajima, a small island northwest of Hiroshima Bay.

Miyajima (which is officially known as "Itsukushima," but is popularly known as "Miyajima") is a must-see site for any visitor to Hiroshima. The island is known for Itsukushima-jinja, a Shinto shrine with a torii, or gate, that appears to float in the water when it’s high tide. The floating torii (pronounced "to-ree"—rhymes with “story”) is ranked as one of Japan's top three sites.

Although it’s most famous for its torii, Miyajima is also known for a few more things, including: oysters, rice paddles, and leaf-shaped pastries.

When my friend and I first got to Miyajima, we tried out the oysters first. We ate at a restaurant near the bay, each of us ordering oyster donburi—a bowl of oysters, eggs, and onions over rice.

Oysters are famous throughout Hiroshima prefecture, and these did not disappoint—they were fresh, tender, and juicy (not unlike the excellent oysters I’ve eaten in the San Francisco Bay Area, I might add). Yum.

After lunch, it was almost high tide, and we walked over to see the torii. According to Wikipedia, the torii was built in the 12th century, although the current one dates back to the 19th century. It was built so that commoners—who weren’t allowed to set foot on the holy island of Miyajima—would have to sail through the gate at high tide.

I had seen pictures of the torii before in guidebooks and on websites. In person, the torii looks serene and eloquent, surrounded by mountains and the sea. It’s a bright orange-red, a shade that reminded me of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Giving a unique contrast to the eloquent torii are the scruffy-looking deer that roam around Miyajima. Similar to Nara, Miyajima is known for its free-roaming deer, which like to amble around, trying to nab food from sympathetic tourists.

Miyajima is also known for its wooden rice paddles, a phenomenon which baffled me while I was there. Miyajima’s small, quaint streets are filled with shop after adorable shop, most of which have a generous assortment of rice paddles on display. The rice paddles have writing on them that, according to one of my co-workers, have lucky messages, such as “do well at school,” and the like.

 
It turns out that Miyajima claims to be the spot where a monk named Seishin invented the wooden rice paddle in the 18th century. I’m a bit skeptical about this, with all due respect to Miyajima. Isn’t the 18th century a bit recent for a tool as rudimentary as a wooden rice paddle to be invented? After all, weren’t humans already using spoons in Cro-Magnon days?

Regardless, you can find rice paddles of all sizes in Miyajima. You can even get your face painted on a rice paddle. (I resisted, although I am totally going to get my baby’s face painted on one, if/whenever I have a kid).

And the best part—Miyajima is home to the world’s largest rice paddle. Weighing 2.5 tons and measuring 7.7 meters long, this is one big rice paddle.

Miyajima is also a famous leaf-peeping spot in the fall, and it’s known for selling leaf-shaped pastries year-round. The pastries are called momiji manju and are stuffed with sweet fillings such as red bean paste or chocolate cream. A number of shops make the manju on-site, using machines that reminded me of the Krispy Kreme doughnut machines.

On Miyajima, we stayed at the adorable Guest House Kikugawa, a casual, 8-room inn that features both western-style and Japanese-style rooms. My friend and I stayed in a Japanese-style room.

The room came with complimentary green tea and rice-paddle-shaped cookies.

For an added fee, the friendly owners of the Guest House Kikugawa cook a traditional Japanese dinner (and a Western-style breakfast, for that matter) for their guests. Dinner that night was amazing. An eight-course traditional Japanese meal of local delicacies (for less than 4000 yen!).

Highlights included grilled fish and shrimp:

Oysters cooked Western-style, with cheese on top. Very fresh and delicious:

White fish sashimi that was not for the faint of heart, but was quite delicious for a sashimi-lover like yours truly:

Some sort of mashed root vegetable (it tasted a bit like taro) with salmon roe on top (apologies--I asked the nice elderly owner what most of these dishes are, but unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the Japanese words she used):

A salted fish that was cooked in a similar style to what I’ve eaten when I went leaf-peeping in Takao and hiking in Tsumago, but this one was by far the most delicious. It was tender and not too salty—just right.

To finish things off, dessert! Very delicious green tea ice cream, with an even more delicious sesame-ish mousse-ish confection, plus a strawberry.

Note: At this point, I would like to give a shout-out to the adorable Australian at the table next to mine, who was also taking pictures of every dish he ate, also with a Canon digital SLR. William, if you’re ever in the Kyoto area again, talk to me. (And this is the closest I’ll ever come to putting a winking emoticon in my blog.)

After dinner, we walked over to see the torii again, which is lit up by floodlights at night. Most tourists only visit Miyajima during the daytime, so the streets were very quiet by the time we headed out.

There were a few tourists taking pictures of the torii, which was actually lit up a bit too brightly for my taste. Although my camera tried valiantly, the torii didn’t show up well in my shots. (Special thanks to William for taking some pics of the torii from his camera with my SD card.)

The most unique part of seeing the torii at night was that it was low tide, and we could walk out to the torii. Close up, you can see the whole logs they used to build the torii, and the gentle, natural curves of those logs.

Being so close to the torii, at night, with fewer tourists, made the experience feel much more personal than it had during the daytime. It made the torii feel more mystical. It’s only when you walk up to the torii that you can see the many coins scattered around its base by past visitors. Pretty cool.

The next day, we took the Miyajima Ropeway gondola up Mount Misen, the tallest mountain on the island.

The view from the top of the mountain was gorgeous—you can see south to Shikoku island. The mountains in the distance are layered behind each other—the view reminded me of Byron Bay, Australia. So lovely.

Similar to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in Arashiyama, Mount Misen also features a lot of wild monkeys, along with the obligatory monkey warning signs.

And before we left beautiful Miyajima, we had one more meal. For lunch, I ate udon with a side of anago-meshi, broiled sea eel over rice. Anago is another dish that Miyajima is famous for. It was pretty good, but not spectacular--your standard tasty eel, although the dish I had tasted reheated, alas.

Overall, though, Miyajima was peaceful, scenic, and delicious. Just the way I like it.

Next post: Hiroshima!

It's ichigo daifuku season!

Daifuku is a traditional Japanese confection  made with pounded glutinous rice, or mochi, and stuffed with a sweet filling, typically red bean paste. Daifuku is, hands-down, my favorite kind of Japanese confection. And ichigo daifuku, or strawberry daifuku, is in season right now. This stuff is amazing, a daifuku with a whole, fresh strawberry on the inside and, often, red bean paste as well.

I take my role as a blogger very seriously, and I've been doing taste tests of as many ichigo daifuku (pronounced "ee-chee-goh" "dye-foo-koo") as I can get my hands on. The largest ichigo daifuku I've tried is the one seen in the picture above. It's an award-winning ichigo daifuku from Shimaya, a sweets shop located in the town of Katata, half an hour northeast of Kyoto. Their daifuku are huge, practically the size of my palm (who says size doesn't matter?), and they're stuffed with white bean paste and a big, sweet strawberry.

My favorite ichigo daifuku so far, though, is from the small daifuku shop around the corner from me. Yes, when I feel the winter blues, one of the things that perks me up is knowing that I am, literally, a minute away from a family-run daifuku shop. I stop there at least once a week, and the friendly owner there now recognizes me whenever I pass by (likely as the smiley girl who speaks broken Japanese and really, really likes daifuku).

The kind of ichigo daifuku she sells varies each day—sometimes they have bean paste and a strawberry inside them, and sometimes they have just a strawberry. They're simple and homemade, unpretentious and delicious.

The prettiest kind of ichigo daifuku I've seen features the strawberry perched on top of the mochi, like a crown. It's a less common style, but oh-so-pretty. I bought these from a confection stand at Keihan Sanjo station in Kyoto.

The green one had a green bean paste filling, while the white one had a red bean paste filling. Both were as delicious as they look.

Which, come to think of it, doesn't surprise me very much in this great, delicious country.

Last weekend, I went to Kobe for the first time since December, to try Kobe beef (at last!) and to see Chinese New Year festivities in Kobe’s Chinatown.

A friend and I ate a multi-course Kobe beef lunch at Kobe Plaisir near Sannomiya station.

The beef was very good, with that rare umami flavor, but there was room for improvement. I hate to criticize something so luxurious as Kobe beef, but the honest truth is that the beef wasn't as good as I’d expected. I purposely ordered the sirloin cut, which is more fatty than the fillet cut (I like the fat), but it ended up being so fatty that I couldn't taste the actual beef very well.

Also, even though we ate teppanyaki style, fresh off the grill, the medium-rare cut was strangely cold. So cold that I couldn't help but think about it being meat, and the poor cow I was eating (does this mean I really will turn into a vegetarian, or at least a pescetarian, one of these days, as I sometimes suspect I will? What about my love for In 'n' Out?).

The meal was beautifully presented, though, and cooked with exquisite artistry by the chef at the grill in front of us. The way he worked those utensils was like a dance. He was also very gracious about my taking an endless number of pictures. (Note: I recently upgraded from my point-and-shoot to a digital SLR—I think it’s going to become my new best friend.)

The sides that came with the beef were delicious as well, including sashimi, a yummy potato pureed soup, and an excellent garlic fried rice that the chef fried right on the grill. Yum. Or, as they/we say here, oishii.

Below, pictures from the restaurant, as well as pictures from the very crowded Chinatown, where there was lion dancing, oodles of Japanese-influenced dim sum, and panda-themed vending machines.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!