FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2023

RAINY SIGHTS & COMFORT BITES

Today we woke up to the one day on the trip with truly lousy weather – it was pouring rain all day.

Our itinerary centered around a day in the Arashiyama district in the outskirts of Kyoto, featuring their famous bamboo forest. Originally, we were supposed to start the day with a trip down the Hozu River on a traditional wooden boat steered by bamboo poles, but there was a devastating accident only a few days before our trip where a boat carrying 29 people capsized and one of the rowers tragically lost his life. Understandably, this was taken off of the itinerary and we all mentally wished our condolences to the family of that captain.

It’s a common thing in the area for rickshaws to take people around the bamboo forest, so that was the substitute activity. We took the Kyoto Metro over to the Arashiyama area and to the rickshaw place, but I honestly felt so uncomfortable at the idea of being an overweight American being carted around by some poor guy in the pouring rain, and excused myself from the activity. Instead, I waved and sent off my fellow travelers and then walked with Mamico to the entrance of the forest about ten minutes away.

Mamico and I walked through the bamboo forest, which is really beautiful, even in the rain. It’s a particularly popular activity, so was definitely packed, but I was able to get a sense of the place and the unique setting.

Hidden within the forest is the Nonomiya Shrine, a shinto shrine dedicated to seeking luck in love and marriage – can’t complain about that haha. In ancient Japan, there was a custom in which unmarried princesses and empresses, called Saiku, were selected to bring offerings to the gods on behalf of the emperor, and sent away to a different prefecture. At that time, this Nonomiya Shrine served as the place where these Saiku would undergo a purification ritual for a year in preparation for their journey.

This image taken from live japan.com. You can sort of see it in my photo on the left behind the sign, but I didn’t realize at the time that this gate is a big deal!

Throughout Japan, most of the torii gates are the bright vermilion (red/orange) color. But the earliest torii gates first built used kuroki, or lumber. Today, this gate in Nonomiya Shrine is the only kuroki torii left in Japan.

For 100 yen, you can choose a fortune, so I of course did. And my fortune, as you can see below, was “Quite Good”! If it had been bad, I would’ve folded it up and left it hanging at the shrine so as not to take the bad luck with me.

I also decided to give an offering to get an amulet for good fortune, the little gold satchels in the picture. They have different amulets at Shinto shrines across the country that represent different parts of life – the promise of good fortune seemed like as good a time to get one as any.

Leaving the forest, Mamico and I headed to the Tenryū-ji Temple to meet the rest of the group. Naturally, when we got there, Maho and a couple of others were there but it turns out that most people had already headed back to the hotel to just have a rainy inside day. We had already paid admission to the temple, so I decided to stick it out, and Mamico and I walked over to explore.

Turns out that Tenryū-ji is the most important temple in Kyoto's Arashiyama district, and is now registered as a world heritage site. It’s the head temple of its own school within the Rinzai Zen sect of Japanese Buddhism.

From the internet: Tenryuji was built in 1339 by the ruling shogun Ashikaga Takauji. Takauji dedicated the temple to Emperor Go-Daigo, who had just passed away. The two important historic figures used to be allies until Takauji turned against the emperor in a struggle for supremacy over Japan. By building the temple, Takauji intended to appease the former emperor's spirits.

As with most temples and shrines in Japan, as I came to learn, this was built and rebuilt over the years due to attacks, fires, etc. Though the garden is the original.

Lots of koi swimming around

One of the most impressive features of this temple are the beautiful gardens, created by the famous garden designer Muso Soseki. It was so pretty on a gross day like today, I can only imagine how picturesque it would be on a beautiful day!

While we were walking around, I got a message from Shannon that she and Helen were there too, so we dropped a pin and found each other, and continued to walk around and look at the wet but beautiful flowers.

Helen took this with a 1-2-3 count to swing our umbrellas down, and I think we nailed it!

Tenryū-ji’s Dharma Hall (Hattō), where the temple’s important religious ceremonies are held, is well known for the large painting of a cloud dragon on its ceiling, painted in 1997.

The dragon’s eyes are rendered in such a way that, no matter where you stand in the building, the dragon seems to be looking directly at you. This effect, known in Japanese as happo-nirami ("all direction gaze"), symbolizes the all-seeing eyes with which the dragon protects Buddhism.

It cost extra money to enter the space and see the dragon, and you weren’t allowed to take pictures, so, being damp and cold already, decided to forego it in honor of getting a warm lunch.

Shannyn and Helen had previously spotted a pizza place of all things near the bamboo forest, so we thought it sounded perfect on a cold and rainy day. Honestly any warm pizza would’ve been great that day, but it happened to be pretty excellent pizza, especially for Japan!

Turns out Pizzeria Lugara is legit, run by people from Italy, and has 5-star reviews across the board, so it was some nice luck that we happened to stumble into it.

I don’t think I realized how much I needed this little bit of familiar comfort food – it warmed both body and soul. Delicious!

After lunch, we took a long bus back to the hotel. Even with a raincoat and umbrella I was totally soaked through and pretty freezing, so practically jumped into the most welcoming hot shower as soon as I got back to my room.

After some time relaxing in the dry and warm hotel, we were ready to head out to our dinner activity: a ramen-making class. We took cars and arrived at The Ramen Factory, an adorable little basement cooking class near the Imperial Palace in central Kyoto.

In the class, we made ramen completely from scratch!

We started with tying up and marinating chicken thigh.
Then the main part of the class, making pasta dough with sifted flour and salt water, pounding it, rolling it out, and putting it through a noodle maker.
We then got to create our broth from a combo of three different stocks (I believe shoyu, miso, and seafood stock), which the staff then took, with our names on a post-it, to heat up.
Meanwhile, the people running the class had been cooking the chicken, which we then got to char siu with a blow torch (always fun!)
We then took turns in smaller groups coming into the kitchen, choosing our decorative bowl, and flash cooking the noodles we had made.
Finally, it was time to add our toppings and enjoy the ramen we had made!

Photo by Maho (along with all of the ones I’m in)

A little ramen-making compilation

This ended up being one of my favorite activities on the trip. It was so much fun to make the dough, and the warm ramen perfectly hit the spot on such a cold and rainy day. Loved the whole thing!

As the last activity of the day, we headed to enjoy a Japanese staple: karaoke.

In the US, karaoke to me is a late-night, not-sober, end-up-there sort of thing, but here – at least tonight – it was early and in a very bright room. A little odd, but we were gonna roll with it!

I love so much that they put Japanese syllables above the English-language karaoke so that people who don’t speak English can still phonetically sing along. It ended up being a fun night, song choices running the spectrum from Ed Sheeran to Disney to Meatloaf to Coolio. The highlight was definitely Mamico’s “Colors of the Wind”!