boston cream puff: July 2007

See -- who is this guy? He doesn't look like any protective deity I've seen in Japan before.

A house on the street I use to get to the supermarket. I'm intrigued by the statues.

A tea house on the grounds of the temple.

The temple gardens at night.

Me and prayer wheels.

That's Kiyomizudera, a beautiful, old, famous temple, in the distance.

Prayer wheels! I didn't know they had these in Japan; they're usually part of Tibetan Buddhism.

Wishes in the dark.

Two women taking pictures of each other with their digital cameras.

Me and some wishes. I wished for world peace, and food, clean water and health care for all, as well as health and happiness for my friends and family. I pretty much have everything I want. Except a better digital camera. And a portable scanner. And noise-cancelling headphones. And a fondue set.

People and their wishes.

Here's Anna, my roommate, in front of a tree with wishes tied on the branches. She used to date a guy named Ben, but they broke up. It was a Ben-Anna split.

Anyway, we're at Kodaiji, a Zen temple near the Yasaka shrine. They light up the temple and the gardens at night on this one night.

Kids today with their sitting around on blue tarps, and their wearing yukata (cotton kimonos) and their drinking copious amounts of beer and getting noisy. We didn't do that stuff (at least the first two) when *I* was in college...

The Inari photos and this are from the Yasaka shrine, in the Gion district, on the night of Tanabata, when the weaving maiden star meets the cowherd star in the sky. If you make a wish on that night, it comes true, they say.

This is an altar for candles and other offerings to Inari. Note the onion shape -- it's the curved jewel you find on the top of the fox's tail. The two little glasses are one-serving glasses of bad-quality sake that you can buy really cheaply.

More of Inari and his/her fox messengers. Note the mirror in the center; this is the main object of worship and it's rare to see it out like that.

Here are some people on its banks. On the left you can see fenced-in platforms -- these are the patios of restaurants. You can look out on the river at night while you eat. I've never tried one of these places (they're expensive) but I bet it's nice.

This is one of Kyoto's two big rivers.

A nice group photo. I don't know why the English name is Pizza Ball house.

Here we are trying to turn them in their little cooking holes.

After the temple, we went to a make-your-own takoyaki restaurant and met another friend of Lori's and Ms Yoshimura's. There are lots of scallions, as you can tell. They pour batter over this.

Lori and Yoshimura-san praying.

Lots of stairs.

Many, many darumas. All of them have both the eyes painted in. You paint in one eye when you make a vow or a wish and the when it's fulfilled you paint in the other eye. I got a daruma from a student and I painted in an eye when I started searching for a job this past year. I filled it in when I got the letter of appointment. Yay! I didn't bring it to this temple, though. I'm making the victory sign because it's a thing lots of Japanese people do when they get their picture taken.

Some tiny and adorable darumas. These tiny wooden ones are for sale at the temple. They come with a fortune tucked inside a hole at the bottom. Lots of people leave their tiny darumas at the temple.

Lori and Yoshimura-san.

This is Katsuoji. It's up in the mountains north of Kyoto. The website is not as good in English, but is clearer. Standing next to me is Lori. We were in Kyoto at the same time five years ago, doing our dissertation research. We came to Katsuoji with her friend Ms. Yoshimura, whom I also knew five years ago.

It works like a melitta filter, except that it makes a very very small amount of coffee.

This is how I get my coffee every morning. I put a little individual mini-filter with coffee into my cup.

Random other tourists buying soft ice cream cones at the stand where I bought mine. I had a combination of mango and green tea, and it was very tasty. Unfortunately the green tea section dripped all over my shirt. Typical.

The view from the estate of a famous Japanese movie actor of the 1930s. I've never heard of this guy, so I can't say who he was, but he bought a humongo estate in the mountains, made a beautiful formal garden, and now it's open to the public, like me.

Tenryuji slippers. You wear them so that you don't track dirt into the temple.

An image of Daruma. He's Bodhidharma, the somethingth patriarch of Indian Zen who came to China and is the first patriarch of Chinese Zen.

A big chair. What's it for? I don't know.

People on the porch that faces the garden.

The garden all us tourists are looking at.

Here are some other tourists.

This is the inside of the main hall, and the altar is in the space in the middle.

Tenryuji, a famous Zen temple.

Arhat with a bib; I know, I know it's serious.

No, really, why all the bibs?

An arhat close up.

More arhats, plus some pretty flowers.

There's a tradition in Japan of making statues of the 500 rakan, or arhats, the disciples of the Buddha while he was alive, who attained nirvana. There's a collection of them right by the yudofu restaurant.

So I went here for lunch. It's almost the opposite of a street stall -- a very traditional and elegant Kyoto restaurant that serves yudofu, or simmered tofu. You definitely have to like tofu to appreciate this place, but I do. I paid about 35 dollars for the lunch set, which was a lot of money, but I got about 50 little dishes to go with the tofu , so it ended up as a pretty good value.

This is a riverbed with a park on the opposite bank. Usually on the weekends, there are outdoor stalls in the park, selling okonomiyaki and takoyaki. Okonomiyaki are made with pancake batter, but filled with shredded cabbage and any kind of other bits of food you want to put in -- shrimp, bean sprouts, cheese cubes, roasted pork, onions, mushrooms, etc. Takoyaki are little balls of the same kind of dough, filled with scallions and a piece of octopus. You might call them fried octopus balls.
Anyway, there were no street food stands on Sunday and I was very disappointed.

Sunday I went to Arashiyama, the neighborhood I used to live in. Where I lived was very quiet and residential, but two train stops over is a big tourist area. This is some of that.

fluffy bread. Hard to make sandwiches with (too thick) but great as toast.

boston cream puff

Friday, July 13, 2007

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

About Me

Previous Posts

Archives