So this was a pretty packed day for me. Having finished touring the Imperial Palace a bit after noon, I decided to walk down the street to Nijo Castle, because I think there were several paintings about it that I had to memorize back in the day.... a lot of good that did me, you can see. ^^;;
The front entrance! This bridge goes over the first moat.
It's a pretty big moat. Again, notice the non-mortar using stone walls with concave curvature! Or, you know, don't...
And the moat was filled with really colorful koi fish, though I suspect slightly more sinister wildlife inhabited the moat back in the day.
Hark! It's the castle!
Anyway, here's one of the main castle buildings, and the one that's open for tourists to go look around in. Unfortunately, this place is entirely made of wood and the walls have valuable kano school paintings on them, so photography isn't allowed cause it'll damage the wood/paper/paint. Anyway, you have to take off your shoes when you go inside, which is a bit dark to protect the paintings. The first thing you notice is that the floor squeaks quite loudly when you walk. See, this castle was built when the Shoguns were in power, and you know how military people can be a little paranoid, especially when they way they gained power was by killing the people that had it before... anyway, the guy that lived here had the floor made so that it would creak loudly whenever anyone came in, that way he would know if anyone was trying to sneak up on him. I think it's called the nighting-gale floor.
Here's a close up of the gate - the intricately carved set of birds and flowers up there is carved from a single piece of Japanese cypress/ceder (I keep forgetting), and it's pretty big actually, over a meter long. Anyway, these elaborate carved panels of wood are one of the decoration motifs inside the castle, including the Grand Reception Hall, which I was pleased to recognize from my art and architecture class! Everything is set up very strictly according to rank - the Shogun sits on an elevated part of the room, with a beautiful painting of a tree against a gold background on the wall behind him, the branches painted in such a way that they frame him. Two doors off to the side with a red rope hanging from them conceal bodyguards, who are ready to jump out at a moment's notice is anyone tries to threaten the shogun. The celing is amazingly detailed, and these wooden block things decorate the upper part of the walls. The room extends outward from where the Shogun sits, and they had dolls set up to show how everyone would be seated. Those closest to the Shogun were sat on either side of the wall facing each other inside of straight ahead at the shogun, because he was too important to look at directly. Behind these guys were lesser ranking nobles, who got to face the shogun sorta, if they weren't bowing and facing the floor really.
A side view of the castle building. Anyway, what's said to be the real treasure of this castle are the paintings. Kano School paintings adorn most of the walls; cranes, trees, birds.... Really quite nice, for Japanese art. (My horrible secret - I don't actually like Japanese art that much, and I'm terrible partial to French and Italian Renaissance art. Don't tell the EAS department that though...) . Anyway, the extravagance and boldness of the paintings in the reception rooms and such are very different from the paintings on the walls of the Shogun's private quarters. Those paintings are in very subdued shades of monochrome and brown, and very Zen and subtle. This room also had dolls of the Shogun relaxing, while about 3 ladies in waiting sat around him getting grapes or what not. To quote Mel Brooks, "It's good to be the king." I have yet to understand how this society can be in some ways so conservative (noble women were not even allowed to be seen by people not especially close/related, and were kept behind curtains), and yet in other ways so strangely not (blatant polygamy).
Anyway, after looking around the castle I went to go see some of the gardens. Apparently this part of the castle grounds featured a Western-style garden and a Japanese-style garden. This is the Western-style garden, where they tried to utilize the West's preference for large expanses of grass..... either our gardens are really really boring, or they just suck at it.
Japanese gardens on the other hand, usually have water as the centerpiece. I think the gardeners where a little better at this type...
The secondary moat.
I went now into the inner palace grounds, but these buildings weren't open for tourists to walk through. The guard tower was open though, so I climbed up there and snapped a bunch of cool aerial views.
The steps to the guard post.
The inner moat and drawbridge.
The inner castle grounds.
More of the inner castle.
A cool side-view of the drawbridge.
I just took a picture of this cause I thought it was funny - usually signs for the bathroom say W.C. (for Water Closet), or 手洗 (手= hand, 洗=wash). But this sign said 便所 where 便= convenient and 所=place. I suppose that's a perfectly reasonable name, I just found it kind of funny. ^^
More gardens.
I was getting hungry around this time, and so decided to look for the snack bar. Unfortunately, though they had a place at the Imperial Palace, there was none here. However, they did have a tea ceremony thing going on, and even if it was a bit pricey, I think the fact that it's at Nijo Palace kind of makes up for it.
The teahouse. You can see the open walls from here where the people sit and look out at the garden!
Fake hand-washing area.
To roads diverge in a wood...
Anyway, it turned out it wasn't so much a "tea ceremony" as a 'eat some traditional tea-ceremony food and enjoy the beautiful view' thing, which was fine by me. Real tea ceremonies take forevvveeerrr and are boring and hurt your legs. Anyway, traditional tea house fare is a bowl of very thick green tea, made by whisking a bunch of green tea powder and water, and a sweet.
The sweet is supposed to help make drinking the tea easier, since it's a bit strong. Though I just think the Japanese can't deal with strong flavors (which makes them great at mastering subtle flavors), cause I don't think it's strong at all. Then again, I drink straight espresso on a regular basis, so I'm probably not the most reliable gauge of strongness in caffinated beverages... Also, they drank tea in bowls. I don't really know why, they totally had cups... There are basically three types of tea bowls though: Chinese style (steep angled sides, thin, elegant), normal bowls (the one pictured here, made by Japanese people that didn't want to listen to crazy-tea-man), and Ugly bowls (very thick, deliberately uneven). The ugly bowls came into style because people were pissed off that they were too much like China, and wanted to be more different. So this one guy that redefining the tea ceremony at the time (I want to say it was Sen-rikyu, but I might be wrong) was good friends with this failed roof-tile maker who suddenly decided he wanted to make bowls. The bowls were of course, ugly and imperfect. So crazy-tea-guy totally marketed it as creative, "seeing the process of creation in it's imperfection," etc. They were a huge hit. I consider this an early example of Japanese consumers willing to embrace anything.
Buying tea also gets you into this exclusive little garden, which you can gaze at while sipping.
Little stream.
The view from where I was sitting
The tea room. Note the flower (flower-arrangement is a legitiment art here), and wall scroll on the elevated alcove. And the posts on the borders of the wall that are supposed to look like tree trunks, and therefore 'natural.'
Anyway, an American couple honeymooning in Kyoto volunteered to take a picture of me with the garden. ^^
Afterwards, it was off to Kinkaku-ji!! Also known in English as "The Golden Pavilion. You'll see why in a second.
Cute meandering little path in the woods....
...entrance gate...
...AND A BUILDING MADE OF SOLID GOLD!!!
Okay, not really. It's gold-plated/gold-leaf. But wasn't the dramatic effect awesome just now? Anyway, after going through moats and inner gates and such, I was a little surprised to just turn the corner after paying the admission, and have a shining gold building accost my eyes. It was spectacular. My favorite site in Kyoto. ^_^
Me and my future residence.
Look at it!! Just sitting there, almost floating in the water, amid a gorgeous lake and islands of bonsai trees... isn't it beautiful??
Almost.... TOO beautiful. ::omninous music:: So anyway, the story goes that after miraculously surviving fires and wars that destroyed most of the surrounding buildings, the original Golden Pavilion was burned down in 1955 by a crazy monk who thought that such a thing was "too beautiful to exist on earth." I guess he was burning it to try and send it up to heaven?
Did I mention that it's made out of GOLD?!?! (ish)
But really, how could you burn this thing? It's AWESOME.
Anyway, I'm sure you're all tired of my million pictures of Kinkakuji (and the sad part is that these are just my favorites, there's more), but I can't stress to you enough how awesome a sight this is. Seeing a golden building in person just can't compare to seeing pictures. ^^
Anyway, after Kinkakuji I decided to go down the road and check out Ryoanji, which houses the most famous rock garden in the world. On the way some kids (guy from England, and a guy and two girls from Australia) asked me for directions to "the rock place" and I told them I was going in the same direction, and that it was just straight ahead about a kilometer. The British guy offered me a ride on his bike, which would've been really cool if by 'bike' he meant 'motorcycle,' but alas it was the free rental bike that came with his hostel. We got about two feet before I was like "Um, maybe I'll just walk and meet you guys there..." Yon picture above is the steps up to the temple that houses the rock garden.
And here it is!! The rock garden at Ryoanji, world's most famous rock garden. Really, if you only know one rock garden, this is it. The stones were all hand selected and places by the gardener, and for some reason people have decided that the placement of these stones somehow holds some deep secret of enlightenment or something.
There has been tons of speculation about what the rocks mean - from the simple "they represent islands in the ocean," to "it's totally a mother tiger and her two cubs " (don't worry, I don't see it either." The coolest feature of the garden though, in my opinion, is that the 15 rocks are arranged in such a way that at any angle you can only see 14 at a time. Anyway, the pamphlet invites guests to sit and stare at the rocks, pondering the mysteries of life.
I think the real mystery though, is why so many people came out here on a rainy day and paid five dollars to stare at a bunch of rocks. ^^;; Ponder THAT.
Right beside the rock garden is this room, and since there were no signs prohibiting it, I took a picture of the wall paintings.
It's hard to tell in the picture, but the gentle drizzle/mist combo made this moss garden (totally ignored off to the side of the rock garden), beautiful. I also met the English guy again here, and he said that he thought this one was much prettier than the rocks.
The rain started to fall a little harder, and I walked to the exit with my bike-riding acquaintances. They all came seperately, but knew each other because they were staying at the same hostel (which sounded much worse than mine. Mine is awesome.). The English guy (he looked really young, like 18 or something) was traveling Asia for three months, and Japan was the last (and his favorite) stop on the trip. I didn't get a change to ask what the other were doing here, cause we made it to the bikes now, and I had to go ask for directions back to the bus stop (I had practically walked across the entire city, and wanted a nice relaxing bus ride all the way home). It had started to rain a little harder, and it was 5pm, which meant all the temples and stuff were closing, so it was time to call it a day.
Whew! 4 attractions in one day!
