Kyoto was heaven on earth

And must be experienced by all as a matter of Global Importance.
I cannot believe what I have seen in the last 3 days, it was so mind-bogglingly fantastic all I can say is YOU MUST GO.
Please let me live so that I can return for weeks, to go into those vast temples and mountains and colour colour colour
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FUCK








Do you get my drift?
I stayed in a 130 year old inn, with gardens in the courtyard, and full tatami and art alcove and ikebana and wood wood wood wood wood a few trees, then more wood...and earthen walls. I had the best 2 nights of dream fantasy, where ladies brought me 6 course meals in my room and I wore the Yukata/cotton kimono they gave me after bathing in their strange shared bathroom. The Yutaka was the most starched item I have ever put on my body ever, and it softened by morning...bliss. I got a wee bottle of sake each night and drank alone, festooned in the robe, like a big dork, and faced with the most unbelievable foods I have ever eaten on all different plates and never the same one twice. Breakfast and dinner was served in this fashion. I shiver from the joy in recounting the fabled visit but nothing would beat trying the severe formality of all the different customs, and bloody slippers that are far to small for my clod-hoppers.




Where I was staying in Kyoto
The best thing that happened next was having the bed laid out for me, in the center of the room...I have never slept central, call me weird but I have always liked a wall, any wall...I don't know, it was 2 futons, very starched white sheet and then 2 ginormous doonas, both in white covers...and a very small pillow, tight and hard filled with soba...I have never had such a different bed or pillow, and it was incredible, my body revelled in it. I loved the transition of the spirit of the room and the preparation for sleep, I loved Mikako, the young woman who laid it out for me and I loved sleeping in a bare wooden and clay walled haven with bamboo light next to me, and the sweetest tea set I have ever seen in a wooden box near the lacquered table.
When I arrived they brought me a green tea and a sweet so divine...I ate the rice paper wrapper as well! What a dag.
So nice, I cried from the beauty.
Around the area I was staying artisans were busy at work in shops with raised tatami covered platforms, where I saw painting and ceramics and calligraphy and scrolls and paper and silk and more, and this was only one afternoon...all woody wood wood and more parallel wood, and grids and lines, more lines than I have seen in my life...I feel so full of the beauty, if you opened me up...what? Some hugely fat light would burn as big as the sun! I can't believe I wrote that!
This Japan is indeed sublime.
Today I went to get the bus to the Golden Temple. A woman passing heard me asking which bus, and she stopped and said she was going, and she just happened to have a group of university students, and they were touring places today and practicing their English. We sat together on the bus, and went a long way from town, and we were getting to know eachother better, and the girls were all lovely, and that was my blessed day. We hit the Golden Temple which is indeed gold, the sun came out and I was awestruck, the red leaves the gold, blue sky, lake. Picture postcard every damn second, and there I was with 12 young women giving presentations in English with quizzes in front of hundreds of sight-seers, funny. They asked me to stay with them as they were going to a tofu lunch and a few more temples and then a famous rock garden. Everywhere we went was gor-geous and more amazing than the last. The tofu lunch was incredible with more types of tofu and by-products than I knew existed. Passed a lot of wind that afternoon.


Fetched the day up in a very famous sand/rock garden. Queen Elizabeth had visited apparently, and I recall it from the program "100 Great Gardens". What can I say, the place was a building site being renovated with this platform loaded with devotees. I sat for a few minutes with one of the students and started to 'get it'. The profundity of it is unerasable. Everyone disappeared as though you were there alone, and in some place as special as an Aboriginal sacred site, that was all I could think. So humble yet so grand.
Last night I was high as a kite racing from one temple to another catching the priests playing in one, a tea ceremony in another, the night lights being manoeuvred for optimum viewing, places where I just wanted to grasp one of the hundreds of fellow devotees and shake them with the power of my beautiful vision...can't post any photos as I left the cord back in Tokyo but you will have to take my word for it, it is a madly great spectacle. But to end it with that rock garden, that was just the icing on the very big and most delicious cake I have ever tucked into.
Oh my. Culture tourist, sore feet and mind full of these dashing fragments...so many temples, so vast, no-one had prepared me for this, it was beyond my wildest dreams.
One amazing thing aside from all the others is the sequence of gates and paths you go down to arrive at the ultimate spectacle. I am so used to the Western way of proudly showing off monuments, but here, you get somewhere fab, and around the corner, most in-auspiciously is somewhere even more fantastic...I would leave thinking, wow, I came in this way but forgot entirely about it, because I was so entranced with the next, the next the next...talk about Disneyland, this is a ride beyond every Disney experience combined, as every pilgrim and million photos per hour can attest to.
Tomomi Nishimura from Kyoto Tachibana University kindly insisted on getting a taxi to the station from there, which was lovely, and she dropped me off near my inn, so that I could get my things and get to Osaka, where I am now.
Hello Osaka!

Sunday Moon.

Read an entire book last night, I needed some English narrative. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, it was on the shelf and provided just the escape I was looking for. Had funny dreams but woke up fine and 'seized the day'. The tatami mats show dust and hair especially so I made busy and got the house and myself sorted before heading for a Lion festival in Numabukuro at the Hikawa shrine. I had assumed, yet again that it would be right next to the station. I had my map and even though it wasn't on there, I wasn't going to be deterred. The policeman's box gave me directions and I was on my way. I found it, by hearing the drumming and flute playing, and when I turned the corner the portable shrine carriers were in full swing. The men really do where the g-string nappies, and I saw a lot of butt cheeks. I also saw but couldn't get a photo of a man with strings around his ankles. What does that mean or do?
The shrine grounds were filled with stalls selling all manner of delights. I had a wheat pancake with cabbage and rice crispies in it. Delicious. I got to use a brush to wipe on the sweet soya sauce, and squirted my own mayonnaise design. Watched some very repetitive dance performance and wandered happily. Lots of kid's stalls with all fun things to do and play with. Except I did not like the toy guns for sale, these seemed the most poular. In the rear of the temple was a tent to eat in, and I sat happily there with my pancake, and met two older tiny women who shook my hand and couldn't get over how big my hand was, and it was as big as theirs were small. Behind me, to my delight was a hall where calligraphers were sitting, painting. Oh wow, to see them doing the real do, how incredible. I try sitting cross legged for 10 minutes and I have to move around! They were smoking as well, with big glass ashtrays on the bench next to their papers. I couldn't get over how good and comfortable they all looked, how very real! This was tradition.
I wandered the area which was nice and quiet. Lots of very overgrown areas, the weeds here are insane. So green and fecund, and whispy and just wild.
Felt really happy and replete, made my way home before it rained to get the futons off the balcony, made lovely cold buckwheat noodle salad and some nice green tea. Am practising kneeling. It is a clear night and I saw the moon rise out of the window.