Japan's tourism revolves around the numerous shrine and temple sites, the rope train ride upto Mt Fuji and the bullet train ride. And the Hiroshima site, which was not included in our itinery.
We visited the gardens around the palace of emperor Akihito and empress Michiko. The fir trees are so strange, they have an outer space type of a look. I have not seen such trees even in Switzerland. All gardens that we visited had a manicured look, so unnatural.
The shrines and temples are well maintained and aesthetic. And everything is of wood. The entire structures, floors walls, roofs, the idols, everything is of wood. The visit to the Sanjusangendo Hall, with its 1001 wooden statues, was an out-of-this-time-zone experience. The Shinto Inari shrine with its torii wooden gates that line the entire mountain and the walking path upwards with dark ornage wooden pillars, known as torii gates, forming a shady path, decreasing in size a it went uphill. All these temples had an entrance ticket and were crowded with tourists and local students, in smart blazers and girls with pleated skirts and keds. Every temple site that we visted, sold dreams and wishes and forecasts for your personal life. One hundred yen was the minimum cost, to shake a hexagonal box, pull out a stick from a tiny hole on one side, match the Japanese numeral on it, to a series of drawers that were stacked, open the designated one and take out a paper with a forecast for your future life, written in Japanese and English. At other temples, you had to drop a 100yen coin into the donation box, then pick up a little one cm bundle, with a little golden charm, then find out what it meant to you, by comparing it to its future forecast list. And then there were little wooden plaques to buy, to inscribe your wish or dream onto it with an ink pen, and then hang it near the special assigned fence near the sacred spot of the temple. We saw thousands and thousands of such plaques tied to fences, near every shrine. Each holy site makes a lot of money by selling dreams and wishes to visitors, and on the entrance ticket too.
Leading to each shrine, one has to always walk uphill, along narrow streets, lined with tiny shops, selling "Japanese bean biscuits", my description, for the baked delicacies that were being sold at so many places. A little sweet dough was poured into flat shaped metal toasters, then a sweet bean curd was put in and another layer of the dough, which was cooked over an open gas flame. Quaint little shops selling very pretty and very expensive Japanese hand fans, hand painted chopsticks, and lots of magnets, key chains and show pieces with 'hello kitty' pictures. Hot roasted chest nuts were the other snack available. And green tea ice cream in cones. Soya seeds, groundnuts baked into some sort of biscuit were also popular snacks. And none of these were cheap, according to Indian standards. Each ice cream was 350yen, and chestnuts were 450yen for 250gms.
Being a vegetarian, my travel director, a very accomodating and experienced lady, made sure that I was served veg sushi and a veg bento box meal, at every place that we dined. So my veg sushi had sticky rice with a slice of green cucumber, rice with a slice of orange pumpkin, rice with a slice of dark orange carrot, rice with a slice of white bamboo shoot, rice with a slice of white raddish, and of course green sea weed and tofu with rice. All these vegetables replace the different fish that make the original sushi bundles. But I wanted the green wasabi chutney to liven up the bites, so I applied it generously on all my sushi bites, although my son and the travel director, both warned me that it would be hot and spicy. I assured them that I loved spicy chutney anyway. And then that was the first and last time that I shall ever ever eat wasabi. My mouth was on fire and almost smoking, and I had to douse my mouth with all the plain sticky rice in my bowl. It surprised my son to see me use the chopsticks so adeptly to wolf down the rice in a hurry. But he loves the wasabi Kit kat chocolates.
The Kinkakuji temple, known as the Golden Pavilion is the typical Japanese pagoda that defined my childhood memories of Japanese folklore that I used to read as a child. This temple is in a lake and surrounded with the unreal looking green trees. The temple's reflection is seen in the still waters, and it can be viewed without any tourists or visitors intruding into its pristine position, in the lake.
On our way to Mt. Fuji, we spotted a few Sakura trees, the pink cherry blossoms, but the rains had begun, so we were lucky to have seen any at all.
Everything in Japan looks unreal and plastic. The very pretty and well heeled girls, the boys with streaked hair, their cute babies, the tiny breed dogs in special doggie prams, the roads with well behaved pedestrians and silent traffic, the neon lighted buildings at night, the plastic sushi and noodle meals displayed in the restaurant windows, the gleaming bullet train, the public cyclists on the footpaths, the manicured gardens and space-like firs and birch trees, the pandas in the Kyoto zoo and even mount Fuji, with its pretty bluish hue, topped with white snow and fluffy clouds near its top.
We visited the gardens around the palace of emperor Akihito and empress Michiko. The fir trees are so strange, they have an outer space type of a look. I have not seen such trees even in Switzerland. All gardens that we visited had a manicured look, so unnatural.
The shrines and temples are well maintained and aesthetic. And everything is of wood. The entire structures, floors walls, roofs, the idols, everything is of wood. The visit to the Sanjusangendo Hall, with its 1001 wooden statues, was an out-of-this-time-zone experience. The Shinto Inari shrine with its torii wooden gates that line the entire mountain and the walking path upwards with dark ornage wooden pillars, known as torii gates, forming a shady path, decreasing in size a it went uphill. All these temples had an entrance ticket and were crowded with tourists and local students, in smart blazers and girls with pleated skirts and keds. Every temple site that we visted, sold dreams and wishes and forecasts for your personal life. One hundred yen was the minimum cost, to shake a hexagonal box, pull out a stick from a tiny hole on one side, match the Japanese numeral on it, to a series of drawers that were stacked, open the designated one and take out a paper with a forecast for your future life, written in Japanese and English. At other temples, you had to drop a 100yen coin into the donation box, then pick up a little one cm bundle, with a little golden charm, then find out what it meant to you, by comparing it to its future forecast list. And then there were little wooden plaques to buy, to inscribe your wish or dream onto it with an ink pen, and then hang it near the special assigned fence near the sacred spot of the temple. We saw thousands and thousands of such plaques tied to fences, near every shrine. Each holy site makes a lot of money by selling dreams and wishes to visitors, and on the entrance ticket too.
Leading to each shrine, one has to always walk uphill, along narrow streets, lined with tiny shops, selling "Japanese bean biscuits", my description, for the baked delicacies that were being sold at so many places. A little sweet dough was poured into flat shaped metal toasters, then a sweet bean curd was put in and another layer of the dough, which was cooked over an open gas flame. Quaint little shops selling very pretty and very expensive Japanese hand fans, hand painted chopsticks, and lots of magnets, key chains and show pieces with 'hello kitty' pictures. Hot roasted chest nuts were the other snack available. And green tea ice cream in cones. Soya seeds, groundnuts baked into some sort of biscuit were also popular snacks. And none of these were cheap, according to Indian standards. Each ice cream was 350yen, and chestnuts were 450yen for 250gms.
Being a vegetarian, my travel director, a very accomodating and experienced lady, made sure that I was served veg sushi and a veg bento box meal, at every place that we dined. So my veg sushi had sticky rice with a slice of green cucumber, rice with a slice of orange pumpkin, rice with a slice of dark orange carrot, rice with a slice of white bamboo shoot, rice with a slice of white raddish, and of course green sea weed and tofu with rice. All these vegetables replace the different fish that make the original sushi bundles. But I wanted the green wasabi chutney to liven up the bites, so I applied it generously on all my sushi bites, although my son and the travel director, both warned me that it would be hot and spicy. I assured them that I loved spicy chutney anyway. And then that was the first and last time that I shall ever ever eat wasabi. My mouth was on fire and almost smoking, and I had to douse my mouth with all the plain sticky rice in my bowl. It surprised my son to see me use the chopsticks so adeptly to wolf down the rice in a hurry. But he loves the wasabi Kit kat chocolates.
The Kinkakuji temple, known as the Golden Pavilion is the typical Japanese pagoda that defined my childhood memories of Japanese folklore that I used to read as a child. This temple is in a lake and surrounded with the unreal looking green trees. The temple's reflection is seen in the still waters, and it can be viewed without any tourists or visitors intruding into its pristine position, in the lake.
On our way to Mt. Fuji, we spotted a few Sakura trees, the pink cherry blossoms, but the rains had begun, so we were lucky to have seen any at all.
Everything in Japan looks unreal and plastic. The very pretty and well heeled girls, the boys with streaked hair, their cute babies, the tiny breed dogs in special doggie prams, the roads with well behaved pedestrians and silent traffic, the neon lighted buildings at night, the plastic sushi and noodle meals displayed in the restaurant windows, the gleaming bullet train, the public cyclists on the footpaths, the manicured gardens and space-like firs and birch trees, the pandas in the Kyoto zoo and even mount Fuji, with its pretty bluish hue, topped with white snow and fluffy clouds near its top.
nice post. could you add some pictures please?
ReplyDelete