December 21, 2009

• Higashiyama 1, Us 0

  More Kyoto time! I'll keep this one fairly brief as well.

  Which isn't too hard to do.  We had a very promising start to our day, at Kiyomizu-Dera, a large buddhist shine on the eastern end of town.  The area is large and picturesque, so I took lots of pictures.  There were some views of the city as well, which added to the panorama.  The walking area wasn't nearly as large as yesterday's temple, although it was something of a steep climb.  But all around this area, there were also local artisans and craftspeople, and we peeked in not a few window fronts.

  After that, we tried to find a "pottery village" which, for all we know, we may have done, but alas, it wasn't very villagey and most of the shops were closed.  We walked a very long distance north in search of a place that turned out to be where we had started earlier, so it was a bit frustrating.  The walk was also down a rather dull suburban sort of street, but it was fairly warm and the weather pleasant.  When we got to a major street I recognized, we hopped the subway back into town.

  There was a place I'd lined up for dinner, an obanzai place that serves organic buffet items.  It was a bit early for dinnerm, so we stopped into a gallery of traditional Kyoto crafts, which was actually really pleasant.  There were no photographs permitted, unfortunately.  But the building was very new, the floors spotless, despite a custodian who was doing a neat trick of sleeping on his feet while leaning on his yarn broom.  There were several craftsmen and women actually making boxes, shaping jewelry, resinating wood, and overglazing pottery in the traditional method -- either shaving down a wooden side with careful precision and an old-style tool; wrapping silver wire by hand into small intricate patterns; grinding her own pigment; or coating wooden blocks with resin and a wood stick -- and the place was very quiet.

  All of the items on display were beyond spotless.  They gleamed.  Even the unfinished wood carvings look like they'd just been brushed off by an artist.  The laquered boxes had no fingerprints or smudges on them.  Like I said, the place was more perfect in some ways than an actual musem.  It was very soothing way to finish the afternoon.  We headed over to the obanzai place and had our fill.  Most of it was cold or room temperature, as is typical of a buffet, but it was all tasty and pretty clearly using quality ingredients.

  Oh, we also stopped by a, well, mall, with "Exciting Book Store!" and "Ask a Giraffe."  The former did indeed have books, but also tons of other crap reminiscent of Spencer stores, including rubber chickens, "Potty Putt" (a golf tee set you can use while on the john), incense, pig shaped humidifiers, and puzzles of Gundam and naked girls.  And the latter, well, you couldn't ask a giraffe anything, since there were no giraffes, but the café it actually was look quite promising, though we didn't stop by.

  

  • 7:14 am
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