Places of Worship

Back in my Mongolia days, I wrote more food posts than anything else.  As a Japan blogger, my bread and butter has become shrines and art.  And that's all well and good, but it can get a little boring, so I developed a strategy I cleverly (or not) call one-and-one.  Basically it means I tried to limit myself to one of each on any given day.  I've mentioned most of the art I went to see, and two of the museums I went to aren't really worth mentioning (hideous work, hideous building, but otherwise...).  I will give a shout out, though, to the Forever Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Forever Museum is set up in an old-style house in the heart of Gion.  Seeing the traditional architecture and gardens is nice, but I actually was most interested in it because they had a show of Kusama Yayoi's work.  This has sort of turned into an unintentional theme for my travels in Japan...I still haven't been to her Tokyo museum but every time I've gone out in search of adventure I've bumped into her work.

This time around had me wishing I could bring my IBDP students to it.  It was an excellent example of what a cohesive body of work looks like - not just because half of the images were her pumpkins but because the pieces that weren't still looked like hers.  I was a huge fan of the "garden" they put together with a variety of her prints of plants.  Who knew that spots could make even weeds so delightful?  But of course my favorite was the big boat o' dicks, or as she titled it, A Boat Carrying my Soul.  I mean, who doesn't love seafaring vessels covered in phalli?

Two of my shrine visits actually were really shopping trips.  I'm about 90% finished with my current plush projects, but I've been intending to make Immortal Sugimoto from Golden Kamuy.  That said, it just wouldn't be me if I didn't add an element of challenge, and I decided that I wanted to use antique fabric to make his clothes - particularly a military uniform, if I could find one.  So as soon as I got into Kyoto I went to Kobo-ichi - the monthly temple market.  This is where I bought the katana handguard the last time I came to Kyoto, so I had high hopes as I wandered through the stalls selling all sorts of things.  Sadly, the closest I got was some dark blue, handwoven fabric, but it would do in a pinch.

While I was in the neighborhood I made a quick side trip.  This spring I read a bunch of (translated) Japanese literature (yes, I was watching Bungou Stray Dogs at the time.  By this point you should know I'm a weeb) and I got curious as to whether or not the gate referenced in the title of Akutagawa's Rashomon was a real thing.  The interwebs did not fail me, and I learned that once upon a time it was near To-Ji, but now there's just a stone marker where it used to be.  Apparently its state of decay was why he chose that as the setting for his story, and it's been gone a long time.  Still, the nerd in me loved getting to the root of a story like that.

Later in the week I tried my luck again at Kitano Tenman-Gu's market.  This one had a more festive atmosphere, but the end result was the same - no military uniforms.  I found a few swatches of fabric that made it worth my while, but moved on.

My last day was actually a double header - it began with a shrine and ended with a temple.  Fushimi-Inari-Taisha is actually pretty much my favorite place in the entire world, and I couldn't imagine leaving Kyoto without seeing it again.  Since I didn't feel like sharing, this meant another early roll-out, but one week away from the classroom is not enough to get back into night owl mode, so that wasn't too hard.

The quality of the light coming over the mountain at 7 in the morn is enough to break your heart, and the air was cool and still.  I knew then that I didn't want to come back.  As hard as it was to leave two years ago, without a guarantee that I'd have work in Japan the following year, at least I had my weebs waiting for me in UB.  I'm three days into the first week back, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get through the rest of the school year, and where to go from here.  But the fourth grader who asked me Monday about an anime she liked helped me to believe I'd somehow manage.

My last dance was with Shoren-in.  It was the first night of their autumn illumination, and while the trees weren't at their peak, there's still something to be said for a temple at night.  You take off your shoes and walk through the buildings, and just soak up the atmosphere.   And if you're really lucky, maybe you'll get to feel like you're finally standing on the beach at Toyama, watching the hotaruika washing up on the shore.  That's the feeling I got, anyways, as I stood in the garden with the blue lights shining around me.  Not that I'm not still planning to go back this May, because you gotta experience something like that in real life, not just your imagination.  But it was a nice way to end my trip.