Unfinished Business

When I first decided that I would go to Kyoto yet again for this fall break, I may have questioned if there would be enough to keep me blogging.  For the record, I didn't really care if there wasn't - a week of relaxing and catching up with the Kawaii Kingpin was more than enough justification to scrap my half-baked plans of going up to Tohoku - but I was at least acknowledging the possibility.  After all, this was going to be my fourth trip to Kyoto.

However, as I sifted through websites last week - it takes real effort to avoid work as thoroughly as I do, but I'm proud to be able to say that I rose to the challenge - my doubts proved to be unfounded.  After all, there was still unfinished business from my last two trips.  First and foremost...in fact, coming in at #1 in my top ten list of justifications to come back to Kyoto...was the Kurama Fire Festival.  After a full day of shopping in Osaka two years back I was in no state to be jammed into a train with a bunch of tourists, but I felt like this year I could suck it up.  Alas, it turned out that I'm missing it again.  When typhoon Jebi blew through last month it knocked down a lot of trees so they called it off this year.  I'm writing this off as a good excuse for the next trip, when hopefully I'll be able to afford the doll dressing workshop at Ando Doll Shop.

Yeah, that's a thing, and being that weirdo you know who is interested in dolls (or, more precisely, in learning how to improve my dolls), I really wanted to do it.  Sadly it just will not fit into the budget.  On the bright side, I'm getting to see all sorts of traditional dress firsthand.

Fortunately there were other festivals I ditched two years back.  I had to - there were so damn many that choices had to be made.  The Kasagake Shinji, for example.  This is a ritual featuring horseback archery at one of the most out-of-the-way shrines you could imagine, Kamigamo Jinja.  I'm exaggerating a little here, but when I told the Kawaii Kingpin where I was yesterday his response was, "Holy moly that's far."  On the bright side, this meant that it wasn't nearly as crowded as it could have been (as you'll read by the end of this post).

Now just for the record, you should be aware that horseback archery takes a while to get exciting when it's conceptually coupled with a ritual.  There was some processional stuff, leading up to the shrine proper, where there were purification rituals, and then there was MOAR processional stuff, coming out to the field that stretches between the first and second torii of the shrine.  Meanwhile, I was sitting in the sun roasting.  I mention this so that you know I'm not exactly anti-ritual.  Without the ritual part, I'm not sure if there would be a need for the archery part...but when you're melting because it is NOT this hot up in Yomaha, all you really want is to cut to the chase and see the damn archers hit some damn targets.

Which, eventually, they did.  Last fall I got to see Yabusame, a different kind of horseback archery, at a festival at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu in Kamakura.  The differences, as far as I could tell, were that for 500 yen I got a front row seat.  Seriously, they are different things - I think this had something to do with hitting a target on the ground, but my position a year ago didn't exactly lend itself to the finer details of the art.  This year, on the other hand, I was in a perfect position to be amused by the fact that one horse seemed to have some bowel issues (hey, when you gotta go, ya gotta go) or another was temperamental - the English-speaking announcer mentioned that he was from Hokkaido, and since I have yet to go to Hokkaido and my body of knowledge is based on the anime Golden Kamuy and A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami, we'll leave it at that.

I also ditched the Jidai Matsuri two years back.  I was shopping.  There were too many people.  These things happen.  Since I've been torturing...I mean, challenging...myself with more and more intricate designs in my dolls (and maybe I'm ready to try some bijinga portraits with my nihonga paintings...don't ever let anyone tell you I'm not a masochist) I thought it might behoove me to do some studying.  The name roughly translates to Festival of Ages and celebrates Kyoto's 1000 years of history as the capital of Japan.

Now, I could have bought seats for this one, too, but after the previous day's torture by sunlight your resident vampire blogger found a shady spot sitting under a pine tree across from Heian Jingu. (Also, the seats today cost more than yesterday).  I was pretty sure I had it figured out, and when FINALLY the first part of the parade made it to the shrine, I just got up and stood behind the seats.  Hell, I even let two little obaasans stand in front of me...it was an awesome day and I was feeling generous.  Also, they were both so much shorter than me that it actually didn't matter, so why not?

It was about 2:15 when the lead part of the parade got to us, and I had heard that the whole thing took about two hours.  There were gaps between parts, which was nice because it gave me the opportunity to go back and erase some of the photos, but after standing on my feet I decided there was a better way...to travel back through time, so to speak.  So when the next gap came to us, I rolled out in the opposite direction.

It's possible I missed some good shots that way, but I can't really regret it.  Watching the procession this way kept it interesting and got me to the museum I was hoping to make it to before any of the other tourists could get there.  It also allowed me to lurk in the shade, so hey, no spontaneous combustion for me today!

Sadly I don't know Japanese history nearly as well as I should to appreciate the Jidai Matsuri fully.  Names and dates and dead people just don't really hold my interest.  But as I watched the people of today walk down the street in shoes of yesterday, which seem like more trouble than they're worth (seriously, those straw sandals looked like hell, and the course of the procession wasn't exactly short), it wasn't hard to get a feeling for the scale of this city's history.

Finally two mikoshi came around the corner of Jingu Michi and Sanjo.  Apparently the first and last emperors to reign from Kyoto are enshrined in Heian Jingu and this is their yearly opportunity to get out and see how much everything has changed.  As they moved on toward the shrine I began to walk down the street.  If I could rewind the last two years I still wouldn't have missed out on my personal shopping tour, but I'm glad that I got the chance to see it this year.  And with that, I'm going to bed.  I have an early roll out tomorrow if I'm going to do what I think I'm going to do.