Every Day is an Adventure

I didn’t mean to go to Kiyomizu-dera, but ended up there escaping from a Japanese graveyard. I had better back up and tell this story correctly!

That Saturday I woke up lazily, and over my toast started reading someone’s Japan Times they had left out. I saw that a tofu festival was going on, a “gourmet tofu battle” between 7 cities in the Kansai area. This sounded delicious and too much fun! Sadly no one awake at that hour liked tofu, so I set out on my own. I only knew vaguely that the festival was near Kiyomizu-dera, which is at the end of Gojo-dori. It was already warm around 10:00 am that day, but before I hit Imadegawa-dori I had the sidewalks to myself. Ah, the freedom of the open road on a Saturday morning, and the pavement singing away under my bike tires! A fragrant coolness wafted from the over the walls of the Imperial Palace I rode under the shadows of its trees. Birds and butterflies fluttered there too, and I thought, only in Japan is such loveliness possible!

Then quite suddenly the little bookshops and curry houses and laundromats disappeared, to be replaced with shiny, polished buildings, taller and taller, though not quite large enough to be called skyscrapers. The sidewalks became choked suddenly the well-dressed, the busy, the city-folk. I was down-town, I supposed, and realized I was after all heading in the direction of Kyoto Station. The lively pulse of the city was exhilarating too, but towards the end of Gojo-dori there appeared, mounting up under the pavement, a gigantic hill. Ah well, I suppose Kiyomizu-dera is after all in the “mountains” (to me they are like foothills really). I pedaled up the hill as best I could, trying to concentrate on how nice it would be to ride down on the way back. Nearly a month on my bike still hadn’t prepared me for a hill! Most of Kyoto is so flat. Being very thirsty and rather lost at this point I bought my first ever Pocari Sweat at a Circle K (it tasted like watery Gatorade, very hydrating) and asked the cashier if she knew anything about a tofu festival near Kiyomizu-dera. She didn’t, but directed me towards the temple. I decided to wander around there and see if I didn’t see anyone who looked tofu-festival-ish. That’s how I ended up in a graveyard. I went up a tiny street that soon became so steep I had to get off my bike and walk it up the hill. I passed several well-dressed people and shops that all seemed to specialize in stone garden features. A scent of flowers and incense was in the air. And then I went around a bend, and there against the sky was a graveyard! And there, on the other side of the street, more graveyard! Wedged in between the (what I now realized to be) gravestone shops were forests and forests of the graves. No crosses here, just large pillar-like structures with the person’s name engraved on them. I wanted to take photos, but there were so many people there offering incense or flowers that I felt very intrusive just being there. I back-tracked as fast as I could and found myself in another Buddhist temple, the name of which I didn’t bother to figure out. I stared into the koi pond at its entrance for a while, watching enormous black butterflies that flapped lazily over the muddy water, and contemplated my next move. I had given up on the tofu festival when I fled from the graveyard. I thought of all the people interred there and how it didn’t matter anymore that they had been Japanese or whatever. Now they were just dead, and all the beautiful gravestones and incense and flowers were really for the sake of the living, those left behind who need some way to hold on to that loved one. It is really the same in any country. Thinking these Buddhist thoughts I decided I might as well go to Kiyomizu-dera.

I felt more at ease there, the place had a festival atmosphere and was full of foreigners. I wandered around and followed the crowd at first—I felt a little lost and alone since I hadn’t intended to be there that day and had neglected to research Kiyomizu-dera before I left my dorm. There was a giant orange entrance gate and a lovely big bell.

Looking at it I realized all of the sudden how very high I was above the city! I took a deep breath. There was a hall there with some bodhisattvas or other holding court, and a bell-pull to catch their attention. There was also a queue of people paying a 100 yen for something and entering the hall. Wanting in my flustered, lost state to do what everyone else was doing, I got in line. When I paid my 100 yen the little old man at the desk told me to not let go of the handrail. This made me a bit concerned but it was too late to back out now. I cast my eye at the myriad of kanji all around but still couldn’t make out what I’d gotten myself into. I followed some high-school boys down a dark staircase. The air became stale and close and the stones under my bare feet sticky. Oh great, I thought, I paid a 100 yen for the Love Tunnel from the county fair back home. What in the world...I followed the handrail into night. The darkness was still and complete. Far ahead I could hear school-girls shrieking, “Kowaii! Kowaii!” (I’m scared, I’m scared!) The floor under my feet was very cold now and I suddenly felt tiny and 5 years old. I hurried forward a bit, and something brushed my face! It was just noren, a thin curtain. I dashed ahead again and this time my face bumped something solid. Oops! The back of the person in front of me. I held back a bit after that, but the voices I was following started to fade away and I hurried again, this time accidentally sliding my hand under the next person’s as I ran it blindly along the handrail. The hand recoiled as if mine were a snake. Sorry! But I really didn’t want to be alone in that place. Suddenly there was a bit of light, a single dim beam illuminating a large stone with a single kanji on it. Hands shot out into the beam and patted the stone. Then mercifully we hurried on, and up, and out at last. Whew! I came out shivering, having a learned a lesson about the importance of being able to read Japanese.

After this I turned a corner and found the main hall of Kiyomizu-dera. I washed my hands at the dragon-shaped fountain before entering, and it was there I finally relaxed. The graveyard and then the weird black hole had rattled me a bit, but I forgot both in that hall. The views of the tree-covered hillsides and down, out over the valley and city were spectacular and liberating.　

And I was alone, and the time was mine to spend. Lazily I wandered from pillar to pillar along the outside of the hall, looking for the best view. A few ladies were there in gorgeous kimono; I worked up the courage to ask a particularly lovely threesome for their photograph, which made them giggle like little girls. I wandered into the interior of the hall, where candles burned before incense-blackened bodhisattvas and the Goddess of Mercy herself, coins tinkled endlessly into offertory boxes, a great bell droned regularly, and incense curled in the air. It was heavenly.

I took some photos before I realized I wasn’t supposed to: a whispered conversation behind me took shape suddenly and I heard the words, “Shashin wa dame yan” “Aren’t photos not allowed” Oops again. I knew whoever it was was talking about me. I stowed my camera and hurried out of there, to face a rack of votary boards where people had written wishes. There were wishes in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean that I could see.

They ranged from the typical—blessings on new marriages, success in career, safety in travel— to some American girl who’d paid 1800 yen to write that she hoped one day to meet Edward from the Twilight series. I smirked at that, feeling a bit ashamed of my country at the same time, and continued my leisurely walk through the grounds. I saw the cutest couple. The girl was in a fuchsia and white kimono, the man in a suit and hung with expensive-looking cameras. They were holding hands, and I caught the glitter of diamonds on their left ring-fingers. The man looked to be about 30. The girl glowed like a 16-year-old at prom, but she was likely 25. He had a shy maturity, she a quick sparkle, yet somehow their happy expressions mirrored each others' exactly. I asked to take their photo too. Oh well, foreigners get away with a lot!

I was a bit dreamy after that, and didn’t notice terribly where I was until I found myself on a path under trees. A delightful fragrance was there. I breathed it deeply. Ah, it was the smell of Japan! I have to explain this a bit. I first smelled this scent (this is embarrassing) when I was 19 on my Japanese boyfriend. It clung to his clothes and belongings. When he was in Japan, letters I got from him carried the scent faintly. I associated the smell with him and was surprised when I got a whiff of the same smell when my Japanese roommate freshman year opened her suitcase, and when my roommate the next year gave me an omamori talisman that smelled the same way. It must be the smell of Japan, I reasoned. This was confirmed when I offered the omamori to a friend to sniff. Her Japanese boyfriend had smelled the same! No way. That was my first boyfriend’s special smell—never mind we had broken up last year and our paths would probably not cross again—how dare she say such a thing. Well Ichi really did smell like that. Oh…well, that’s funny. Our boyfriends smelled the same. Maybe it really is the smell of Japan? Maybe…

Anyway, when I arrived in a Japan a silly little part of me thought it would be nice to encounter that smell again. I wanted to stay in one spot and sniff it for a long time. My first boyfriend’s hair, the omamori, hand-written letters from Japan…the smell brought feelings of longing, friendship, bitter-sweet goodbyes. That smell.

On the street at the foot of the temple I stopped at an ice-cream stand and bought a matcha-flavored cone. I wandered around the shop fronts licking it leisurely, feeling very Audrey Hepburn-from-the-beginning-of-Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s and hoping people noticed. A rickshaw went by, shiny and elegant, the man pulling it up the hill to Kiyomizu-dera puffing and straining and still trying to smilingly give his passengers the history of the temple. At last the matcha ice-cream was gone and I had to go home. On the way back I felt happy being in Japan for the first time. I coasted joyfully down that hill that had been so much trouble that morning, so fast my brakes shrieked in protest for about 30 yards as I slowed down for a red light. Back on Kitaoji-dori, I bought four bananas for 130 yen from an old man at a fruit stand, and shouted “Arigatou!” as I rode off, he waved and shouted "Ookini!"

Oh, it was lovely to be alive, here, in Kyoto, in Japan!