Home is where the heart is
Apr. 7th, 2015 22:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyI went back to Kyoto with my friends S and J last Thursday, via the Seishun 18 ticket (i.e. a 9.5-hour local train ride) for maximum nostalgia. Kyoto is lovely as usual, albeit a little cold and rainy, and kind of melancholy, because I like it so much better here than in Tokyo, but I don't live here anymore.
In an attempt to make the best of it, however, I went up the hill with J on Monday to Kiyomizu-dera, the main halls of which are under major restoration but which is of course still lovely, particularly at the tale end of sakura season when the petals are falling like spring snow. We went through a gate in the fence that was unlocked for the first time in my nearly two dozen visits to the temple and found ourselves walking through temple land, past a bamboo grove, beneath two imperial mausolea, and to a little temple in the pass called Seikan-ji, site of a famous episode form the Tale of the Heike. It was lovely and we were almost the only people there besides a toothless (literally) fellow traveler from Tokyo and the temple attendant, with whom we made conversation and who chased us down as we were on the steps to leave to give us our correct change as well as Kiyomizu-yaki sake cups. In the continuing adventures of "people in Japan give me things," tonight at Gontaro we got free matcha warabi mochi, because I don't even know why, but they were delicious.
I have a long list of random temples I want to visit and/or revisit, but instead I went to the Manga Museum today and will be going back on Friday as well, because doing research soothes my soul and my incipient panic about not doing enough research. Tomorrow we're seeing Jupiter Ascending, AT LAST.
In an attempt to make the best of it, however, I went up the hill with J on Monday to Kiyomizu-dera, the main halls of which are under major restoration but which is of course still lovely, particularly at the tale end of sakura season when the petals are falling like spring snow. We went through a gate in the fence that was unlocked for the first time in my nearly two dozen visits to the temple and found ourselves walking through temple land, past a bamboo grove, beneath two imperial mausolea, and to a little temple in the pass called Seikan-ji, site of a famous episode form the Tale of the Heike. It was lovely and we were almost the only people there besides a toothless (literally) fellow traveler from Tokyo and the temple attendant, with whom we made conversation and who chased us down as we were on the steps to leave to give us our correct change as well as Kiyomizu-yaki sake cups. In the continuing adventures of "people in Japan give me things," tonight at Gontaro we got free matcha warabi mochi, because I don't even know why, but they were delicious.
I have a long list of random temples I want to visit and/or revisit, but instead I went to the Manga Museum today and will be going back on Friday as well, because doing research soothes my soul and my incipient panic about not doing enough research. Tomorrow we're seeing Jupiter Ascending, AT LAST.
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Date: 2015-04-07 14:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-08 04:54 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2015-04-08 00:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-08 04:49 (UTC)