Tokyo Tofu Japan » Japanese civilization class field trip #3 + Partay!

Ok this is a little late….this trip took place on March 18, 2006.

Ah, another potential travel Saturday taken over by a field trip for my Japanese Civilizations class. Not having gotten much sleep the night before (its sadly been a pattern lately (an あくじゅんかん, as it were)), I wasn’t too excited to get up at 7am on a Saturday. Anyway, I say the same thing every time we have one of these field trips, so I’ll skip to the good stuff.

Got to Kyoto around 10am, with our first stop being Ginkakuji. I visited here last time in uh December? Surprisingly, the place looked exactly the same in the 4 months that have passed! (Yes, that was sarcasm.) Last time I visited, it was raining, and so I spent maybe 15 minutes wandering around and then leaving. This time, despite the fact that there was a 90% chance of rain in Kyoto (but it wasn’t raining…yet) I spent about 20 minutes wandering around, because this time I actually walked up around the hills behind the temple. Ginkakuji is probably one of the most boring places in Kyoto that I’ve ever visited, and usually I really love going to temples. We were given in total 2.5 hours to explore the very small grounds of this temple, so after spending my 20 minutes in the place, I left, walked through the shops and basically wandered around the streets around Ginkakuji. I had hoped to find something interesting, and despite seeing a tall staircase leading into a large hill, when I got up to it it turned out to only lead to some private homes. So, walking back towards the temple I had hoped to run into some fellow gaijins so I wouldn’t be wandering around by myself. Eventually I did and the 6 of us, still having a good 1.5 hours to kill, wandered over to a restaurant with a TV (that I went to the last time I was here) to kill time and eat. After a while Brian and Keith wandered by too. Around noon (still with 30 minutes to go till we left) we started heading to the bus, just as it started to rain. Earlier in the day I had told Dr. Johnson that I had read there was a 90% chance of rain today (and subsequently brought my raincoat, umbrella and goulashes) and inquired as to what the alternate gameplan was, to which he replied there was none. So, not that it was starting to rain, I was just sooo looking forward to exploring other temples!

Stop #2 about an hour after we left Ginkakuji was Daitokuji, the only place on the itinerary that I hadn’t previously visited. Unfortunately, because the rain was starting to come down quite heavily at this point, and the fact that I was absorbed in a discussion with a bunch of other people on our childhood’s favorite cartoons and movies (clearly, very important), I ended up not really seeing a whole lot of the gardens of the temple complex. The main purpose of our visit was to the large rock garden at Daitokuji. We were given a nice tour of the main building and surrounding garden by a guide, who ended up reading a bunch of interesting passages to us, written by famous monks of the temple, and at the end of the tour, as we were leaving we all were able to see the current head monk at the temple, who spoke fluent English and had apparently written quite a few books, and was actually autographing them for people right then and there. I contemplated this option for a moment but ended up leaving without buying anything. At this point it was raining fairly steadily, so I made my b-line for the bus and waited as everyone trickled back to it, so that we could be off to our last stop, Ryoanji!

Ryoanji (literally meaning the peaceful dragon temple) is a Zen temple, that contains probably the most famous rock garden, which was through to have been built in the 1400’s. The garden consists of a rectangular pebble-filled area dotted by 15 moss-covered boulders of various sizes, and from the viewing platform, no matter where you stand, there is always one rock that is hidden from view. It is believed that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder. I had visited Ryoanji on my first trip to Japan in 2004, and had really enjoyed it. In fact my mom and I had liked it so much, we were planning on building a Zen garden of our own in our yard when we got back from Japan (plans were later cancelled because to do it right would have just been too much $$). So, I was looking forward to going back to it again, despite the rain. However, when we arrived at Ryoanji, I was incredibly disappointed to find that the wall surrounding two sides of the famous rock garden was covered by a very unsightly and certainly un-zen-like white tarp and scaffolding. So, as a ‘consolation prize’ to having the world’s most famous zen garden being ruined by construction (I feel really horrible for the people that made trips to Japan specifically to see Ryoanji, and didn’t know before hand about that), we were allowed to enter one of the garden areas that isn’t normally open to the public. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in there besides a small building holding the figure of someone important relating to Ryoanji (though, the figure had eyes made from crystals, which was supposed to show the “life force”, so said the sign). Walking around in the rain, I got to see the temple grounds, which looked virtually unchanged from the first time I visited. Everyone was pretty eager to get out of there, so we ended up leaving about an hour ahead of schedule to head back to JCMU. However, that doesn’t mean we got back an hour early, noooo we still got back at 6:30pm. Our lovely drive back on the bus was made even more enjoyable by the fact that the driver turned on the TV for us to watch, and the channel with sumo of course couldn’t come in clear, but we could watch dubbed American infomercials!!

Shortly after getting back to JCMU, I was pretty wiped out, so I intended to take a “quick” nap since at 8pm there would be a big ‘St. Patricks day’ party (no St. Patties in Japan, and since we had class when it was the holiday in the US, it got delayed to Saturday night) and a party for all the people that turned 21 in March (there are a lot of them!). So naturally my quick nap turned into like 1.5 hours, and I woke up some 20 minutes after the party began. Oops. Well, I guess I was fashionably late? Anyway, at the party there was much fun and merriment, and much drinking. I can say I got pretty plastered. I even got to eat some birthday cake! I had a great time hanging out with everyone, but around 12:30am I was finally done in by an attempt at playing DDR which, I failed miserably. Wandered back to my room and went to bed…

Ginkakuji, again:

If you know me, you know I like..moss. Whenever I go to a temple, you can usually hear me utter the phrase “nice moss” at least once (that is, assuming, the temple does actually have nice moss). So, going to Ginkakuji, I was pleased to not only see a large display of a sample of every kind of moss found at Ginkakuji, but it was also given a sign that stated, in English, “Very Important Moss”, underneath which was given a “(like VIP)” just incase you didn’t get it. So, heres pictures of some very important nice moss: