The weekend that just slipped away from my fingers was just so adorably enjoyable that I must scribble down a few words in its honor. The Friday was just your typical school day at Kyoto Sangyo University were I got to speak a lot of Japanese and French, followed by a cozy evening and cup noodles (me being a poor student). Nothing special there, but this is when Saturday came along.
Just about two hours train ride from central Kyoto is where you find Nara, a wonderful city littered with temples and shrines. This happens to be where me and the rest of my religion class were headed in the first rays of Sunday morning.
From 11 a.m. we trotted along in the heat that I have missed so sorely, taking in the beauty and endless wonders of the city's temples. The main one we visited was Horyuji temple, built sometime in the 7th century. It consists of some of the oldest buildings in Japan, a place where the custom is rather to take the temples apart every now and then and rebuild them for various reasons I won't get into now. Suffice it to say there aren't too many old temples in their original condition lying around. For these reasons they were all the more breathtaking, and the national treasures they keep seemed endless, each one more magnificent.
We walked around with our teacher who is a bottomless well of information regarding Japanese religion and she showered our little heads with little known facts about everything we saw. After she left us alone we saw some more temples and went to the deer park, where wild deer roam freely among the inhabitants of the city. You can pet them, give them cookies and just generally hang around. Good place to make new friends. Magnificent creatures, really....
Before our sensei left she mentioned that on Sunday the marathon monks of Mt. Hiei (I think I have blogged about them before) would be finishing their 1000 day challenge and walking through Kyoto, holding a ceremony at a small shrine in Gion. Of course I decided to stop by.
So it was that me and Karina, from Mexico, woke up early on Sunday and took the train to Gion, completely unaware of the splendor the day had in store for us.
Walking out of the subway station in Gion, my favorite part of town, we followed a group of white-clad people carrying a drum to a crowd of people at that small shrine. We couldn't see what was going on so we decided on walking around the crowd a bit to our left and ran right into our sensei who again, told us everything that was going on. I noticed a gap in the crowd right in front of me - this was where the monks stormed out of the small tea house next to us, followed by two maiko and some followers/supporters and walked over to the shrine - about two meters to our right - and started to rub their rosaries and chant. At this point we had clear view of every single detail that was happening.
I was listening intently to their chanting when all of a sudden the whole crowd joined in, so I got goosebumps all over. It was such a magical moment, and the energy in the air so strong, it was a remarkable thing to be a part of.
A few minutes later they finished the chanting and walked to the river a few meters away as a few of the white-clad men started scooping water and goldfish from a big tank in front of the altar into wooden buckets. The spectators then carried the fish to the river in a single file and poured the fish in, to freedom! Me and Karina got to take our turn, we each got three fish. People were talking loudly, taking pictures of the maiko, laughing, carrying the buckets back and forth, creating such a nice atmosphere.
At this point we thought it couldn't get any better but our sensei suddenly appeared behind us and said 'oh, and if you want to get blessed just get in line over there'. I didn't even stop to think, grabbed Karina's hand and we ran over to where the people were already kneeling in a long line, waiting for the monks to tap their heads with their prayer beads.
We kneeled, put our hands in a prayer position and lowered our heads as the three monks walked by, tapped our heads and said what I'm guessing was a short mantra. I had seen this on the photos our teacher had shown to us before in class, and in videos.... but I never thought I would ever get to be so lucky as to become a part of it. I thanked my lucky stars as I stood back up.
So, alright. Seeing the ritual up close and personal, participating and even getting blessed by a Buddhist monk... surely it's all downhill from here. The procession went on to a big Buddhist temple in the northern part of the city, Kitanotenmangu, where another ritual was to be held two hours later. In the meantime we went to explore the temples a bit further inside Gion, further up to the mountains. We came to a temple I for some reason hadn't seen before. Turns out there was a Shinto funeral in procession, it was very striking to the the people working at the temple all in black, usually they wear white robes. The door to where the ceremony was being held was slid open slightly so we sat on a bench outside for some time, listening to the hypnotizing chanting. Another memory I wont soon forget. When it was over we marched on to the next temple, mentioned in the famous 'Heike monogatari'. It was supposed to be 500 yen to enter but we got in for free... because it was just one of those days. :P
This temple was one of the nicest one I have visited here in Kyoto, there was a waterfall that fell in a narrow stream into a bucket, producing a most pleasing sound. In the face of the rock one could make out the mossy outlines of various figures carved into the stone. We even found a museum randomly standing in the middle of the forested temple grounds, with some very nice Buddhist statues. We were on our way further up into the mountains (with a bell to scare away any approaching monkeys, although I doubt that would have worked...) when we heard music in the distance. It sounded like a soundtrack to a Steven Spielberg movie... and not at all Japanese, so of course we ran to the direction of the sound.
Turns out the Kyoto symphony was having a concert at an open stadium nearby, free of charge! I had read about this but thought it would be very expensive so I had pushed it our of my mind.
We sat down close to the stage and deeply enjoyed songs like 'The typewriter', 'The blue Danube waltz' and many more. We found the conductor to be the happiest man in all of Kyoto, he was such a pleasure to watch! Jumping up and down, waving his hands, giving some of the members thumbs up and smiling incessantly. Between songs he and a woman announcer joked around and he would laugh so heartily. :)
After this, and a short ice cream break (mmm macha ice cream!), we were half-expecting a pot of gold to fall from the skies in front of us.
We decided to try to catch the ceremony at Kitanotenmangu and hopped on a bus (that was conveniently just arriving as we ran to the stop, like all the other buses and trains that day...) but we were a bit to late. Oh well, not that it mattered. We explored the temple a bit and headed back home. On the way we found ourselves in front of Coco Ichibanya, my all time favorite curry restaurant (at this point I wasn't even surprised anymore) and had some amazing Japanese curry. A suitable ending to a remarkable weekend in Japan.
Now lets hope they only get better before I have to go home....
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