Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A Day of Hiking Up a Hill and Listening to Celtic Music

This past Saturday, I visited the Kiyomizu temple on the eastern mountains of Kyoto. I have actually seen the temple in a few movies about Japan, so I was looking forward to going. A few of my Japanese friends, and my sensei, were surprised that I had not seen Kiyomizu temple yet; the temple is widely popular. Once I arrived at the base of the hill and began the slow walk up the ever-thinning streets towards the temple the crowd became noticeably denser. The street leading to the temple was full of colorful tourist shops selling stereotypical Japanese wares and other assorted junk. Adam came across a rug with a motorcycle, an eagle, and a Confederate flag as the design. One store was selling a mask of Obama and a statue of Colonel Sanders with the title ‘Uncle Sam’ on the base.

The Kiyomizu temple is a complex of buildings with the showpiece being a temple on stilts on the side of the hill with a promenade offering a view of Kyoto. On a clearer day, Osaka is visible to the south. The multitude of people moving around, and taking pictures, was astounding. There is an old tradition that if a person jumped off the promenade, a thirteen-meter fall, and lived, their wish would come true. Apparently, over eighty-five percent of the jumpers survived, and today the practice is prohibited.

After leaving Kiyomizu temple, we ended up walking north our current favorite bar, the Gnome. The bartender remembers us, and usually tells us when the weather in Shiga prefecture will be like when we are leaving. On Saturday, the Gnome had a band start playing right after we arrived. The Gnome is usually nearly vacant when we arrive, and having the bar to ourselves is certainly part of the draw for us. However, on Saturday the place was almost full for the concert. ‘Shanachie’ is a quartet of Japanese women playing the fiddle, harp, among an assortment of percussion instruments and a melodica thrown for good measure, accomplice by a singing in Japanese, English and Gaelic. I ended up buying a CD, and the band was happy that some foreigners had been at the gig; although I think at first, the band thought we were Europeans.

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