World Reviewer blog

There’s a lot been said about vending machines in Japan…I’ve even seen vending machine fashion i.e. designers disguising people as vending machines. A lot has been said because there is a lot to be said for them. I’m in no way a vending machine connoisseur - I don’t buy the stuff at home - but then at home I’m just not faced with the same extent of choice. As well as machine staples like cold drinks you can also find hot drinks (in cans too?), ice creams, freeze dried noodles, whole meals and underwear - but no longer knickers that have been worn by ka-wa-ie (cute) Japanese school girls, just the straight off the production line personal hygiene stuff. And you don’t just find vending machines on station platforms, they’re every 100 metres of so along the pavement and around every corner when it gets closer to any tourist atraction - expect to find them convieniently located within the tori gated enclosures of shrines and temples.

And even if you know what you feel like you can easily be over whelmed by choice. Fancy an simple ice tea you stay? Well there are seven possibilities just outside the gates of the Ryoanji Temple - that one with the famous zen rock garden - there aren’t anywhere near as many temples in Kyoto as vending machines but there are still thousands and they all have their own machines.

Mentioning that rock garden brings me to my second surprise for the day. Both rocks and moss are enough to make a garden… In my experience today the rock garden of Ryoanji was less interesting than the un-World Heritage listed moss garden of Ginkakuji. I’d like to make some kind of gathering moss comment but I can’t think of the right way to say it - and it would just be having fun with semantics: Read my reviews and have a look at the photos and you’ll see what I mean. Moss beats stone any day.

If you go to Kyoto you’re potentially looking for traditional Japan.  Geisha spotting, an invitation to a tea ceremony, admiring carefully-altered-to-perfection gardens, visiting the shrines and tasting all the detailed nuanced flavour of this ancient culture are the activities on the traveller’s agenda in Kyoto.  Some of these things you can pre-arrange but some are pot luck and sometimes you need the gods to smile on you…
Which is what happened to me at the Yasaka Shrine.  At the top of the main traffic street in Gion, Shijo dori, most tourists will be tempted by the bright red gate of this shrine by default because it’s right there and enter to find a shrine kept carefully lovely – it’s role in the important Gion Matsuri festival guarantees it’s gorgeous up keep.  It’s main focus as a shrine is keeping people safe from illness, but it has other practical uses – namely as a wedding venue.  And I was lucky enough to see two beautiful, traditional Shinto brides on their big day.  In her heavy, heavily embroidered white kimono, with its long train, fan and head gear one bride was pleasant tempered-ly having her photo taken with her new husband, also dressed beautifully, and I was totally taken in an stared at here like she was some kind of exquisite artefact – which in a way she was.  A thing of great beauty which totally distracted me from admiring the temple…  But I’m sure it was lovely if this wonderful creature would choose it for her nuptials.

May the Shinto spirits smile on her as they smiled on me when arranging that I come out the nearby Maruyama Park at just the right moment in the gentle Autumn rain.

Arriving in Kyoto from Tokyo is at first not much of a shift.  The station is ultra modern and the sign-age points you in a thousand different directions, to the bus, the train, the shops, the coin lockers, the toilets the JR station, the Subway station, the rail line…  You get the idea…  But one you’re out of the station it is almost unbelievably different to the Tokyo I had just come from.  Narrow houses, traditional style houses with bamboo shades and wood features line narrow streets running along beside twinkling canals and you can see the top of temples and shrines peeking over the top of the houses behind high gates.  It doesn’t seem like a city in the same sense of the word, but a slower, gentle old town.
Walking beside the canal on the ‘Philosopher’s Walk’, named for the university philosophy lecturer who used to partake in this stroll every evening, it is peaceful.  There may be tall buildings and traffic, but all I can see is those narrow houses on either side of the canal with it’s draping trees and fat, happy carp.  Tea houses, and shops – some of them no doubt lures for tourists, but it’s out of season so the shop keepers are leisurely – and the tori gates which signify a shine is near, or a particularly nice tree or bridge are the landmarks.
I wander humble and peaceful as a cloud… when suddenly I see a man accompanied by a woman in one of the most beautiful kimonos I have ever seen.  I could be on a film set for a film I’d love to be in.  How lucky I feel at this small encounter – you can see that I’m getting into the tea ceremony ethos of making each moment its most lovely.  I wonder if I can move here….

P.S. TRAVEL TIPS:  The new section of Kyoto station is a massive rabbit warren and it’s difficult to find the Subway - accept that you may have to follow the signs into what feels like an entirely different postcode…  And try the vending machine coffee…As well as having a choice of hot or cold and it being about a quarter of the price of a cafe version they have very entertaining names.