Morning and Seikanji

One thing about staying with Akira in this rural, out of the way Kyoto house of his — it’s too comfortable. Despite coming back fairly early most days, I fell a couple days behind in blog-writing here because it’s so comfortable that I completely caught up on sleep here doing 6-8 hours a night, and also because I’m not dancing solely to my own schedule, and my mornings are taken with breakfast and getting ready to go out. Also, my JR Pass isn’t getting much use because he’s driving me everywhere. It’s not better or worse, but rather it’s different, a different style and experience of vacation and one that I am glad that I got a chance to experience. I am a little worried that this will be like when I met Jah in New Orleans during my USA trip last year around this time though, and how I felt a bit lonely and homesick after parting ways with him.

Also, I forgot to mention this in yesterday’s blog, but it turned out that Akira didn’t go to Ohara to buy vegetables like I thought he was, but flowers — he bought a bunch of dried flowers, some of which went into a vase by the front door, some of which went into a vase into my room, and who knows where else. How nice of him. He also bought some fresh flowers that went into a vase in the kitchen. He said that the dried flowers only cost a couple hundred yen and would last a full year. I wonder about driving all the way there just to buy some flowers though. Seemed like an excuse to take me to see somewhere strange and new instead! But hey, it was a neat experience, even if I disliked the premium access temples.

Akira drove me to the Fresco supermarket and the nearby bakery once again this morning, for the fourth day in a row. It’s become a firm habit by now. I’ve taken a picture of the outside of the supermarket, and the inside of the bakery, but not the outside of the bakery, so here goes. The name of the bakery is Little Stone, a little franchise that seems to have about half a dozen locations around Kyoto and the Kansai region.

This was breakfast. I messed up and ordered a repeat bread even though I was trying not to do so. Akira even warned me about it and I didn’t recognize the repeat bread until I saw pictures while writing the blog later on. This is because I hate bread and refuse to devote any sort of memory storage slot to it, I think. What was I just talking about again?

Today, he had planned out an itinerary for me that started at nearby Kiyomizu Temple, for which he said he’d drive me up to the back door of, but before that he was going to show me where he was going to pick me up at the end of the day, one street over from the end of the famous Nishiki Market, or Nishiki Ichiba, which I had expressed interest in walking down during the day before all the stores closed.

On the way, we passed by this enormous torii gate belonging to the Heian Jingu Shrine.

It stands by Okazaki Park, where a handicrafts market called the Heian Raku Ichi Market was being held. According to the website, it supposedly was a two-day market, and held about 80 vendors today, but would hold about 200 tomorrow, on Saturday. I was originally planning to visit this today, but after talking with Akira, he said he’d bring me here tomorrow before I left for Osaka instead, as my schedule today was already packed on top of there being less vendors today. He still took me by the place to see it though (and make sure it was actually running).

He then took me over to Nishiki Market about a 30 minute ride away from his house, and which was my last stop on today’s walk. He made sure I knew where to meet him at 5:30 pm, and then drove me all the way back to Kiyomizu Temple, which was only about 10 minutes from his house. He dropped me at a back path behind the temple, on its southern end, accessed from the end of a mountainous road with barely any travellers on it at all. However, I felt like this was cheating, again, so once he dropped me and drove off back home, I backtracked a little ways back down the road as I had noticed a small shrine we had passed by along the way. This was Seikanji Temple, and it had a suspicious little forest trail leading up to it.

It wasn’t very long before it turned into a proper set of stairs leading up to the temple though. There was a little donation box at the entrance asking for a 100 yen donation to enter the grounds, and I entered behind another lost Caucasian tourist who had somehow found his way here. He didn’t pay the fee, but I did, somewhat grudgingly, though this also meant that I tossed a measly 10 yen into the prayer box instead of the usual 100 yen afterwards.

I didn’t pick up a goshuin at this temple as I didn’t see one on display and never found any attendant to talk to, though there certainly was someone in the house that was attached to the temple. Instead, I got these pictures:

I’m not sure if Tigey was allowed on this “Stone of the Gods”, or Kanameisi, but all the sign said was to please not stand on it, and while three sides of the stone was fenced off, the fourth wasn’t, so I reasoned that people were allowed to touch it. So Tigey did. I’m sure the temple brochure explained about the shrine and stone and any proper procedures revolving around using it, but that brochure also cost 100 yen and I was unwilling to pay that. If I wasn’t supposed to let Tigey touch the stone, then probably don’t gate that information behind 100 more yen.