Reply #38: Well, today I feasted on scenery [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I've been to Kyoto many times before, so I'm not goping to a lot of typical tourist places on this trip.

I had heard that the region called Yoshino, about 80 miles south of Kyoto, was beautiful at this time of year.

I woke up to rain, but that kind of scenery looks good in rain, so I set out anyway. For about half of the journey, the train chugged along through ordinary suburban and small town scenery, but all of a sudden, we were in the mountains, and the towns and villages looked almost entirely traditional (except for the satellite dishes), with their tiled roofs and tall, narrow silhouettes. The gardens were accented with bamboo and sago palms, and the ripe persimmons still on the backyard trees added a touch of color, as did potted plants arranged around the back doors of the houses. The rice harvest had just taken place, and stacks of rice stalks were piled up against the fences. The mist and low clouds added a watercolor-like air to the tree-covered mountains, where the leaves were just beginning to turn.

I arrived at the end of the rail line only to find an aerial cable car, which was much higher than it looked from the bottom. At the top of the mountain was a village with lots of temples and shrines, a village that is famous for autumn leaves and for springtime cherry blossoms. I didn't want to do the full walking course (about 10 km), not that late in the afternoon, but I went about 2km in each direction.

Most of the souvenir shops were closed, but an old lady who was making dango, skewers of rice paste candy, called out to me and began telling me how delicious her cherry dango were. It was a slow day, so I bought a skewer, and they were indeed delicious. I took her picture, and she gave me a cup of tea.

Farther down the road, I saw a sign advertising "Yoshino dolls." I stopped into the shop to ask what those were to find another cheerful old lady who showed me a few samples. Come to find out that I had already had a pair of Yoshino dolls (clay figures representing a man and woman in medieval Japanese clothes), but my mother had broken one of them, so I took the opportunity to buy a complete "couple."

Then I continued on to the main temple in the area and found some men building what looked like either a log cabin or a large bonfire. It was a bonfire, and the following day, there was going to be a festival at which people would write their wishes for the coming year on a small wooden plaque and throw it into the fire.

That was about all the exploration I had time for, so I took the cable car back down and retraced my steps back to Kyoto.

Tomorrow I plan to wander around in Kyoto and see what I encounter.

Feel free to ask questions if you plan to travel to Japan. :-)