We did the three most popular spots in Kyoto – a Buddhist shrine, a Shinto temple inclusive of the Golden Pavillion, a building coated in gold leaf (which wouldn’t last five minutes in a liberal, freedom loving, western democracy), and a walk through a bamboo grove big enough to scaffold Manhattan. We saw the same thing at all three places – the backs of people’s heads, or if you were lucky, a shapely arse (I don’t care) as yet more steps were climbed. It’s Easter so these places were packed with more people than usual, a few of whom were actually Japanese. And the CB and I got lost at the first stop. Went straight ahead instead of turning right and finished up in the dodgy part of Diagon Arrey (see what I did there with another ritelary leflence). After two back-tracks, we got back to the bus about 15 minutes late and did the walk of shame down the bus aisle while having garbage pelted at us. All subsequent walks were done at panic pace.
We did a short Shinkansen or bullet train ride out of Hiroshima. It’s a great way to be introduced to one of Japan’s most ubiquitous cultural attractions – tunnels. The good news is you go through them really fast. The bad news is the next one is only seconds away. And while on the subject of transport, occasionally at home we see these box shaped, pug-nosed Noddy cars. Here they seem to be a fashion statement, like flaired pants in the 1970’s. Every second car is a Pug. I never took any notice of who makes the ones sold in Australia but here it’s a case of the car companies saying “if you think that’s a ridiculous looking vehicle, hold my beer”. They’re as common as Lexuses (Lexii??) in Cambodia, another perplexing and unique (in my experience) national characteristic. (See Mekong Muster from a few years back).
When you spend a bit of time in Europe, cathedrals and castles tend to be at the forefront of the travel itinerary. Here in Japan it’s Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples and Buddhist shrines and Shinto temples. Certainly the Shinto establishments are everywhere because they have to be. It’s a religion that celebrates nature and they have around 8 million deities which means that not every ant gets to be a god. We are now officially shrined out.
The consistency of an agenda dominated by shrines has been offset by weather that reversed polarity once we started heading east along the southern coast. The Sea of Japan side gets flogged by Siberian overflow. The Pacific side is protected by the mountainous interior except when the weather howls through the honeycomb of Shinkansen tunnels and reaches the other side. So we went from beanies, scarfs, gloves and bearskins in Kitakyushu to shorts and t-shirts in Takamatsu. There was one bloke, a hardy Kiwi, who wore shorts at the thoroughly weather exposed skywalk in Busan which was closed because of the wind and rain. I thought he was wearing jeans but it was his blue legs.