True Beauty

Yesterday we went to the castle Nijo-jo. It was very beautiful (albeit in a different way than European castles.) The first thing to strike me was the massive thickness of the surrounding walls. It was truly cyclopean in construction. The castle itself was very comfortable feeling. The rooms were reasonably sized, the castle was warm, the floor was smooth, and the walls were painted with beautiful paintings of animals and scenery.

One pattern that we have discovered in Japan is that everything burns down. If you go to a historic site and read the history of it, it will have burned down. Probably it will have burned down multiple times. You would stand the same chance as a blind rat has in a room full of pumas to find a historic site in japan that has not burned down. If you did, it is probably under water. Nijo-jo castle burned down, and then was replaced by another castle from a completely different part of Japan. They moved the whole castle.

My guess is that the entire country of japan went through some fire cult infestation, or perhaps was involved in a huge drunken fight, which spread out over the whole countryside. I have not looked at the dates of the burning down of all of these buildings, but it must have all happened at around the same time.

Perhaps the Japanese discovered fire way after they discovered architecture.

Perhaps Saruman faked his own death and fled to feudal Japan and scoured it.

Perhaps they never told their kids not to play with matches.

Anyway. While we were contemplating this we got into a contemplative mood and decided to write some haiku.

The cherry blossoms
Pink and white and pinknwhite
Are fractactical

The clouds of the trees
The setting sun reflected
In upheld branches

What if we saw some
Chicken of the tree my Swee
Would you eat with me

Maybe that bird that
Sounds like it's being stepped on
Is a nightingale

Who's that gaijin
Sneaking into our photos
Get him out of here

Walking to the train
Flower blossom from the sky
Flew into my mouth

Guess who wrote which one.

After we were finished with the castle we went to a restaurant and got some Udon, which is Japanese buckwheat noodle soup. Mine came with tempura and Alison's came with a single slice of lemon (she is trying to lose weight (just kidding! it also came with a big mushroom)). Seriously  though, no-one could lose weight eating Udon. Our bowls of soup were about half a gallon each. The noodles were so big and hearty that they were easy to eat with chopsticks. It was pretty darn good. Our next noodle related plan is to try out Yaki-Soba.

We discovered these awesome fried rice chips (they sound insane, but they are so good that we have gone through two bags already, and we are going to buy more for sure). They are pretty darn good.


Today we visited Fushimi Inari, which is the largest Shinto shrine that we have visited yet. It has thousands of Torii (wooden arches) one after the next all over the place. It is a shrine dedicated to Inari, a god of rice, and the symbol (messenger?) of Inari is a fox. There are foxes all over the shrine, and there are hundreds of small altars with objects of worhip (which range from rocks to trees to statues to a mirror). All of these sub-shrines are located all over the mountain, and you travel through hundreds of torii (it looks like you are going thorough a tunnel the torii are built so close together) to get from one to the next. There is a massive complex of shrine after shrine about half way up the mountain, but you can keep going up if you want to.

The standard method of worship is to wash one's mouth and hands, put money in a box, ring a bell (to drive away bad luck), and then to bow to the altar, pray, and clap your hands twice. Many people did this at every shrine that they walked to, but some would only pray at certain shrines.

Tomorrow we plan on going to Osaka and getting Swee a leg brace (all the steps at Fushimi Inari were not good on her knees). We will also try out some real Osakan food (Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki specifically). Apparently Osaka is to Japan as Texas is to the US, so they should have some good hearty food.