Today almost didn't happen as Mr Joshie took a bit of a nose-dive health-wise overnight. Jen was on the verge of staying at the apartment with him and sending me out into the dizzying confusion of train platforms and timetables that is Kyoto. Josh wouldn't hear of it. He declared himself fit to travel, and so we planned a day of carting him about the countryside.
On the way out, he tried on the traditional wooden shoes (called geta) that are left for use at the apartment. He doesn't call them geta however, not even slippers - he calls them awesome shoes!
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| Awesome Shoes! |
Our first stop was Fushimi, home of the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Not a recent addition, the Inari Shrine predates the time when Kyoto was the capital (around 794 or so). Inari is the Shinto god of rice, so not surprisingly is quite the popular deity - both in Shintoism and Buddhism. Inari's messengers are pairs of kitsune (foxes) who for some reason sport red bibs - and are often located either side of the main gates.
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| The Main Gate - flanked by a pair of kitsune. |
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| A secondary haiden (hall of worship) - where you can ring bells. Clearly this appealed to the Martin children. See what I did there? Peal - bell? Genius. |
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| A fork in the path of the Thousand Torii. |
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While carrying Josh on the way back down the hill to Inari Station, he fell asleep (I was able to determine this by the lolling of his head, and the drool I could detect on my shoulder). He continued to do so until we reached Nara (about an hour away) - which saw him progressively improve in energy and demeanour for the rest of the day (huzzah!).
Nara is lovely. Despite the famous Todai-ji Temple (temple=buddhist, shrine=shinto... a tip for new players), being located a couple of kilometres away, it was a pleasant walk past speciality shops and into Nara Park - festooned with autumnal leaves and Sika deer alike. The deer are tame, but can get a little forward in their hunt for deer snacks (purchased from street vendors for the bargain price of 150 yen a bundle).
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| Able to withstand the attentions of all 3 Martin children - impressive. |
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| While they were no Mickey Mouse, Josh was very taken by the deer. |
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| Their interest in us picked up when they detected deer snacks. |
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| An unfortunate gent getting swarmed by ravenous deer - he was never seen again (notice the one on the right giving him a head-butt for good measure). |
We started getting a sense of the scale of the Temple as we approached the Main Gate. This timber structure would dwarf most Temples proper.
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| If you look reeeeally closely, there are some Novocastrians sitting on the steps to the right. |
We eventually reached Daibutsuden (the Great Buddha Hall), which was the world's largest timber structure until 1998 - when some kid went crazy with paddle pop sticks for a school project.
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| A previous incarnation of this thing used to be 30% bigger. True story. |
Inside we came face-to-face (well, face-to-foot) with Daibutsu (the Great Buddha) some 14.9 metres tall and weighing around 500 tonnes (apparently, it used up nearly all of Japan's available bronze at the time and virtually bankrupted the place).
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| If I backed up any further I'd fall down the front steps. |
While taking piccies of various enormous statues and structural details, I managed to bowl over a small (teeny) Japanese kiddie. I was mortified - based on his size, both he and his mum should only just be checking out of the maternity ward - yet here he was, traipsing about a giant bronze Buddha. His Mother and I both commenced bowing profusely, stammering out a half dozen gomennasai's apiece. Once I was assured he was fine, I tip-toed my way out of the vicinity.
Rejoining the rest of the family, I spotted the column I'd read about in a couple of travel guides. The story goes that should you be able to squeeze through the hole at the bottom of this particular column, you guarantee yourself eventual enlightenment.
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| Lily sizing up her chances of success. |
All three Martin children made it through without having to embarrassingly resort to power-tools to extricate them. The reason for the importance of fitting through this particular opening is that it is the exact size of one of the Great Buddha's nostrils (not that ferreting about in an over-sized nasal cavity would be all that enlightening).
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| You can almost see a couple of legs hanging out of its nose now - can't you? |
For what was expected to be a miserable day (what with Josh looking sketchy at best) - it was one of the highlights of the trip. Tomorrow we must take leave of our fantastic apartment in Gion (I'd recommend it to anyone staying here more than a couple of days), and jump on the train to Okayama.
