1187 Here's Dad, pedaling and talking, free as a bird.
1188 Here's Mom, two kids and all the shopping.
1227 This is the 11-Headed Kannon in the Shitennoji Temple. Beautiful
1128 The Amida Yorai Buddha of the same temple. Also beautiful
Oct 15 – Kobe, Japan. Overnight the leading edge of the typhoon has caught up with us. It's very cloudy this morning and there's a high probability of rain and even higher this afternoon. Actually it looks like a certainty to me. We're heading out to Osaka, maybe the weather will be better there but I doubt it. Because we were tied up here overnight the morning tours got off exactly on time. A good start.
It took about an hour to get to Osaka. Much of the highway had a sound wall along the edge so there wasn't much to look at. Once on the streets in Osaka there was plenty to see. People heading to work, men in suits and women dressed very smartly. I guess it's not casual Tuesday. I saw a family going somewhere on their bikes. The man was riding in front and talking on his cell phone. The woman was riding behind with two children; one over the back wheel in a car seat like affair, the other was between the lady and the steering column also in a fiberglass chair. In front of the handlebars was a large basket that was full of items they had purchased. Actually it was a little overfull but all kept in place by the tied close plastic bag they were in. So the man rides solo, one-handed while yakking on the phone while the woman pedals both kids and all the purchases.
In a few minutes we arrived at the Shitennoji Temple. Built in 592AD it's believed to be the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan. Although fire, earthquake and war have required that it be rebuild many time the original buildings and their layout have been faithfully recreated. The Great Southern Gate, Central Gate, Pagoda, Kodo (Assembly Hall) and Kondo (Main Hall) all line up on a north-south axis. This layout has been reproduced many times in other temples and has become known as the Shitennoji cathedral style. The site houses six national treasures and relics of the Buddha.
It was built by a prince, Shotoku and is dedicated to the Four Guardian Kings of the North, South, East and West. We ran into these guys at the Great Buddha Temple in Nara last year. They know where the original buildings were placed because they know the location of all the foundations. The buildings designs were known from drawings of nearly the 6th century. Prince Shotoku's philosophy of the harmony of all things, Wa, was adopted here and the Wa sect of Buddhism was born.
We entered the temple grounds through the Great South Gate. A large space is enclosed by the walls of this gate. Across the large courtyard is the South Inner Gate that leads to the walled area of the Garan (Central Precinct). Inside the Garan you find the 5-story Pagoda, the Kodo and the Kondo. The northern wall of the Garan actually connects with the middle of the side walls of the Kondo so technically half of it is in the Garan and half is not.
As you approach the Inner Gate you are confronted by two of the directional Guardian Kings. I'm never sure with two I'm seeing. If this is the south gate it seems logical that the one to the left would be west and the one on the right would be east but I don't know if that is the system they use. The best I can say is that the king on the left is orange and the king on the right is green. Both are armed, muscled and obviously irritated. Clearly I have not done my homework on this topic. Before passing through the Inner Gate you have to do a ritual cleansing at the well or spring in the first courtyard. There's a long handled ladle that you use to pick up some water and pour it over your right hand, you then take the ladle and pour water over your left hand, you then pour more water into the palm of your right hand to cleanse your lips and lastly you turn the handle vertically so water runs out of the ladle, down the handle and over your left hand to cleanse the ladle and your hand. Having cleansed your hands and lips you are ready to enter the Garan for worship.
Directly through the South Inner Gate you find a cast iron pot on the side that is half full of sand and setting in a covered stand. This is where you light your incense offering and push the stick of incense into the sand to continue burning. Ahead of you half way to the pagoda is a large stone lantern that would be lighted for festivals and special occasions. Beyond that is the 5-storied Pagoda. The central shaft of this structure has enshrined relics of the Buddha.
I decided not to enter the Garan here but to walk around the outer courtyard to the west. I had read that there were some interesting items there. In the southwest corner of the courtyard they have a special building for Binzuru (Pindola Bharadvāja in India) from the Edo Period (1700s). He was one of the 16 arahats of Buddha and is said to have healing powers. In Japan, they believe that if you rub the statue and then rub a part of your body that has problems the problems will disappear. The old boy is seated outside the temple with an offering box in front of him. The last time I saw him he was in Nara and was carved of wood. The carving on this one is much finer and if he's wood he has had many layers of hard lacquer applied to his surface. He's a smooth and hard as stone.
Continuing around the west side of the courtyard you come to the West Gate. It is thought that the West Gate of Shitennoji is the East Gate of Paradise so the solemn sunset ceremony held at both the spring and autumn equinox is performed here and has been for over a thousand years. Also along the west side I saw a large statue I believe to be Prince Shotoku. The very small two page English guide they provided is not really very informative. There's a prayer wheel on the walkway in front of the statue and he's holding a rope in his right hand that goes over a pulley and is attached to vertical rod. It appears that if the rope is pulled it will lift the rod and letting go would strike the ground much as a doorman's staff in mediaeval times, or the staff used by mediaeval conductors to pound the floor to keep the beat. He's a solid carving and the arm is not articulates so I'm not sure if someone else pulls the rope or if it's just symbolic. There's a shrine at the front of his rock platform. Maybe acolytes pull down on the horizontal portion of the rope like an old time bus bell to make the staff work. Hard to say and I didn't ask. One thing that makes me unsure of my identification of the individual portrayed is that he has bronze blooming lotus plants on either side of his statue. This usually indicates that the statue is of a Buddha, in my experience.
On both sides of the altar at the base of the statue and the statue itself are what appear to be Buddhist funerary stones. Plain square posts with a slightly pointed ball on top, like an upside down peach. There are characters inscribed on one face of the post and one character, not the same on each ball. Each post has a vertical green flag associated with it. Some of the flags have white characters others have yellow. Regardless of the color the larger vertical row of characters are exactly the same on each flag. Each also has a vertical rectangle the same color as the larger characters on the upper left and lower right of the flag. The characters inside these colored rectangles not only differ from flag to flag but also from one rectangle to the other on the same flag. A quick comparison of the rectangles on 8 flags, that's 16 rectangles, showed that none of the 16 was the same. Neither of the rectangles on the flag of a grave matched the characters carved into that stone. I have no clue what anything on the flags signifies.
The bell tower is in the northwestern segment of the courtyard. The architecture of the roof and the upper floor was typical but the bottom floor was a trapezoidal box with very small shuttered, vertical windows. Almost like little gun ports.
I returned to what would be the West Inner Gate to enter the Garan. I found myself between the Pagoda and the Kodo. I thought I saw our group heading toward the back of the Garan so I headed that way too. I turned in to the center of the Garan between the Kodo and the Kondo. Between these two buildings is a raised, flat stone platform about 18 inches high with a short stone wall around it. I discovered that this stone stage is called the Ishi Butai. On every April 22 it's used for a memorial ceremony commemorating the death of Prince Shotoku. This structure is over 400 years old and has been designated as an important Cultural Property.
I walked down the west side of the Garan past a small bronze dragon playing with the ever present ball and rows of small paper lanterns with inscription on their bases, probably prayers, hanging from the cloister ceiling. I'm pretty sure the Buddhist architectural name for the covered walkway surrounding a religious precinct is not cloister but that's what a Christian church structure of this type would be called. I found our group at the north end of the Garan about to enter the Kondo.
The Kondo is the main temple in this complex and houses the statue of Prince Shotoku in his incarnation as Guze Kannon, the Buddha of Infinite Mercy. He's in the center of the Four Guardian Kings who are also found but in pairs in the inner gates. The two side walls and the back wall have frescoes of Buddhist legends by a well know Japanese painter. They are very pretty. Shotoku is seated in a very non-traditional pose, seated with his left leg crossed over his right and his right hand on his right ankle. His left hand is raised shoulder high, palm forward. A very traditional position. The leg pose you could see in any waiting area in the US.
After walking around the Kondo to see the paintings we headed up the east side to the Kodo. This smaller temple has several national treasures inside. The first major one are the statue of Nyorai Amida Buddha. I only know one Amida Buddha, Yakuyoke the Protector from Evil Spirits. I'm going to have to find out more about Nyorai. He's seated in the traditional lotus position with his left hand in the same shoulder high, palm out position. His right hand is on his right knee, palm up, also traditional.
The second largest major treasure is an 11-headed Kannon figure. This one had a regular head like everyone else but there's a smaller head at the top of the normal one and 8 more, even smaller, heads in a circle between the first two. Sort of like a headband of heads. These smaller heads are in pairs of two in each quarter of the circle. Right in the center of this headband above and between the Kannon's eyes is a very small, standing Buddha with his hands raised like a priest's would be giving the benediction. The head of this small Buddha is the 11th head.
The most common definition of Kannon in the English speaking world is 'the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy'. This is not precisely correct. Technically, Kannon is Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva and is neither masculine nor feminine. A Bodhisattva is a future avatar of Buddha, destined for enlightenment. Since Buddhism came to Japan from India by way of China and Korea it has much in common with Hinduism. While Hindus do have a lot of gods the number is somewhat overstated as the same god can have a series of avatars that have other names. They are not separate gods but different beings which are the same god. Oops. I guess I might know more about Buddhism than I originally thought.
Both figures are wood carvings covered in gold leaf. They are spectacular. The Kannon has a lattice work behind it of golden rays with circular ribs connecting them with a screen of tiny seated Buddhas behind that. The Amita has a pointed arch of 7 Buddhas behind him. The one directly over his head is slightly larger than the other 6. Behind that he also has a wall of the same shape as the arch but larger, covered in tiny Buddhas.
The Five-storied Pagoda is very pretty. The roof of each story is only very slightly smaller than the one below it. I didn't go inside but wandered the grounds until it was time to reboard the bus. By the time we arrived at our next destination, the Osaka Castle, it was raining and as we walked into the castle it started raining in earnest.
The first structure built on the Osaka Castle sight was a monk's lodge built by Saint Rennyo in 1496. Saint is a loose translation, Rennyo was a Buddhist monk. It quickly grew into a large temple called the Ishiyama (later called Osaka) Hanganji. Later it was surrendered to Samurai Nobunaga Oda after several conflicts between the temple and his troops. Oda's long term goal was to unite all of Japan under his rule. After an embarrassing encounter Oda committed suicide and Hideyoshi Toyotomi adopted the task of uniting Japan. He was successful in his attempt and became the first Shogun, the title for the military ruler of Japan.
Toyotomi built Osaka Castle in 1585. His rule was short lived as he was killed during the Summer War in 1598. His wooden structure was burned to the ground in the 1615 civil war. Are you getting the idea that Japan has a very violent history? I guess a country with a lot of Samurai used to ruling their own area chafe quite a bit at the idea of having a Shogun controlling them. Since their society at the time was as violent as it is now orderly and polite, this was to be expected.
In 1620 Shogun Hidetada Tokugawa, the model for Shogun Toranaga in James Clavell's novel Shogun, took control of Osaka and began rebuilding the castle. It took ten years to finish. It was an important location in taking control of Western Japan and critical in reestablishing the Shogunate under his authority to reunite Japan. Again many of the buildings were destroyed in the war to remove the Shogun and reestablish Imperial Control in 1868. The Samurai of the deposed Tokugawa Shogunate escaped imprisonment in Edo, now Tokyo, they seized a fleet of 8 warships, sailed to Northern Japan. The Japanese Imperial Army defeated them in only 7 months in what proved to be the last battle of the Japanese civil war and brought an end to the Japanese feudal system once and for all. Meiji control of the country was fully restored. So I guess the Battle of Hakodate was Japan's Gettysburg. There's a physical connection between the two wars as well. After the US civil war ended, the excess inventory of rifles was sold to the Japanese government. The presence of these rifles in the battle on the side of the Japanese Imperial Army gave them a decided advantage over the sword carrying samurai of the Tokugawa Shogunate. To quote a common movie line, "Never bring a knife to a gun fight."
The brief reprieve for some of the original buildings ended in WWII when all the castle's original structures were leveled during bombing raids. The castles tower, built of concrete in 1931 survived and is still in use as the castle's museum. After the war Osaka Castle began its new life as a city park. Over the years the site has been restored and today it is a major tourist attraction. The tower's museum has many displays, drawings and paintings of the castle's various incarnations. There are several models of the castle in various configurations from Toyotomi's era to Tokugawa's. The buildings that have been reconstructed have different colored roofs so you can identify which buildings exist now. They are very well done, as you would expect of models made by Japanese craftsmen.
The bus parking is south of the castle's park and outside the Outer Moat. We walked from the bus parking to the southeast side of the moat where we entered through the Tamatsukuri Gate. The area inside the gate is the Japanese Plum (Ume) Grove Garden. (Pickled, these small bright reddish purple delights are one highlight of any sushi meal. They are also commonly prepared as a dried, salted snack food. I like them a lot both ways. Eaten at the end of a sushi or sashimi meal they act as a breath cleanser.) The Japanese value this plum, it's one of the four suits in their traditional deck of cards and they attribute great health benefit to eating it. You almost always find one on the rice in a bento lunch. They always seem surprised that I like it.
The Inner Moat is dry on the south side and wet on the other three sides. It's deep and wide (230 to 300 feet) and only two bridges cross it, easy to defend. Much of the moat's 65-foot tall wall is original but all the white, rectangular, two-roofed turrets have been rebuilt. We crossed the inner moat at the Sakura Gate. Just inside this gate are some very large stones. Directly across from the entrance is the largest, the Tako-ishi (Octopus Stone). It's 18-feet high, 39-feet wide, three feet thick and weighs about 130 tons. Quarrying, transporting and placing these large stones required many specialized tools and advanced, for the time, technology. Unlike the Egyptians, the Japanese have detailed records and drawings of the process so they are not in question.
To the left of the entrance is Gimmeisui Well. The actual well was located elsewhere on the property but when a building was constructed on that spot in 1931 the above ground atop the well was moved here and drinking water was piped to it. That building, the 4th Army's HQ, was destroyed by bombing attacks in 1944 and after the war the original buildings, from the Shoguns period were not reconstructed so the area is now a plaza but there's no plan to move the well back there. From the entrance square we moved to the Tenshu-kaku (Main Tower) of the castle.
It's a beautiful building with 3 gables on each side and 5 roofs. A bit of an unusual design but very pleasing to the eye. It's set atop a very tall stone base, equal to about the first two stories, and is done with white walls, green roofs and gold & black accents. The gold is mostly on the white areas of the eaves at the peak and the corners and at the end of the gables, but on the 8th floor they walls are black and they have some golden designs and two large gold tigers, crouching in preparation for a jump.
The tower has 8 floors. The top floor is an observation porch on all sides and a museum shop in the center. This is where we started our visit. The 3rd thru 7th floors are dedicated to the life of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the original builder and the wars and construction projects of that era. The second floor has information about the various incarnations of the castle. They have a small area there where you can try on a samurai helmet and coat for 300 yen and take all the pictures you like. I couldn't resist the temptation and outfitted myself with the coat and helmet of Yukimura. I believe he's a cartoon character in Japan. I liked the helmet because it was the only one that was not black, it's burnt orange, and has antlers as the decoration. I have to admit that I make a more believable sumitori than I do a samurai but it was worth $3 to try. Right next to the lady renting the helmets was a life size reproduction of one of the tigers that adorn the walls of the 8th floor on the façade. They're about 5 feet tall and almost 11 feet long. The gold with black stripes is striking against the black walls. In the same display was a golden koi of the type they have at each end of the roof's gables. They're gold with pale green highlights, a great combination.
Inside the tower the museum has dioramas of various events. One depicted two groups of samurai arrayed for battle. One side carried red flags the other white. The title said it was the battle for Osaka and it was set in front of a large painting of the same battle. The miniature warriors in the diorama were extremely detailed.
Another much larger painting, done on a six segment folding screen depicts the battle between Hidemasa, a feudal lord, and future shogun Tokugawa, founder of the third and final shogunate, to Unite Japan. Because the Japanese avoid even numbers that are not multiples of an odd prime, especially 4, six segments are ok because that's a multiple of the highly preferred number 3.
It was a well-designed museum and could only be faulted for the absence of a detailed English guide. The small guide they had mostly describes the grounds and buildings, not much is said about the displays inside the tower.
On the talk out just after passing through the Sakura Gate I noticed a Tori Gate across the small courtyard. Since these gates signal the entrance to a Shinto shrine I walked over to get a look. There were several buildings arranged around the edge of a circular plaza at the center of which stands a statue of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the founder of the castle. I could see another Tori Gate nearby on the left so the sacred area is quite small, maybe the size of 2 or 3 NBA courts.
We drove across town to the Kobe Crown Plaza Hotel, a very nice establishment, for a set menu Japanese lunch. Each place had an almost round golden lacquer wooden place mat, about 1/6 of the circumference had been cut off to make a flat edge to put at the edge of the table. There were tables for 6 and tables for 3. Again the Japanese aversion to the number 4. They had to reset several to tables of 4 to accommodate the couples in the group. The aversion to the number 4 is cultural and religious. If the strange tourists who are not Shinto, Buddhist or Japanese and want to sit at a table for 4, they don't care.
The lunch was bento style, many small servings of a wide variety of food. They served us roasted tea, which I really like. The first course was maguro (tuna) sashimi served in a shallow bowl on a shiso leaf (relative of mint, I think) with a few small yellow petals on it and some tiny purple (and as it wound up pickled) leaves on the side. Since the maguro is maroon the yellow leaves contrasted nicely. Authentic Japanese food is all about the presentation, combination of subtle flavors and textures. Pretty much an art form of its own.
The second course was white miso soup with mushrooms and some small martini onion sized balls of yam or rice paste.
The third course came in two different types of containers. Some of us got the traditional rectangular, partitioned lacquer box with a lid. The rest of us, our table included got circular, stacked, round lacquer boxes with a lid. The lid has a round base so you can turn it over to use as a small plate.
The top tier of the box contained a cube of tofu (the hard kind you need for sukiyaki), a chestnut, a small maple leaf cut from winter melon, a gingko leaf cut from pickled lemon rind, small piece of misoyaki salmon and two small ceramic bowls about the size of a golf ball. One looked like a lemon and had a cover the other was just a very small bowl and held a small piece of tofu (the soft kind), dried bonito shavings and some Japanese spinach. The covered lemon bowl held pickled sprouts, red beans and a scattering of sesame seeds.
The lower tier box had some shreds of fermented soy bean sheets, another piece of fish, something white maybe trout and two round balls of some gelatin that I couldn't identify. Almost no taste so it wasn't objectionable, although some people did not like the consistency. This was served with a bowl of white rice and a little ceramic fan divided into three segments containing small amounts of daikon radish, purple pickled daikon radish and two segments of pickled Japanese broccoli.
Dessert was typical in that it was not very sweet at all. Traditionally Japanese people like salty and sour over sweet. They had put a chestnut in a ball of red bean paste and coated that with white glutinous rice paste. Red beans are a source of one of the most culturally flavored sweets. For me, a great meal overflowing with subtle tastes and textures.
From historic sublime to modern ridiculous. Our next stop was at Dotonburi Street a popular hangout for tourists, both foreign and Japanese, as well as locals. This street is the Japanese food equivalent of Las Vegas. It would be much more impressive at night but we'll be gone before dark. The street is lined with small restaurants that own huge signs each competing with the other to grab your attention. There are crab restaurants, most with a mechanized 10-foot wide crab trying to crawl up the side of the building. Many were not operating during the day but a few had their 8-foot long legs flailing about. There are ramen restaurants, most decorated with large dragons. This noodle, adopted here from Chinese cuisine, is very popular. Still others are adorned with huge puffer fish made like a paper lantern. These restaurants have the special license required to prepare Fuju. The license is manditory because if improperly prepared it's poisonous and sometimes fatal. I've tasted it and it gives you a mild tingling feeling in your lips and tongue but to me the flavor was not that special. There are also some donburi (rice bowl) restaurants and karaoke & sushi bars. No, not combined! One of the karaoke bars had a large cowboy hat on its sign.
The lone Kobe beef restaurant we passed had its sign reproduced on a board set on the sidewalk with holes in it for tourists to put their faces through. Diana's a sucker for these so we had to pause for a picture of her enjoying Kobe beef and Asahi beer.
I've reserved the most unique establishments for last. You can find all these previous types of restaurants all over Japan, although maybe without the glitzy signs. But the pride and joy of Osaka is the takoyaki restaurant. Tako means octopus in Japanese and yaki means fried however this does not exactly describe the product. It's actually more of a round dumpling with not only octopus but other items in it. There were usually green bits and white bits showing on the outside. The make up the batter and then put it in large grills that have a muffin tin like top but with round holes. As they batter cooks they stab it with a metal chopstick and spin it around to cook the top side. The little golden brown balls that it produces look quite attractive and thus your intrepid author, as he usually does, decided that this unique local delicacy had to be tasted.
You can't buy just one so I found a shop that would sell me 4 of them for 200 yen. That's 50 cents US each so the price is not too steep. He offered me several toppings but I turned them all down but a brown sauce that looked like eel sauce and I really like that. They are served with a toothpick like stick to eat them with. I popped one into my mouth expecting it to be completely cooked through and thus solid. Well they're not. The outer skin is about 1/8 inch thick and the middle is liquid. That's not so bad; I like a lot of liquids. The flavor however is awful. Maybe I didn't buy mine at the right place or maybe the chef was goofing with the tourist but if they all taste like that I'm not sure why anyone eats them.
I've eaten a lot of local specialties in my travels and usually I find them to be at least interesting and often excellent. This thing was just disgusting and it got no second chance. The remaining three went into the closest trash can without delay. To be fair, I might have given it a little more time to see how the flavors developed but the liquid center was so hot that I burned my tongue, cheek and the roof of my mouth. Mercifully, the damage may have prevented me from getting the full effect of the flavor. This seemed a very strange outcome to me as I like octopus in soup, sashimi and sushi. It has very little flavor and is mildly chewy. I don't know what gives the takoyaki its nasty taste but they should just serve the tako and leave the yaki out.
Once back aboard the ship we found out that the captain had decided that we are spending another night in Kobe and sailing at 4:30am tomorrow. Our call at Nara, Okinawa has been cancelled. We are going to stop at Nagasaki, Japan on the 17th instead. To get to Nara we would have had to go east from the protected harbor, it's on the Japanese Inland Sea, into the Pacific Ocean east of Japan. The typhoon is heading up the east coast of Japan so we would have had to sail right through it. Not a very comfortable process. I'm sure the ship could handle it but many of the passengers have mobility limitations and challenges that could have resulted in a host of injuries and that's never a good idea. Add to that the fact that a high percentage of them would have had Mal de Mer issues and discretion is the better part of valor so you change the itinerary. The Inland Sea is large in some places but not nearly big enough to allow for the creation of more than some small swell and waves. Plus, heading west is away from the storm and although it will be windy, the ride should be very comfortable.
Our performer was Ken Block and impressionist, somewhat of a disappearing art. The Carson show had lots of them in their heyday. Not so much since the '80s. Ken is good, we've seen him before.
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