First, the balls of octupus. After our sweaty climb up and down Monkey Park (see previous post), we'd worked up an appetite. The park exits next to the Hozu river where several vendors have food stands, including one stand specializing in octopus balls and crab sticks. See pictures above as proof. Steven had one of both. "Chewy" is how he described the octupus balls. I elected to have the more kosher fried chicken skewers and sweet potato spears.
We ate al fresco, on a bench near the river, where traditional Japanese boats where maneuvered by large poles. If you have the muscle, you can rent a boat.
Here too we found many tourists in rent-a-kimono. This pair are not geisha (or geiko, as they say in Kyoto). Real geikos are not allowed to use cell phones!
Food and rest revived, we worked our way down the main drag in the Arashiyama area to the Tenryu ji Temple, otherwise known as the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon. The tale is that koi in a nearby pond transformed into a dragon. After seeing many Shinto shrines (marked by distintive red Tori gates), this was our first Buddhist temple of the trip. Shinto is the original religion of Japan, but over centuries the Japanese have also adopted Buddhism, imported from India and China.
The Temple of the Heavenly Dragon is not only a World Cultural Heritage Site, it is also the head temple of the the Rinzai Zen Buddhism branch. Established in 1339 by a shogun in memory of a recently deceased emperor, it had originally been the site of the first Zen temple in Japan. Alas, fire has destroyed the temple eight times over the last 686 years. It was last rebuit in 1864.
However, the garden behind the temple looks as it did when Muso Soseki designed it in the 14th century. It is a "borrowed" Zen garden, making use of existing features in the environment. I was especially fond of the lily pond, which apparently has bright pink blossoms in the spring.
The temple features a fierce dragon and an even fiercer shogun or (was it a monk?) at the entrance. His scowl is meant to wake you up bring you to full attention. He certainly woke me up.
After admiring the garden, we visited the famous Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. You have to come early to miss the crowds. With crowds, it is a little less serene, but a wall of bamboo still bends over you for a quarter mile, the wind rustling through the leaves. A natural wonder.
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