Up a small mountain and down it again

Haven't got time to write much right now, but here are some photos from today. 

This is a platform built over the river. All the restaurants are like this one.

Sahoko looking very happy! 

I hope she is enjoying our visit as much as we are. 

She looks like she is!

The Japanese government  is encouraging people to wear traditional clothing by offering discounts to those wearing them, so you see quite a lot of young people, the guys as well as the girls, visiting tourist spots dressed like this. 

(Well, the guys outfits are a bit less elaborate!)

We ate mountain river fish, which was sweet and lovely. 

It has a pale green sauce made from a mountain herb that is only used for this fish, and apart from that is regarded as a completely useless weed! (How particular is that?)

If it`s a temple it is Buddhist, and if it`s a shrine it is Shinto. I have the impression that you can kind of follow both (but I may be wrong.)

Tassles on the tree mean it is protected and sacred.

Gigantic bamboo! It ust have been about 30 foot tall, and the photo was taken from above.

The orange colour of temples is pretty much a protected and patented colour and is called `Ni`. Much easier to make rhymes with than `orange`!

I think this feller is a troll of the sacred mountain...

We ate here;  many kinds of chicken dishes including batter fried breast bone gristle and chicken gizzard. The gizzard defeated me and I wasn`t that keen on the gristle , but everything else was really delicious.　(Ｔｈａｎｋｓ go ｔｏ Junzo, a friend, for broadening my mind on this front!) Another tasty thing we ate today, earlier on, was a sweet a bit like Turkish delight made from mountain grass (may have been a fern actually) and dusted with a coating of green tea powder!

Kyoto - A city of contradictions

What an amazing day!

Sahoko Aki san came to meet us and has been guiding us around Kyoto.

We have visited a Buddhist Temple complex and a major Shinto Shrine.

We have walked in little narrow old streets, eaten lunch in one restaurant, and supper in another.

We walked by the river where courting couples sit and chat. They sit at measured distances from each other for intimacy and orivacy, though there was no canoodling as far as I could see.

We saw and were permitted to take some photos of a couple of Maiko, who are apprentice Geisha girls. This was very lucky indeed, as they are not usually out and about in the open like that.

We saw street performers throwing fire around, and we finished up in a bar drinking sake (rice wine) and I had a glass of spirit made from sweet potatoes, though I had been warned that it was served with hot water I might have chosen a cold drink! It tasted delicious (like Japanese potcheen) but, oh boy, it is HOT here. Very, very hot!

Here are a few photos of our day, roughly in the order described above.

This is a pickle stall. There are rocks on the pots in the background holding the vegetables down in the pickling liquid. My traveling companion and friend has the surname of `pickles and the shortened version of her first name sounds like the Japanese for `good health`. So she has been nicknamed `Good Health Pickles`!

They are young, these girls are, about 15. I hope they are happy with the life they have chosen. I can`t work out whether it is a calling, like nuns, or exploitation...

A canal runs through Kyoto as well as a river, that is fringed with willow trees and crossed by many little bridges.

Big in Japan!

おはよう!

The competition continues, by the way, to win a Twelvemo Figure if  you comment on the previous posting or like the Twelvemo Facebook page!

Now, for a short while, there will be an interlude from creative stuff on this blog to explore some of the wonders of the Far East and I am in Japan with a a friend and an interesting two weeks lined up!

A couple of years ago I made an animation for a major exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (in Norwich). The exhibition was call unearthed (it's meant to be spelt with no capital first letter) and it brought together ancient ceramic figurines made in two different cultures in different parts of the world; the Balkans and Japan. In both cultures these extraordinary works were deliberately broken and the pieces kept, preserved, and shared between houses and villages. No-one knows what the purpose of them was, why they were made, so we can only speculate. In Japan the Dogu figurines were made by the ancient Jomon  culture of Japan thousands of years ago. The Jomon made amazing and beautiful ceramics with rope and flame motifs figuring prominently. 

Anyway, the short animation that I made for the exhibition was well received. Children seem to be entranced by the soundtrack and Japanese archeologists rather like it too, so I am hoping to be big in Japan! (At 5 foot 9 inches I actually am big in Japan already!)

Our trip is partly funded by the Great Britain Sasakaw Foundation ( http://www.gbsf.org.uk/ ) and has been supported by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture ( http://www.sainsbury-institute.org/ )

More info coming soon, but for now here is the little film that I made. Hope you enjoy it!
If it doesn't load right (it may be too big)  you can see the film on the this page of my website; http://www.sarahbeare.com/page4.htm