Tofu Filled Kyoto
Good morning Kyoto!! Please forgive us for knowing so little about you. Fortunately the best guide awaits, Hikaru, having already made the 30 minute journey to Kyoto from Otsu.
Our first destination today is Kiyomizu-dera, a massive temple with amazing views over Kyoto. Ahh taxis are much easier with someone who knows the language. Soon we arrive in Higashiyama District and the road makes way for pedestrians only. As we start our ascend the shop-lined road becomes obscured by traffic, the worst kind — terrible tourists in no hurry to get anywhere. Shuffle stop, shuffle stop, shuffle stop.
As we join the crowd of tourists we soon get lost in the sites and stores. But who can resist seeing a bride and groom in traditional dress, geisha girls and cherry blossoms in bloom. Click, click, click. We've been sucked into the tourist vortex... Ahh Japan, stopit.
The Japanese pottery catches our eye for longer than we'd like to admit. Handmade sake sets, sip sip sip. We drink them in, only with our eyes, but stop ourselves at the shiniest of them all, lined in gold-leaf. We need to get out of here, but not before we take the shop's card.
Time for lunch, Hikaru has a place in mind, a client of his — Tofu Restaurant Cafe. Something new for us, we're in! We've had tofu before but not where it's the main event. This place has a wait, thirty minutes. We take Hikaru up on his kind offer to wait while we continue looking around. Cough cough, tourists.
The pickled cucumbers on a stick, served roadside catch our eye and no sooner than they meet our stomaches our table is ready. Hikaru does the ordering, the bowls and plates arrive quickly, of which there are many. Some small, some lidded, all of them mysterious. The largest of them all, more of a pot than a bowl is perhaps the most interesting, the freshest of the fresh — tofu made table-side. Hikaru and I share stirring duty. Minutes later we dive in, slowly and cautiously. Everything is delicious, beige has never been so mysterious or flavourful. Worlds away from the mass-produced bricks of tofu we could hope to find in our local supermarket. We feast till we are full, then feast some more. Then resign ourselves to not being able to finish everything. Tofu wins. Slippery sucker, cough cough.
We join the tourist trail up to the wooded hills of Kyoto to Kiyomizu-dera, the Pure Water Temple on the site of the Otawa Waterfall. The wooden stage of the main hall juts out over the hill offering up spectacular views of Kyoto city. To jump off the stage here is the English equivalent of the expression "to take the plunge". Once a tradition, if survived, would grant you a wish. A practice now prohibited, but the odds of surviving were pretty good!
We have little time to view all the sites in the temple complex but all are steeped in history and Hikaru, our ever accommodating guide keeps us informed along the way. We make a fast (read slow) descend through the tourists, back to the road to hail a taxi to Kyoto Station — we have a show to catch!
At the Station, we head into the theatre to see — The Tale of the Genji Sequel — Japan's oldest love story reborn through the theatre of Kabuki and Noh, and Opera. Based on the worlds first full-length novel from the 11th century and performed by Japan's most recognised and leading Kabuki actors, Ichikawa Ebizo. Ebizo plays the hero of the tale, Hikaru-no-kimi, the emperor's outcast son. A rather dashing but naughty chap who had many romances over his life.
The story from there got a little lost in translation but what shone through was the quality of the costumes and performances, sometimes aggressive and dramatic, but always elegant. Exceedingly nuanced movement and expression, never black and white, always a subtle shade of grey. Overall an excellent introduction to Japanese theatre, narrated by Opera by Anthony Roth Constanzo - an Italian American countertenor...clearly anything goes in modern Kabuki opera!
As we move from the high-culture of Japanese theatre, we go up, up up in Kyoto station for something familiar for dinner, a bowl of soothing ramen to calm the senses and once again prepare us for zzzz.
