Head out of Kyoto to visit endearing Nara
FOR nearly two decades, I have eagerly collected Japanese tea and sake sets, woodblock prints and geisha figurines. They delight me with their elegant design, with depictions of intricately shaped maple trees and dazzling silk kimonos and the I-know-something-youdon’t-know gaze of the women wearing them. My collection started with a love-at-firstsight purchase of colourful geisha bookends from the 1950s. Stamped “Made in Occupied Japan”, they were at a flea market in California, where many Japanese immigrants once worked in the orchards, and they led me to muse about another world and era.
Yet it was only in November that I finally made it to Japan. Like many visitors before me, I thought I would make Kyoto the centrepiece of my visit, but I was also keen to veer from the traditional tourist’s path and discover Japan for myself.
As it turned out, the dozen or so ryokan, or traditional Japanese guesthouses, in Kyoto I contacted were fully booked. Disappointed, I eventually resigned myself to overnighting in Nara, about an hour’s train ride to the south.
I knew Nara had its own bragging rights. As Japan’s first permanent capital, it easily maintains its noble stature with eight UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Daibutsu – or giant Buddha – bronze statue housed in an imposing wooden temple, as well as the tame and friendly descendants of sacred deer, anointed as national treasures, that roam freely among the temples, pagodas and forested parks. It sounded dreamy.
Staying in Nara, too, would put me close to Ise, or so I thought. My California friend Hiroko, a Tokyo native, had visited the small town a year earlier, and told me of its Shinto shrines – an astonishing 125 in all, making it essentially Japan’s version of the Vatican and a pilgrimage destination for many Japanese people.
I related this to Kayoko Ku- wahara, my host at the tiny Guesthouse Sakuraya situated along a quiet residential street, as we sat sipping tea on my first evening. A fierce wind had picked up by the time my train from Kyoto had pulled in, and after a short bus ride to the suburb where Sakuraya is, I had to walk some 10 minutes in the cold to reach the guesthouse. But upon entering, I was enraptured.
After Kayoko showed me to my room – one of three she rents to guests – I took in the heavenly view from the sliding glass doors: an enclosed courtyard and dimly lit garden, a carefully shaped arching pine and a palm tree among mosscovered steppingstones.
From the moment I set foot inside the guesthouse I felt privileged – so much so that when Kayoko cautioned me that reaching Ise would require a very early start and three hours of travel on four different trains, I was loath to book an overnight’s stay closer to the shrines. I wanted to return to my oasis. Moreover, it occurred to me that in the spirit of religious pilgrimages, the long and complicated journey to Ise and back would be fitting, if not adventurous.
Before the long journey, however, I took a day to explore Nara. I was gradually greeted by some of Nara’s ubiquitous and cordial deer, making it clear I’d reached Nara Park and was near Todaiji temple.
I had seen photos of the temple and what’s known as the cosmic Buddha housed inside it, but these don’t prepare the visitor for the awesome, towering bronze sculpture, flanked on each side by the golden Kokuzo Bosatsu – or bodhisattva of memory and wisdom – and Tamonten – called the lord who hears all. Completed in AD 798 and arguably one of Japan’s most striking sights, the three towering figures held my attention. I took my time walking the perimeter, considering meanwhile what I’d read earlier, that the construction of these mighty sculptures had employed, legend has it, some 2 million labourers and had nearly bankrupted the coun- try, in part because the statues were covered in gold leaf.
After that, I wasn’t sure what to expect in Ise. The next morning, soon after departing eastward from Nara, the train passed through a long corridor of bamboo stalks and then hugged the edge of a plunging forested ravine covered in radiant fall foliage. Part of the journey wound through farmland punctuated by snug villages with black-tiled roofs, small groves of crimson-coloured Japanese maple trees, welltended family gardens and solemn pagodas and temples atop grassy hills, some with simple cemeteries encircling them. In this corner of Japan, on this rural train, I saw no tourists and few residents.
But once I reached Ise and found my way to Geku, or the Outer Shrine, I was surrounded by other pilgrims. I was among them as we crossed the wide bridge leading to the shrine area, washed my hands alongside them at stone vessels with wooden ladles and followed them under soaring torii, or gates, marking the sacred entry.
Following a map here and later at the Neku, or Inner Shrine, some 20 minutes away by bus, I came upon shrine after shrine, quickly seeing that visitors could only get so close to the forbidding and venerated wooden structures dating to the third century, all unadorned, fenced in and removed from the pathways bordered by impenetrable Japanese cedars. Shinto tradition also dictates that the shrines be rebuilt every 20 years, using wooden dowels and interlocking joints instead of nails, and only priests and members of Japan’s imperial family are allowed inside the inner sanctums.
I watched as families lit votive incense sticks and young couples timidly approached the picket gates before slowly bowing in silence.
The prayers, I understood later while reading about Shinto philosophy, are for prosperity, a bountiful harvest and, above all, peace in the world.