Great Reversal of Fortune at Kyoto

Spring is upon us. Last Friday was the official first day of spring in Japan, and all people are getting excited about Hanami ("Looking at the Flowers") Season, aka Sakura Season. Hanami actually is when Japanese people go out of the office/university in droves to sit under blossoming cherry blossoms, and get blind-drunk. It is widely-regarded as the most auspicious time of year to start anything.

Since this is the start of the new financial year, new graduates employed by companies typically get the task of staking out a good spot for their office, putting some cushions on the ground, and sitting there - for ages - until everyone else turns up.　

So, what better time than now to go to Kyoto?


This is the Kiomizu (clear water) shrine. Rated (by me) as the Kyoto's top temple, above even the Golden Temple.　

Look - our first Sakura tree!


　 Coming up to the temple there are some ladies dressed up as Geisha posing for photos in front of a cherry blossom. I felt that this was very Japanese.



Now, here we are, the view from the Kiomizu. Not bad at all.




　 　 But, enough of this wandering around. We're here for real business.

This lady is selling Omikuji (fortune-telling pieces of paper) inside the temple. 100Yen per fortune told.


　 You shake this old-school box, and out comes...


...a stick with a number on it!




　I got number 17.

The lady hands you the appropriate paper.

My fortune is ....

... "BAD" !!!　

　 It says:

- You have to be very conservative
- Any enterprise undertaken, even if you struggle a lot, will lead to poverty
- If you are ill, you should not change your doctor or medicine
- It will be difficult for you to be happy
- If you sue someone, you'll lose, so it is better to be careful
- If you've lost something in water, or in a dark place, it will be hard to find
- If you fight with someone you will lose, or if you win, you will soon encounter difficulties
- Be careful, you may die (!)

Now, as you may imagine, I wasn't entirely happy with these prognostications.

Thankfully, mercifully, if you don't take the Omikuji home, then you can forget about it. However, you must tie it to a tree. I don't know why. Perhaps the bad news will get bored of being tied to the tree. Or the tree may eat it (I'm just speculating here).

But then, just as I was going to tie the bad news away on a tree branch:

"Please do not tie Omikuji to tree branches" .... What now?


　 Thankfully, you can tie your bad Omikuji to a specially-designated clothes-drying frame. It is believed that it is just as effective as a tree. This guy kept on muttering "I can't believe I got BAD again. Why do I always get BAD..."


　 The proper way to do it is to firstly fold lengthwise into a tieable surface:


　 Tie it on.


　 Its OK if you're a beginer and completely screw it up by tearing the omikuji. Just retie and insert the torn part into the knot:


　 Now, this is the famous Kiomuzu Platform, well-known from the saying "it's like jumping off from the Kiomizu platform". This means to do something big. If you jumped off here, you would be in big trouble.


　 Also, following my close brush with danger, its probably good to have a look at some cloth talismans ("omamori"), in order to help out in the good-fortune side of things.


　 But which one to chose?

Wealth is always a good option. That thing about wealth not buying happiness was probably made up by someone poor, like me.


　 Safe traffic. Kind of niche. Probably would buy it to give to a taxi driver.

　 Longevity is actually quite a good option if you think about it. It may be fun to say "you need to die of something"/"I want to die before I'm old" etc., but in reality, bad living will not only make you die younger, but your later years will be unpleasant and rubbish.


　 Now, clearly, Better Fortune & Success trumps For Wealth. But then again "better" is relative, isn't it.


　 But the ultimate has to be the Aladin's lamp version:

"For A Variety of Wishes" !!!


　 Available in two colour-schemes.


You can also buy a book like this:


　 Which is essentially a list of all the top-rated temples (presumably rated by knowledgable people). In each one, an experienced chap with a paint brush paints a funny mark inside (he was sitting right here, but ran away):


　 The funny mark looks like caligraphy, but isn't actually a Kanji (Japanese character), as far as I can tell:


　 But what's this?

A second omikuji place in the same temple?

I have a chance to get some good fortune!

OK, here we go again:


　 Number 99 - sounds promising already.


　 "BIG GOODNESS" !!!


　 My fortune, as ammended:



- The person who encounters this Omikuji will have the morning sun rising upon them

- Difficulties encountered up till now will fade like stepping out of the darkness into a moonlit night

- They ought to be able to get what they want

- They will be plenty happy

- If they are ill, they shall make a full recovery

- Any journey undertaken will be successful

- If pregnant, birth will be easy

- If they enter into a fight/disagreement, they ought to be careful

- If there is a question of life or death, life shall prevail

- Any business connected to land, money/gold, paper, or trees will be successful

- They will have lots of children

- They will win in any fight they have



Well, I'll settle for that.

Midnight Scoop

There is an excelent program running in Japan called Midnight Scoop.

Every episode they get reader's ideas of stuff to do.

This time, this salaryman wrote in to explain his morning commute situaiton.

He lives on the Yamato river (goes through Osaka and Nara), and his office is on the same river.

But he needs to take three trains to get to work and back.

So, naturally, he thought it would be worth investigating whether the river route is better.


　So, together with two "detectives" from the show, they set out at his regular commute time in the morning.　


　 But things don't go entirely to plan.


　 Due to splashy conditions, his bag gets a little wet.

　 Soaking all of his documents.


　 Realising that it may take longer than anticipated, he phones his boss and says that he may arrive a little late - around midday.


　 He eventually arrives past 5pm. The total trip took over nine hours.


　 "From this (we can conclude that) commuting on the Yamato river to here is impossible"

Early Morning Technique

So, this is what a Japanese traditional buffett looks like:



　 Neat, understated, with high-quality technology discretely deployed.

So, for starters, load up with a selection of seaweed-based products:


Almost all of these are sea-plants. And all are actually very tasty. Either with mayonaise, sesame seeds, or dried. 　

On the way, check out some temperature-control technology that would embarrass NASA:


　 But whats this?


Why, a packet of flattened dried seaweed (nori - the stuff sushi rolls get wrapped in), of course.　


　 So, you put some of the seasoned seaweed on your bowl of rice, take the nori, and ...


　 ...this is where the technique comes in...



　 ...its a sort of precision chopstick grasp...

　 ...there you go.

　 OK, but what about drinks?

How about no less than three different types of green tea - Genmai (baked unpolished-rice tea, fragrant), Kuromame (black soy bean tea, smells of soya), Houjicha (roasted tea).


　 Coffee is also available.

Now, due to poor spatial awareness I wasn't able to locate any form of stirrer. This is not the proper way to behave in a traditional Japanese restaurant:


Also, don't forget that the Japanese have invented the tiniest milk thimbles in the world. 5ml. This is just enough for two coffees.

I Never Realised How Much I Don't Need That

Now, we've had a soak in the acidic/alkine/radioactive water, soaked in the communal pool, dressed up in traditional Japanese clothes.
So, what now?

Checked out the refresh salon space capsule?
　

　
It plays music, makes smells, and generally relaxes you. After you're done you get a vitamin-enchanced drink.


　 Unfortunatly, I was a little too big for the machine.

So, we're done at the onsen?

Wrong!

It is a Japanese custom to go shopping for tourist stuff we don't need.

So, lets start with the hotel shop. Here we have a bucket of premium daikon. Each of these is about a meter long.

　 Daikon ("big root"), is like a massive carrot, but white and slightly sharp-tasting. You get a little dish of the stuff pickled in restaurants. Tasty and crunchy, but you most probably don't need a kilo of it in a hotel onsen.

According to Wikipedia, daikon is "Mu" in Korean and "Moolah" in Nepali.

Now, I'm still trying to figure out why, but if you search for 大根 (DaiKon) on Youtube (I'm unemployed), you find loads of videos of cat and dog owners feeding Daikon to their pets. You can also check this production: "Nyanta kun (Miaoy), how is the raddish?".

Not only that, but you can get ...

... Renkon (lilly root) slice coasters! ("Kousta"), hand-made by a local old guy in the shop:



　 Made of real wood, $4.72

Or how about some lilly root chopstick holders?



　 Only 420Yen! Your chopsticks will look so much more...topical.
　
OK, OK, you want something a little more practical. I mean, you proabably already have coasters.


So how about some ear srapers?



　
If you want, you can also get them with shiny stuff hanging off.


　 Or some sweet-sticks. You use these to pick up sweets with.


　 Also available in the back-to-the-1930's, (aka just-found-them-in-the-forest) look:


　 But, if you want to go for the ultimate niche product, look no further:

Now, I'm sure you already knew this, but just in case - a wasabi scraper is something like this:

　
This is, of course, the old-school way of making wasabi.

Naturally, it results in a tasty, spicy but natural taste.

But the wasabi-scraper has one cruelly ironic flaw:

The wasabi gets stuck in its scraping mechanism, meaning that we need....

...yes, a scraper-scraper.

So how about a wasabi scraper-scraper made from completely natural material !

　Now, almost anywhere in Japan you can get gooey red-bean paste sweets. These can be tasty and delicious:

But you really need to understand the local market before you play this game - look at what happened with the carboxylic acid cracker with green paste.　
　

So lets try outside:

A lot of toys are strongly-represented:


　
Including a sumo-panda!
　

　 I would have bought this one if it didn't cost the same as my entire wardrobe.

Plus haircut.