Traveling Day 19 and 20, January 26 and 27
Although I've been back in Austalia for a fortnight now, here is the final entry on my time in japan.
26 January
We spent the morning at the Kyoto International Manga Museum. We were shown around by the curator. I would have preferred more time to explore by ourselves because of the nature of the museum. A lot of the museum was shelves and archives of manga. The special exhibition was of picture shows which were a predecessor of anime. I unfortunately can’t remember the Japanese name.
We went to the Noh theatre in the afternoon. I fell asleep in the theatre again. Then I became so bored that I went outside to watch the Noh on the TV in the foyer and read some of the Tale of Genji manga adaptation I had bought that morning. Noh is very, very, very stylised and very slow. Even among the Japanese the people who go to see Noh have studied it as an art form.
27 January
I was part of a group of six who spent a half day in Nara. We were taken around by a student guide. We went to Kofukuji temple where a deer took a bite out of my map of Nara. We also went to Todaiji Temple. The great Buddha at Todaiji was really impressive. I’m glad I made the effort to go to Nara just for that. There was a reconstructed lotus petal with hairline engravings like the one of the petals of the lotus that the Buddha sits on. I want to know how they worked out what the engravings were. You can’t see them with the naked eye anymore.
Lunch included rice studded with beans and ageshi dofu dashi. The food for lunch was Nara local specialities. Ageshi dofu dashi is tofu coated in flour, fried and cover with a sauce of dashi (fish stock).
I took some down time after getting back to Kyoto that afternoon.
We all had a banquet dinner together. Some people had shabu shabu. The rest of us had a meal which was more based on the specialities of Kyoto. The first appetiser was a shot of apple cider vinegar, it was very good. Vinegar reduces the glaecemic index of food so I was pleased that it was served. The initial course included three different foods cut into flower shapes on a stick; fish, daikon and something else I think, fried fish, soy milk with tofu skin in it heated over a flame, and sashimi. You took the tofu skin out of the soy milk, ate that and then added another liquid to turn the soy milk into a runny tofu. Subsequently we were served, a clear soup, boiled daikon with a white miso sauce, sushi, and some sort of citrus ice cream. The clear soup was not miso but had paper thin carrot and seaweed and a triangle of something, possibly fu (wheat based bread thing that can be served by itself or in a soup) in it. There was a tiny paper crane as part of the initial presentation of the meal and we were given Japanese cedar husband and wife chopsticks as a present (husband and wife chopsticks have one pair shorter than the other).
26 January
We spent the morning at the Kyoto International Manga Museum. We were shown around by the curator. I would have preferred more time to explore by ourselves because of the nature of the museum. A lot of the museum was shelves and archives of manga. The special exhibition was of picture shows which were a predecessor of anime. I unfortunately can’t remember the Japanese name.
We went to the Noh theatre in the afternoon. I fell asleep in the theatre again. Then I became so bored that I went outside to watch the Noh on the TV in the foyer and read some of the Tale of Genji manga adaptation I had bought that morning. Noh is very, very, very stylised and very slow. Even among the Japanese the people who go to see Noh have studied it as an art form.
27 January
I was part of a group of six who spent a half day in Nara. We were taken around by a student guide. We went to Kofukuji temple where a deer took a bite out of my map of Nara. We also went to Todaiji Temple. The great Buddha at Todaiji was really impressive. I’m glad I made the effort to go to Nara just for that. There was a reconstructed lotus petal with hairline engravings like the one of the petals of the lotus that the Buddha sits on. I want to know how they worked out what the engravings were. You can’t see them with the naked eye anymore.
Lunch included rice studded with beans and ageshi dofu dashi. The food for lunch was Nara local specialities. Ageshi dofu dashi is tofu coated in flour, fried and cover with a sauce of dashi (fish stock).
I took some down time after getting back to Kyoto that afternoon.
We all had a banquet dinner together. Some people had shabu shabu. The rest of us had a meal which was more based on the specialities of Kyoto. The first appetiser was a shot of apple cider vinegar, it was very good. Vinegar reduces the glaecemic index of food so I was pleased that it was served. The initial course included three different foods cut into flower shapes on a stick; fish, daikon and something else I think, fried fish, soy milk with tofu skin in it heated over a flame, and sashimi. You took the tofu skin out of the soy milk, ate that and then added another liquid to turn the soy milk into a runny tofu. Subsequently we were served, a clear soup, boiled daikon with a white miso sauce, sushi, and some sort of citrus ice cream. The clear soup was not miso but had paper thin carrot and seaweed and a triangle of something, possibly fu (wheat based bread thing that can be served by itself or in a soup) in it. There was a tiny paper crane as part of the initial presentation of the meal and we were given Japanese cedar husband and wife chopsticks as a present (husband and wife chopsticks have one pair shorter than the other).