My Travel Adventures

Brent, Joel, Ciaran, and I began our day at Senso-ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo. Dedicated to the Bodhisattva Kannon, the complex is known for its iconic five-story pagoda and is believed to be the most visited religious site in the world. Compared to the temples we saw on previous days, it has an uncharacteristically steep roof, and photography is allowed inside (though I would say there is not much of a point to it as the interior is not very ornate). Brent and Joel went to one of the wooden stands to buy omikuji: paper sheets with random fortunes written on them. According to tradition, if the fortune on the sheet is bad, the person who bought it can tie it to a nearby rack and it will be burned by a priest.

Today was light on sightseeing, as Ciaran and I had to make the two-and-a-half-hour Shinkansen trip from Kyoto to Tokyo (not including the transportation times to and from hotels) and because we met multiple friends. As soon as we left our bags at our apartment near Tokyo Skytree, we took the metro to the very other end of the city to meet Kevin and Jaya at the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is one of Tokyo’s most famous even though it was completed relatively recently – in 1921 – using materials from every prefecture ruled by Japan, including Karafuto (modern day Sakhalin), Korea, Kwantung, and Taiwan. Although it did not really blow us away, we were impressed by the very roundly pruned trees in its courtyard.

We took the express train from Kyoto to Nara and ate our storebought breakfast on board. Optimising our time this way allowed us to be among the first people through the door when Kofoku Temple opened at nine o’clock. We bought the combined ticket for the whole complex, which encompasses the Central Golden Hall, the Main Hall, and the National Treasure Museum. I remembered that the highlight of this particular part of Nara was supposed to be its five-storied pagoda, but I could not see it anywhere. Only when I opened the map to find our location did I realise that the ugly grey building we had been ignoring next to the Main Hall was scaffolding draped in grey canvas.

The memory that sticks out to me as I sit down to write about our second day in Kyoto is that of our late-afternoon search for dinner somewhere south of the main train station. Ciaran and I were walking towards two ladies when their dog started arching its back to poop. Instead of waiting for the dog to finish and collecting the poop from the ground, one of the ladies held the dog with one hand to stop it from pacing around and used a tissue in her other hand to catch the dog’s poop before it even hit the ground.  

We left Osaka for Kyoto after eating breakfast. We could not find free seats on the train, so we stood behind the driver’s cab and watched the magic of Japan’s railway system happen. There were two men behind the glass separating passengers and crew. The younger of the pair was sitting down and apparently receiving instructions from the older one, who stood by and joked around, occasionally pointing outside the window and explaining things. The young driver had a screen to his right displaying the times the train was supposed to arrive at each station down to the very second, but neither man seemed particularly bothered by the train’s being two minutes late.

On our third day in Japan, Ciaran and I visited Mount Koya, also known as Koyasan. Situated south of Osaka, Mount Koya first became a religious settlement in 819 under the leadership of monk Kukai, who travelled to China to study Tangmi – the Chinese version of Vajrayana Buddhism – and returned to found the esoteric Shingon School in Japan. Followers of the Shingon School believe that Kukai (also referred to as Kobo Daishi) never died but rests in meditation until the arrival of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. His mausoleum is found at Okunoin. The cemetery that has arisen around Okunoin contains over 200,000 tombstones and is the largest in Japan.

After eating breakfast close to our hotel, we walked down to the Namba Yasaka Shinto Shrine, a place of worship dedicated to the spirit of the sea and storms, Susanoo. The shrine is famous for a building shaped as a giant lion’s head which holds, in its open jaws, a stage where locals perform rituals memorialising Susanoo’s story. We spent only a few moments at the shrine before walking onwards to Shitenno-ji. We passed by a number of other temples on the way but only entered one that we saw from afar and thought very picturesque for having a blossoming sakura right in front of its entrance gate. There was nothing very notable about the interior (and the bathroom both Ciaran and I wanted to use was closed) except for a stone statue of the cartoon character Doraemon. He had apparently been elevated to the ranks of a venerated spirit.