After breakfast — at which Hsuan, W, and I wore our yukattas — we walked to the Yasaki-jinja shrine, which is a shrine complex only a few blocks away from Gion Shinmonso, through some shopping streets and at the southeast part of the Gion neighborhood. We got there in the early morning, and many of the usual food stands were still setting up. I noticed that many of the lanterns decorating the shrine were marked in English lettering — Franklin tailored, Noster, Natural Beauty, and roth Alley Bar, to name a few. I can only assume the Kanji labeled lanterns were similarly labeled by businesses that purchased the lanterns and donated them to the shrine.
Maruyama Park is adjacent to the shrine, so we walked up there a bit. J wanted ice cream, but the ice cream store wasn’t open yet, and eventually, we left to return to Gion Shinmonso to freshen up a bit. The futons in our room had already been stored.
On April 5, I think after we arrived at Gion Shinmonso, I booked us for the two hour lesson at the Samurai Kembu Theater, since the Kyoto Samurai Experience location hadn’t responded to my e-mail. I booked through TripAdvisor/Viator.com. We were scheduled for the 11:15 AM two hour lesson, which included not only some basic samurai sword training, but also some folding fan technique and dressing up in samurai kimono.
Kembu (actually more often spelled Kenbu on the web) means sword dance, which is a traditional Japanese dance form involving samurai sword and fan techniques. The Samurai Kembu Theater is located just a few minutes walk from Gion Shinmonso, and it is one of the more famous Kenbu groups in Kyoto.
We got there at 11 AM, along with others who signed up for the 1 or 2 hour classes, and we registered. About half of the 11:15 AM group were signed up for the 2 hour session, and the rest signed up for the 1 hour session. We chose our samurai costumes ahead of time, according to pattern and size. We were given swords according to our size — men’s swords, or women’s/children’s swords. The swords aren’t sharp, except for the pointy ends, but they’re made of a zinc alloy that is both shiny and heavy. The lesson was a real workout. You can buy these swords from many different stores for home decoration.
After belting on our swords, we were drilled in basic slashing/swinging techniques, as well as drawing and sheathing our swords. Then we were divided into three groups, and one group at a time went into another room to put on the kimono, hakama (trousers), and belts, while the rest stayed in the main room to continue sword drills.
Once dressed up and after the final drills, the 1 hour class people had their photos taken by the instructors, and then they left after being given certificates. Afterwards, we in the 2 hour class had our photos taken, and then we received additional instruction on using the Japanese folding fans for interpretive dance techniques.
Finally, we were given choreography instruction for a Kembu dance, and each family group performed for the rest, while the instructors either directed us from the sidelines or took videos with our cameras.
Afterward, we our certificates, got out of our samurai clothing, signed guest comments, and departed. We went back to our room, then went out for beef and rice bowls for lunch (having decided that a highly rated teppanyaki bar might be good but not what we usually think), and then returned to our room.
On our way back from lunch, we were fortunate to cross paths, very briefly, with these three apparently authentic Maiko -- identified by their white make-up (tourists don't bother -- too easy to smudge when you're stuffing your face with lunch and tasty confections), their hairstyles, and the extra-elaborate obi (darari obi, worn exclusively by maiko). (I say "apparently" because I thought Maiko wore high platform sandals, but perhaps there's a reason for these not to do so. On the other hand, later that evening I did spy a maiko running (!!!) to some job -- she seemed to be late and in a hurry -- and I don't think she could have been wearing the high sandals.)
There are photo studios that do "maiko transformations" for customers, but I get the impression that's for tourists who want to get photo shoots of themselves dressed and made up as maiko, not to walk around town dressed as such.
Our final destination for touring was the Fushimi-Inari Shrine, a short train ride away from Gion. It’s another complex of shrines, as are many others, but this one is famous for not one torii gate (those stone or wooden gates that kind of look like the letter pi) but thousands (seemingly) of torii gates. These gates are donated to the shrine by businesses or, one guesses, wealthy citizens, and they come in all sizes. In fact, we saw signs along the way that listed prices for the gates, apparently based on size, ranging from miniature gates maybe a foot or two tall to the big gates maybe a dozen feet tall.
Inari is the god of rice and is apparently the patron of business, which explains all the businesses sponsoring torii gates.
The shrine complex starts at the base of Mt. Inari, and then the paths lined with the gates start winding up through the forest and up the mount. We went through at least a thousand gates, and though I was worried about not returning to the Gion Shinmonso in time for our 7:30 PM dinner — we had selected sukiyaki instead of kaiseki this time — we decided (at W’s and J’s urging) to press on to the top of Mt. Inari. The boys spent time mocking Hsuan and me for being old and slow, but we still pressed on.
By the time we reached the peak, at 233 meters elevation, I was not only soaked by the drizzle and rain but also by the sweat throughout my shirt, vest, and hoodie. The weather was cold and wet, explaining the layers of outerwear; we had also borrowed another umbrella from the ryokan. I was sweating so hard that my face was steaming at the top of the mountain. About halfway up the mountain, I had to switch the order of my vest and hoodie, so I wouldn’t soak through the vest, which I had intended to wear on the plane flight home.
We managed to get back to our room a little before 7 PM, and I made a quick stop by the public bath downstairs and returned in time for dinner. We had chosen the sukiyaki dinner, and the middle-aged lady brought our first items and the grill. The food included a ludicrously large plate of vegetables as well as a huge plate of meat, plus sashimi as at all our dinners.
Unlike the kaiseki, our servers weren’t coming up to serve us periodically, and we cooked ourselves. In any case, we couldn’t finish all the vegetables, and finishing the meat wasn’t much easier. The young man (whose name — along with the women’s — I didn’t ask and wouldn’t remember) eventually came up to take away our remainders, but we hadn’t even gotten to the udon noodles, so we asked for a few more minutes.
Dessert was some sort of Japanese honeydew, plus a few cubes of mochi.
The young man and the elderly lady came by again to set out our futons and bedding, and we chatted a bit. It turns out they say Okini instead of Arigato in Kyoto.
After breakfast on April 8, we spent the entire day traveling by Shinkansen from Kyoto to Shinagawa station in Tokyo, then by Narita Express to Narita International Airport. At Kyoto station as well as at Narita, I kept trying to spend whatever Japanese coins I had, because banks don’t exchange coins, only bills. I snagged some sake flavored KitKats, which are popular in Japan, as are the many other flavors of KitKats we don’t get in the US. In the end, I was reduced to plugging coins into vending machines, buying too much Coke before remembering I like the bottled green tea as well.
We arrived at LAX on April 8, Sunday, at 9:50 AM, and had the usual slow going through customs and border enforcement, though I tried to use the Mobile Passport app (which didn’t work for whatever reason). The guy who drove our Uber home kept breaking hard or accelerating hard, which made me queasy after our long trip. Then the boys and I went to a Spanish Mass that used to be called bilingual, but it was all in Spanish, which I suddenly remembered less well than Japanese.
But I was glad to be home.
——
All the photos from this trip are on my Flickr page, too. I found out that Photos for OS X didn’t properly import all the time zone, time, and date data for all of my photos, which forced me to go through all 451 photos and adjust times correctly. That part wasn’t fun.