Japan in Autumn - Kyoto Pt 1

 We travelled from Takayama to Kyoto taking the southbound journey to Nagoya on the scenic Hida train in the rain. It was still pretty with the mist.  From Nagoya, it was a swift 30 minute journey on the shinkansen to Kyoto.  After we left our luggage at the hotel, a 5 minute walk from the Shinkansen, we thought we would venture out to have lunch inside the station.  It turns out Kyoto Station is not only monstrous in size and crowds but also in confusing accessibility.  It seems that you can only get from the west entrance to the east entrance on a certain level and if you missed the elusive signs and logic, it meant a long walk outside the station which spans several blocks.  Only on our last day did we figure out the route!

My last visit to Kyoto was chaotic, marred by traffic jams and huge crowds during the cherry blossom season.  This time around I tried to dodge the crowds by doing things differently.  We visited the Fushimi Inari shrine at night - it was a short ride on the local train after the rush hour.  The shrine was beautiful at night and actually felt like a shrine.  What a contrast to my last day time visit.

The Arashiyama bamboo forest was a terrible crowd experience on my last visit because we were stuck two hours in traffic and arrived midday.  This time, we tried to get to the bamboo forest early via public transit, although not early enough, but it was still better than the last visit.  The very enjoyable vegetarian lunch at Shigetsu together with  the fall colours inside the Tenryuji garden gave us a nice reprieve.  

We moved on to the Otagi Nebutsuji Temple which is unusual with its unique collection of statues, with different expressions on their faces, some of them whimsical and quirky.  It was a thoughtful ending to the day.

From the train ride to Nagoya

The descent into the depths of Kyoto station

This mural is so evocative of the station

Fushimi Inari Shrine

Some of the ten thousand torii gates at the shrine

Fox guardians at the shrine

When we left the shrine, the neighbourhood has almost shut down except for this food court that was still open.  It was a nice surprise to find a stall serving grilled unagi, one of my favourites.

The Arashiyama bamboo forest

The Hozugawa river flows beside the bamboo forest 

Fall colours peaking in the Tenryu-ji Garden

Inside the Tenryuji - this is an image of Bodhidharma,, founder of Zen Buddhism, emphasizing meditation and direct experience versus ritual. 

Vast meditation room inside the temple

Followers sit inside the meditation room looking out onto the zen garden (far from tranquil in this image)

What a pleasure to walk through this beautiful walkway connecting the buildings, with the garden on both sides 

Zen Garden inside temple

Main pond inside the garden

Shigetsu the vegetarian restaurant inside the garden. Glad I made the reservation for the vegetarian lunch months ago - place is fully booked and I could see many disappointed people turned back at the door.

Tenryuji has its own bamboo forest without the crowds

The Otagi Nebutsuji Temple with its thousand sculptures

The Otagi Temple grounds are not pretty like the Zen Garden but it took us to a different human level with its depiction of the different emotions on these faces, almost a reality check - a great way to balance out the day.

A day at The Huntington Pt. 1

One of the main purpose of our visit to L.A. this time was to visit the Huntington, a complex with the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.  We spent a full day there as guests of a friend who has a membership with its accompanying privileges - skipped the lineup and walked right in.  Still we found ourselves short of time to see everything we wanted to see, not to mention exhaustion in the L.A. heat - we could easily have spent at least another day there. We had to skip some of the galleries because there just wasn't time to appreciate the art fully so we decided to focus on what is unique to the Huntington - the Desert Garden, the Huntington Library Exhibit and the Chinese Garden.  I will cover the Chinese Garden in Part 2 of this post.

We started at the Desert Garden because this is one of the more unique gardens and also to try and catch it in the softer morning light.  But the L.A. sun was already high up in the sky at opening so it probably made no difference.  In hindsight, I would have done the Chinese garden first as it was very crowded by the time we got there at midday.  

The Desert Garden was amazing with all kinds of exotic desert plants.  You can see some of them below.  I apologize for the paucity of captions mainly because not everything in the garden is labelled.  Not being a botanist or even a gardener, I just took photos of what has visual impact for me.

Panorama of the entrance to the Desert Garden

This tree looked like a deer with antlers

Cacti - the round ones are quite common in Southern California but the tubular shaped ones in this planting are rather unusual.

From the Desert Garden we moved through to the Japanese Garden, starting with the bamboo forest.

Stunning art installation "Red Earth" by Lita Albuquerque, 2020 - a boulder with red pigment in the midst of the bamboo grove.  From the artist:  “2020 is the year of perfect vision. We are in a time of expanded perception where we are shifting from a perspective that is human to one of the human in the cosmos. I have placed ‘Red Earth’ in this intimate setting... to represent the earth—the heart even—of the planet in its stillness."

A few of the many beautiful bonsais in the garden

The Zen garden beside the entrance to the formal Japanese gardens

Bird's eye view of the Japanese Garden

This hummingbird appeared 10 feet in front of us on our way to the Desert Garden - I had to scramble to adjust my camera settings to catch it, barely...

Elegant staircase inside the Art Museum

Giant Peony tree on the grounds

The Huntington Library exhibit hall.  Many original manuscripts on exhibit including the Gutenberg Bible and the Canterbury Tales.  One piece I found particularly interesting was this arrangement of a music score for a quartet below.  The music is arranged so that each player seated in front of the shared book can read the score.

This Audubon drawing also caught my eye especially after the recent viral video of a eagle battling a fox for a rabbit.  Also reminded me of the Audubon at the Toronto Reference Library!

 

This lovely statue of Artemis (goddess Diana) adorns one of the hallways, there was no moon for her to point the arrow at but there was a skylight right above her.  I actually prefer the back of the sculpture - the curve of the body was more elegant.

The formal gardens

Next post:  the Chinese Garden, "Liu Fang Yuan, 流芳園, or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, one of the finest classical Chinese style gardens outside of China" as described on the Huntington website - and I agree.