Zen gardens and scroll shops

Our final day in Kyoto, and Saeeda and I found ourselves dragging somewhat. The constant travel has begun to take its toll, and our initial jam-packed days are giving way to more leisurely itineraries. This morning we visited only two temples, both of which were, yet again, stunning. Kinkakuji temple (pictured above), was actually a shogun's residence during the Edo period, and was covered in gold leaf by orders of the shogun - apparently the dude lived in filthy luxury while his people starved. The other temple we visited was Ryoanji temple, site of Japan's most famous zen rock garden. I had never seen a zen rock garden before this, and had always wondered what the fuss was about. Experiencing the garden in person, however, convinced me of the meditative powers of the garden. To see line upon line of precisely raked sand, with rocks cropping up in precisely calculated places to convey a feeling of mountains piercing clouds, or perhaps islands rising from the ocean - this sight instantly puts one at ease. The picture I took below was of all the tourists, each of whom would round the corner to the garden and fall quiet immediately. If not pressed for time, I would have remained there for a much longer time.


With all our major sites out of the way, Saeeda and I decided to wrap up our stay by going for some leisurely souvenir shopping. In one of the promotional guides that we had been handed by our hotel concierge, Saeeda had found a tiny, obscure entry about a scroll store somewhere in old Kyoto. Keep in mind that all of Kyoto is old, so this place being old just meant that we'd have a bear of a time locating it.

Although the subway and bus system in Kyoto is excellent, with signs in both Japanese and English everywhere, we were still in a foreign land, and eventually you get turned around. We were at an intersection, unfolding and refolding several different maps, trying to get our bearings, when we heard someone ask us in accented English where we were trying to go. I turned to look, and realized that I had spotted this same gentleman who was talking to us a little while earlier on a bicycle one block away. At the time, I had thought it curious to see a tourist biking around Kyoto, but had dismissed the thought because Kyoto is a very bike friendly place. If someone wanted to see it on a bicycle, they very easily could.

I gave the man the name of the street we wanted to go to, completely expecting him to scratch his head and apologize for not knowing where that was. The street was not a major thoroughfare, and was tucked away in a small neighborhood according to the article that we had. To our complete surprise, the man did some mental calculations and then gave us directions that proved to be completely accurate. Before we parted, I asked him where he was from and what he was doing in Kyoto. He replied that he was from Australia, and had been teaching English in Japan for the last sixteen years. I couldn’t help but laugh. An Australian teaching English in Kyoto was giving directions to a Pakistani couple in the heart of historic Japan. The world is truly a tiny place.

We found the scroll store we were hunting for, and it turned out to be a delightful little shop that smelled of old paper and which had scroll paintings hanging everywhere. There was a little ledge at one end of the shop, where a small Japanese man sat cross-legged behind a table, surrounded by aging brown boxes containing yet more scrolls. Everything we looked at was beautiful, and the storekeeper was extremely helpful, despite his broken English. Saeeda and I finally picked two scrolls that we liked – an ink painting of a crane set on green silk, which was Saeeda’s favorite, and a hazy painting of a clouded moon, with bold flecks of cherry blossom petals in the foreground, which I liked. We couldn’t afford both, and had no idea if one was supposed to bargain at a place like this.

The shopkeeper, sensing our dilemma asked us if this was our first time in Japan. We told him so, and he thought for a while, smiled, and said he would give us both for the price of the more expensive one. I was happy, because it would have been a tough call for me to pick one over the other. By the shopkeeper’s own description, both scrolls were a hundred years old – of course, we had no way of corroborating this, especially since the price for the scrolls wasn’t what I, in all my antique dealing experience, would expect of something that was a hundred years old. But contrary to the bazaars of China, where no matter how hard we haggled we just knew we were being had, this environment was completely different. From the demeanor of our Japanese shopkeeper, to the look of the store (which was right out of a Harry Potter novel - check it out), at no time did I sense that I was being taken advantage of. I for one have decided that I now own two, hundred year old scrolls that I purchased from a charming store in old Kyoto.