A fortnight before we leave for cherry blossom season in Kyoto, we get the news that global warming might have claimed another victim. Because of the unseasonal warmth, the trees bloom earlier than expected, and with non-refundable tickets and hotel bookings, there's little else to do but pray that the blossoms will wait for us.
Someone up there loves us. When we leave Delhi for Tokyo to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, the trees are nearly bloomed. As anyone with a passing acquaintance with Japan will tell you, there are two perfect seasons to visit Kyoto: late September when the leaves turn red and March/April during the sakura or cherry blossom season. Celebrated as hanami, or flower-viewing time, this is when hordes of Japanese congregate at the many cherry blossom-lined parks to ooh and aah over their beauty, take photographs of their Nikons, contemplate the transient nature of beauty and life, and — I suspect, most important — consume vast quantities of sake.
The Sakura season coincides with April 1 — when hundreds of thousands of freshly minted graduates begin their careers with various Japanese corporations, jobs they are likely to hold until their retirement at 60. The number of recruits is down this year. Still, many of the lucky ones who have been hired now await their first official assignment to stake out a vantage spot beneath one of the cherry blossom trees for the annual outdoor office party later in the evening. All over Kyoto, eager-eyed graduates in their new black suits and fresh haircuts lug crates of Asahi beer to be laid out neatly on identikit blue plastic mats under one of the hundreds of flowering trees.
Life is beautiful. Kyoto lies at the heart of the Kansai region. The imperial capital between 794 and 1868 (before Tokyo) it's often compared to Paris, London, or Rome. My trusty guide ranks it "one of those cities that everyone should see at least once in their lives." This advice is taken seriously; according to some estimates, 100,000 tourists—mainly Japanese—visit every day.
But Japan is nothing if not a country of contradictions, where a highly developed aesthetic sensibility can happily coexist with Hello Kitty's bizarre kitsch, and a rapidly ageing population seems permanently fixated on "cute."
Contradictions abound in Kyoto, too. My first glimpse from the railway station is, in a word, disappointing. But Kyoto's beauty is not always apparent—it reveals itself in stolen, unexpected glimpses. Our taxi whizzes past depressingly plastic department stores like Daimaru and Takashimaya. Then, out of nowhere, we pass by the wooden structure of a torii gate and get a fleeting, heart-stopping glimpse into the exquisite garden of a small shrine.
Yuji Osaki, an old friend, is our guide, philosopher, and friend during our time in Kyoto. He's been here — done that, several times over. Now he tells us that our best chance of spotting a geisha — the real McCoy — is in Kyoto. In the local dialect, however, they are referred to as geikos. Only 80 or so geikos are left in Japan, most of them in Kyoto. To spend an evening in the company of one of these fair women could set you back by USD 3,000 — for which privilege you can expect to hear a few ballads, a musical instrument or two, and have them light your cigarette.
I find it hard to spot a woman in a kimono, much less a true-blue geiko, not even when Osaki takes us to Ponto-cho, a tiny lane studded with restaurants in traditional wooden houses. Ponto-cho is the site for the biannual traditional geiko dance in spring and autumn. But on the night that we are there, the only kimono-clad woman we see is the one who serves us dinner, stirring thin strips of beef and vegetables in a simmering broth (which we will later drink as soup) for a few seconds before placing them on our plates to dip in various sauces. The photographs of the menu placed outside the restaurant come with a statutory warning: "These are samples. Please understand." The names of meals have haiku-like dimensions; there's tsuki-akari (image of moonlight), which translates into a considerably more prosaic boiled vegetable, tofu, sashimi, and miso soup.
Kyoto's cuisine is a highlight. Japan Airlines serves it as its showcase for Japanese meals on flights. But if there's only one meal you'll eat in Kyoto, let it be kaiseki — an art of cuisine that is as renowned for its presentation as its taste. Kaiseki isn't cheap, but — here's a handy tip — lunch is significantly less expensive than dinner, with no quality compromised. My nine-course kaiseki lunch at a traditional Japanese restaurant overlooking an enclosed garden began with a broad bean dumpling in bean curd skin cream, progressed via three kinds of seasonal sashimi and grilled crab, shiitake mushroom, ginkgo nut, and gluten soybean to end simply with steamed rice, miso soup, and pickles. Each course came in a different porcelain platter that was more beautiful than the last. And the meal was so light that, two hours later, I was ready to eat again.
The key to seeing these temples and shrines is judicious choosing. We zero in on four. The first is the Ryoanji temple, which has a famous rectangular Zen garden. No trees are here; only 15 randomly located rocks are placed on white gravel. The story goes that you can only see 14 of these rocks at any given time, no matter from which angle you look at them — only the truly enlightened can see all 15 together.
So, I'm not enlightened. No matter, the walk to the temple around the pond comes close to nirvana. It helps that it's drizzling, the trees are a fresh green, and the sakura is in perfect bloom.
For sheer razzle-dazzle, there can be a few temples to beat temple #2, the Golden Pavilion or Rokuonji temple, in the middle of a lake. Once the villa of a powerful shogun who abdicated in 1394, this temple encompasses three types of architecture: the first floor is in a palace style, the second is in the style of a samurai house, and the third is a Zen temple. The top two floors are covered in gold leaf on lacquer. As with the Ryoanji temple, the grounds and gardens are exquisite. But as I pass by the small offerings stalls, I can't help but smile at the sweets wrapped in Hello Kitty boxes.
To my untrained eye, Temple #4, Sanjusangen-do, is designed to impress with 1,001 statues (1,000 of them standing, the central one seated) of the Buddhist deity Kannon. Remarkably, these 12th—and 13th-century statues made of Japanese cypress wood remain in pretty good condition.
The Kyoto International Manga Museum, the first (and presently only) cultural manga facility in Japan, has been removed from the temples and shrines for several centuries. More library, less museum, houses a collection of 300,000 items, mainly comics, related to manga. The museum guide outlines the significant role of manga in Japanese culture. Manga, it says, are found in picture scrolls produced in the Heian period (794-1192), and it is "extremely meaningful that there is a manga museum in Kyoto, a town where traditional culture still thrives."
Predominantly Japanese — look out for the small English collection on the middle shelf as you enter — the museum includes a manga studio where graduates of the Kyoto Seika University give manga drawing demonstrations.
Also removed from the serenity of Kyoto's temples and gardens is the mad hustle of the Nishiki market, where the old jungle saying goes, "There's no kind of food that you can't find at Nishiki." As I wander around, I discover all kinds of fabulous (and frequently weird) food — from fugu fish skin and grilled sparrow to wagashi (Japanese sweets) and tofu skin milk doughnuts. I go through the crowd, stopping to buy fresh wasabi and nibble on such tiny snacks as grilled tuna throat.
Nishiki was established over 400 years ago when merchants visited Kyoto's Imperial Palace to buy local products, fish, and games. To keep their products fresh, they used the freezing underground water beneath Nishiki, which still guarantees the freshness of fish. My stroll through Nishiki ends with lunch at an oden stall—a stall serving various ingredients such as eggs, daikon, and tofu simmered in a soy-based broth.
Finally, it is time to leave Kyoto. With one last look at the towering pagoda at Kiyomizu Dera temple, we board our train to Nara, having experienced a slice of this timeless city.
