End of Part I

So much has happened, and at the same time almost nothing has happened.  I've found my places and I've found my people in Kyoto.  The likes are many and the dislikes few.  I have discovered a pace and sensibility that agrees with me.  We get along, Kyoto and I.  It is not without struggle.  But the struggle is reasonable, grounded.  It is not egomaniacal or absurd, aggressive or cynical.  There is a beauty to Kyoto that is almost disquieting.  Not since my sojourn in Paris have I felt this kind of fondness for a city.

My relationship with my art has changed.  In New York it was somewhat combative, which really mirrored my relationship with the city.  New York was mostly a battle, the city always trying to defeat me.  In Kyoto the painting comes easier.  I do not labor over paintings and fight with them like I did in New York.  I think this is maybe because life here is less complicated.  That is not to say my life is easy, but the bullshit that runs so thick and deep in New York doesn't seem to exist here.

I have made some inroads into the Japanese art world, somehow accomplished more in three months than seventeen years in New York.  Strangely, despite my extreme difficulty with the language, I find myself a little more outgoing and willing to approach gallery managers and directors.  I also find that they are more receptive than their New York counterparts.  Hell, in New York you can't get the intern at the front desk to greet you, let alone get the owner to sit down and talk with you, hear what you have to say, look at your portfolio.  It comes down to respect, really.

But this is not an essay comparing and contrasting New York and Kyoto, the US and Japan.  It is rather my reflections on three incredible months.  I am grateful for the experience, to the Itos, to Mineko and Aki and the amazing people I met through them.  I feel terribly lucky.

I came to Japan because I wanted to go somewhere where I didn't know a thing.  I wanted to remove myself from everything that is comfortable and familiar.  To grow as an artist, or indeed as a person, one has to shake things up every now and again, break out of the routine.  I did that.  Oh man, did I do that.  But I learned that we quickly establish new routines.  And a new comfort zone is constructed.  This is human nature I suppose.

This is the last post until January.  I'm spending Christmas in Los Angeles.  So I will say arigato gozaimas and akemashte omedeto (happy new year).

Santa Monica?

Tokyo is cool.  It is cool in the same way New York is cool.  It is cosmopolitan, exciting, sexy and forever changing.  But it is not beautiful or charming the way Kyoto or say, Paris is.  It is honestly a bit of a shock to be here after more than two months in Kyoto.  It is not just the pace of the two cities that is different.  It is the culture that is different.

Tokyo to me feels almost not Japanese.  It is rather some kind of strange Japano-Euro-American hybrid.  You can walk the length of some streets without seeing a single shop or restaurant sign written in Kanji or even Katakana (the Japanese characters reserved for foreign words adopted into the language).  They all have English names.  I saw shops called Santa Monica, Long Beach, Abbot Kinnney and even Brooklyn Museum (which was actually a very smart mens custom tailoring shop).  Of course you also see shops representing every major and minor retailer in America and Europe.  Sometimes companies that have ceased to exist in their country of origin still carry on in Tokyo.  This is all very strange to me.  We have our Little Tokyos and Chinatowns in America but the signs are all in English, or at least subtitled in English.

I feel Tokyo lacks the connection with history, nature and Buddhism that Kyoto has.  This has everything to do with it being totally destroyed by Allied bombing in the War, and Kyoto mercifully being spared.  Like Berlin, Tokyo was then occupied and in effect governed by American forces after the war ended.  So it is no surprise really that culturally it is so Western, and that its architectural history with a few exceptions dates from the mid 20th Century.  As "Edokko" (the proper term for people from Tokyo) adapted to and embraced Western ways it seems their spiritual (i.e. Buddhist) heritage was compromised.  So too was their bond with nature.  Tokyo is really the original concrete jungle, more so than New York.

This is not to say Kyoto is better or more authentic than Tokyo, or visa versa, but they really couldn't be more different.  It is really just a case of old Japan versus new Japan.  Both are completely Japanese without having anything in common.

We're not in Uji anymore...

Tokyo is instantly another world.  You can feel it as soon as you get off the train.  Tokyo Station at rush hour is mad, people swarming, moving in every direction, fast, focused.  I'm lost almost immediately.

Somehow, after three trains and a long walk, I find my hotel - Claska.  Night has fallen so it is difficult to make out the neighborhood, but it seems to be in the middle of nowhere.  I'll see what impression daylight brings.  It is cool without trying too hard.  It is perhaps slightly past its prime, which for me, makes it better, like an old leather jacket or comfy sweater.  Hip hotels tend to age quickly and badly.  This is lived in without being shabby.  I suppose this is that mysterious Japanese characteristic with which I am obsessed: wabi-sabi.

The shinkansen from Kyoto was pleasant until the woman next to me decided to paint her nails.  Who does that?!  When she opens the bottle to begin a second coat I very politely say, "Onegai shimasu."  She either doesn't hear or is ignoring me.  I tap her gently on the shoulder and say it again.  She turns and stares at me blankly for a second.

I decide she cannot possibly be Japanese because: 1) She is a fat cow;  2) I cannot imagine a Japanese person even entertaining the idea of painting their nails in an enclosed public space; 3) There was no "sumimasen" or "gomennasai" when I asked her to stop, standard responses from any Japanese person when they feel they may have offended someone; 4) She was coughing like crazy the whole way to Tokyo, obviously ill.  A Japanese person would definitely have been wearing a germ mask.

Funny how you can recognize a nationality just by habits.

Matsunoo Taisha (松尾大社)

There are hundreds of shrines in Kyoto, each devoted to different deities.  People come from all over to petition these divinities to aid in their personal cause.  This might be someone praying to ease the suffering of an ailing loved-one, a woman hoping to get pregnant, a businessman desiring financial rewards, or a student wishing for academic success.  

Matsunoo Taisha, one of Kyoto's oldest shrines, is the favorite of sake brewers.  The reason for this is water.  The local spring water, considered some of the best in Japan, is believed to be blessed.  So the brewers come offering prayers and a large barrel of sake to Oyamakui-no-kami (the mountain deity responsible for the water that flows from Mount Matsuo) hoping their next batch of sake will be blessed.

This shrine is also where my friends filmmaker Clive Williams and musician Aki Kasuga were married.  So it is indeed an auspicious location.

One that got away

I happened upon Tofukuji Temple the same day I visited Fushimi-inari Taisha in late October.  Instead of going back through the gates I descended the mountain by a different route.  This brought me to Tofukuji.

It is always a little odd when you stumble on to a major temple or shrine in Kyoto.  This is pretty easy to do, by the way.  When you haven't actually planned to see something you are a bit taken aback.  Where am I?  What is this?  I had no idea Tofukuji contained one of the most highly regarded zen gardens in Japan.

It was late in the afternoon and I was rather tired from the hike up and down the mountain at Fushimi-inari, so to sit and contemplate the wonderful dry garden as the sun was beginning to set was splendid.  I've found this is actually a good time to visit most temples because you can be alone, the crowds having left much earlier.

Like so many of the really beautiful and meditative gardens I've seen, Tofukuji also needs a revisit.  Perhaps I'll even plan to see it next time.

Low-profile

Kyoto is so densely packed with temples and shrines and gardens it is remarkably easy to just pass by beautiful, historic sights without even pausing.  Yasaka-no-To Pagoda, built in 1440, is one of those slightly over-looked landmarks.  I must have passed by this pagoda half a dozen times en route to other places.  It is on the way to or from some of the heavy-hitters on the Kyoto tourist map: Kiyomizu-dera, Kodai-ji, Chion-in, Ryozen Kannon.

You can't miss this striking five-story wooden structure; it shoots up 46 meters from a cozy neighborhood of traditional machiya tea houses and shops.  Still, somehow Yasaka-no-To blends in to the landscape when you are focused on its more famous neighbors.

Today I stopped and looked and gave it the respect it deserves.

A different view

I think it was in art school, a professor told me, to really see a painting you must visit it at different times of the day, different times of the year, in different weather, and even consider your own moods (happy, sad, angry, etc.)  Because you will see it differently each time.

This may hold true for visiting the temples and shrines in Kyoto.  I first went to Chion-in in mid-October (see my post "Chion-in: notes and impressions").  It was sunny, warm.  The gardens were green.  There was a breeze.  It was late in the afternoon, but the days were not so short, so the shadows were not stretched, the silhouettes were not crisp.  It was quiet, I was almost alone there.

I returned the other night to see a totally different place.  In the autumn, some of the more popular temples in Kyoto extend their visiting hours and host spectacular light shows after dark.  We are not talking Pink Floyd, Las Vegas or techno rave.  These are some really talented lighting designers highlighting the temple and the rich autumn colors in a dramatic, almost theatrical way.

It was dark, cold.  As is always the case, even on a chilly autumn night, visitors are required to remove their shoes when entering a temple.   I could feel the night air through my not-quite-thick-enough socks as I climbed the wooden stairs into the core of the enormous sanmon (main gate).  The gardens were not green, but black and orange, red and yellow, already stripped naked in some places, the bone gray of winter.  I was not alone.  I had come with a few artist friends, but we were joined by hundreds of others in a line that snaked slowly through the grounds of the temple.

I lived almost 17 years in New York.  The change of seasons is usually very pretty and always enthusiastically welcomed.  But I have never seen such a celebration for the annual pilgrimage of the Earth around the Sun like I have seen here in Kyoto.  It is observed and honored as if it were a once-in-a-lifetime event, like Halley's Comet.  I suppose that is the way all of life's events should be appreciated.

Welcome to "Cooking in Kyoto", with your hostess...

There are cafes and bars in Kyoto that don't feel like cafes or bars at all.  They feel like you've entered someones house.  And oftentimes you have.  The laws governing business zoning are not as strict as in the US.  From what I understand, if you happen to have a street front property, you can turn over a portion of that to a business regardless if it is otherwise a totally residential neighborhood.  So the places that appear to be someones home, probably are.  Behind a sliding door or curtain is where the proprietor actually lives.

Tonight I stopped at a cafe off of Kawaramachi Dori with the Itos that was the epitome of this special cafe/home hybrid.  We walked down a long narrow corridor, slid open a door and there we were in what looked and felt like the kitchen and dining room of a private home.  There was no attempt to hide or disguise anything: a case of sake stacked against the wall was a case of sake stacked against the wall; the refrigerators were not the industrial restaurant variety, they were the same as you or I would have in our home; the television was set at an angle for the proprietress to watch, not the customers.  Everything seemed to be organized in a pure utilitarian manner for the matriarch of some family to feed her kin, not a chef or restaurant manager trying to impress clients.  There was nothing orthodox or professional about the place at all, which is why it was so charming.

There was enough seating at the bar for about 7 or 8 people max.  There were no other tables or chairs.  The proprietress/cook, an animated, but elegant woman, stood behind a bar facing us, as if she were the hostess of a cooking show.  In fact, if there were cameras rolling that's exactly what I would have guessed this was, a television set.  She chatted with the customers while she washed dishes, poured beers, and served food, the same way your mother would simultaneously entertain guests and prepare a meal.

I had to smile.  I couldn't stop smiling.  The conversation, the little I could understand, was warm and casual, just old friends catching up.  That official politesse between customer and maître d' that one usually finds in a restaurant did not exist.  I was almost surprised when the bill arrived.

Even though I understood almost nothing of the conversation, I was so totally entertained it just didn't matter.