KYOTO: The Ultimate Japanese Experience : A City For All Seasons : Celebrating the Times of the Year in Japan’s Capital of Tradition

There is probably no other culture in which the changing seasons are so sensitively and fully celebrated, both in life and in art, as in that of Japan. The association of a particular place with the beauties of a certain season is described in Japan’s earliest poetry, and the customs that grew out of this sensibility are still very much in evidence. Since an excursion to one of these famous scenic spots often requires the better part of a day, eating and drinking have come to be regarded as basic elements of the day’s festivities rather than mere concomitants. The food is always something appropriate to the time of year, and often the cuisine itself has become associated with the place.

For 1,100 years, Kyoto was the capital of Japan, the seat of the imperial court and the center of Japan’s traditional culture. Although the emperor and the government moved to Tokyo (then called Edo) in the late 19th Century, Kyoto remains the conservator of the arts associated with the court aristocracy as well as of the military and clerical elites that grew up around it. Ironically, perhaps, my favorite places in Kyoto are not embedded in the urban patchwork of post-war concrete boxes, traditional houses and tile-roofed temples and gardens surrounded by mirror-faced high-rises, but in the hills to the east, west and north of the city proper, where snow lies deeper and longer in winter, and cool air hangs in river gorges and in wooded shade in summer.

By mid-April the cherry blossoms have scattered elsewhere in Tokyo and Kyoto, but at the temple of Ninnaji, between the city center and the Takao area to the northwest, the famous Omuro cherries, a pale pink grove of more than 200 trees, are in full bloom. The trees branch out directly from their bases in low mounds of earth--as you walk among them you are surrounded by clouds of blossoms rising like pink mist from the ground. The gracious extent of the temple precincts and the 17th-Century garden reflect Ninnaji’s long association with the imperial family. For two weeks each year, low wooden platforms covered with straw matting are set up under the cherry trees. From early morning until late in the afternoon people flock to Ninnaji, paying their regular admission fee plus a small surcharge for a day’s occupancy of one platform plus a pot of weak tea. Friends old and new, three generations of family members, cozy couples and company parties growing increasingly merry as the day wears on occupy the platforms, spreading their picnics among the cherry trees, often bursting into song inspired by the luminous blossoms and the sustained imbibing of sake.

Stalls on the temple grounds sell warmed sake and snacks, but the customary way to enjoy the outing is to bring a Japanese-style packed lunch ( obento ). Some of the most elegant come from Kyoto’s department stores (usually found on the basement level). Packed in individual wooden (or Styrofoam stained to look like wood) boxes, these may include rice formed into a five-lobed cherry blossom shape, prawns and vegetables cooked in broth, fish paste (colored pink and flower shaped), a few pieces of sushi and pickles.

In the dog days of summer, Kyoto steams under hot, hazy skies. The city’s denizens while away their leisure hours in icy coffee shops, or sit at home in their special summer crepe underwear, fanning themselves with elegant folding fans in one hand, mopping their streaming brows with small, neatly folded cloths in the other. Against the blazing sun of shadeless streets, parasols of cloth or paper are more than elegant affectations. The fall of night, when the temperature often holds in the 80s (called nettaiya, or “tropical nights,” on the weather report) offers little respite. Real relief is found only at the water-cooled elevated edges of the Kyoto basin. Rushing through a green cleft between Mts. Kurama and Kifune, the Kifune River cools the narrow valley. Here in the hills north of the city, knowing Kyotoites cool their feet and enjoy somen, threadlike fine wheat noodles, served over crystal-clear lumps of ice. By the first Sunday in May, the inns and restaurants along the river have built platforms out over the water, just inches above the swirling stream (the better to dangle your feet in the water when no one is looking).

About 20 minutes on foot upstream, the restaurant Shinshin’an straddles the pavement. Sunlight filters through screens of golden reeds, set up to shield guests from sun and stares of passersby. Clear water pours over the rocks, cooling the air and inviting dipping of exposed parts.

Shinshin’an, a branch of the restaurant Toriijaya farther upstream, is one of Kifune’s more elegant places to have somen as part of a full kaiseki meal (multi-course formal meal). Lounging in the speckled shade, gazing at the mossy rocks and trees on the opposite bank, all memory of the heat and the city fades. A meal might include hamo arai, slices of hamo eel dipped briefly in ice water to firm the flesh and dull the characteristic eely odor; a chilled blue-stemmed goblet of gooey grated tororo yam mixed with broth to a vichyssoise consistency, sparkling with junsai, the buds of a freshwater plant enveloped with a natural colorless jelly; and cold somen in dashi broth, served in a frosted glass bowl with shiitake mushrooms, seeds of aromatic prickly ash and a cold poached egg to provide a richer sauce when the yolk breaks.

When the mid-August Bon Festival has passed, the autumnal voices of insects make the air vibrate, and a cool clarity, unfelt a few weeks earlier, presages the coming of fall. The first leaves to put on a glowing display of color are those of the same cherry trees whose blossoms will be admired in April. But it is not until the maples begin to change, in the second half of October, that the Japanese really celebrate autumn. The blazing foliage of the hills rising steeply from either side of the Kiyotaki River have, since the early 9th Century, drawn visitors and pilgrims to Takao, about an hour by bus northwest of downtown Kyoto.

Three temples spread along the western bank of the river, but it is to the oldest, Jingoji, founded in 824, that the first-time traveler should turn. One of the most powerful Buddhist sculptures in Japan, the 9th-Century wooden image of the Buddha of Healing, Yakushi Nyorai, is always on view above the altar of the Golden Hall, or Kondo. The calm of Jingoji’s spacious grounds; an ancient pond dark with centuries of silt and decomposed leaves glimpsed between tall cypresses; conjure up the secluded mountain temples of the Heian period (794-1185), when the imperial court drove the powerful Buddhist clergy into areas remote from the center of the capital.

The hundreds of worn stone steps leading from the Takao bus stop down into the ravine of the Kiyotaki River and up to the gate of Jingoji provide the best stage for viewing the turning maple leaves. From Oct. 10 (a national holiday) until mid-November, a number of stands sell--believe it or not--maple-leaf tempura. Even for the Japanese, the pleasure must surely be conceptual rather than gustatory (try instead the fresh-roasted gingko nuts, pale yellow-green within their papery skins).

For more substantial refreshment, stop at one of the restaurants along the river, where you can warm yourself with sake heated to blood temperature and one-pot dishes (nabemono) cooked at your table by lantern light on long verandas or right on the stony riverbed. When winter comes to Kyoto, except in centrally-heated public and commercial buildings, few concessions are made to the drop in temperature. To sit and gaze at a frosty garden, now silenced by the cold, hovering over a brazier or an ineffective electric fire, is still considered an elegant pastime. The chilly pleasures of a winter landscape can be savored at any number of Kyoto’s great temples, but not all offer the compensation of yudofu (literally, “hot water bean curd”). One of the head temples of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, Nanzenji was established in the 13th Century in the heart of Kyoto’s Higashiyama (“eastern hills”) area. Some of the surviving buildings date from the early 17th Century and reflect the original architectural style imported from China.

Aside from immersing yourself to the chin in scalding water at your inn, the best way to warm up after or during sightseeing is by eating a dish cooked at your table over a charcoal brazier or, more often these days, an alcohol flame (if your table is outdoors, so much the better to disperse the unpleasant fumes). The most classic of such dishes is yudofu, snowy cubes of bean curd in hot water or a clear, seaweed-based broth, dipped in diluted soy sauce on the way to your mouth. Because of its high protein content when combined with rice, tofu is an important part of the Buddhist diet, which is vegetarian and was brought to Japan from China by Buddhist monks.

On the quiet street that runs along the northwest border of the compound, a number of small temples and other commercial establishments offer yudofu and more elaborate meals. The Choshoin, set in a lush garden, is one of the most appealing.

As the days lengthen, sliding doors are thrown open to the warming sun, and Kyoto’s cycle of seasons and celebrations starts again.

GUIDEBOOK

Keys to Kyoto

Getting there: Northwest flies non-stop to Osaka (the nearest airport to Kyoto) from Los Angles for about $930, advance-purchase, round-trip. United, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways also have connecting flights to Osaka. Buses run frequently to Kyoto Station (about 90 minutes). From Tokyo station, the bullet train takes about 2 1/2 hours to Kyoto Station.

Where to stay: Brighteon Hotel, recently-built hotel in the heart of the city; from U.S. telephones 011-81-75-441-4411, fax 011-81- 75-431-2360. Hotel Fujita Kyoto, small hotel by Kamo River, Nijo Ohashi Nishizume, Nakagyo-ku; tel. 011-81-75-222-1511, fax 011-81-75-256-4561. Hotel Gimmond Kyoto, pleasant hotel in the city center, Oike-dori Takakura Nishi-iru, Nakagyo-ku; tel. 011- 81-75-221-4111, fax 011-81-75- 221-8250. Kinmata Ryokan, beautifully kept, small traditional inn in central Kyoto, Gokomachi Shijo-agaru, Nakagyo-ku; tel. 011-81-75- 221-1039, fax 011-81-75-231-7632. Three Sisters Inn, traditional inn used to accommodating non-Japanese guests, near Okazaki Park , Okazaki Kurodani-mae, Higashiyama-ku; tel. 011-81-75-761-6336, fax 011-81-75-761-6338.

For further information: Japan National Tourist Organization, 624 S. Grand Ave., Suite 1611, Los Angeles 90017; tel. (213) 623-1952.