Essay of My Wonderful Life, A Trip to Osaka and Kyoto

It is the end of in January. I will be busy from the end of this week. I could scarcely take a leave now. So I suddenly decided to take a trip to Osaka and Kyoto for holidays. I checked the Website both of Ikkyu and each hotel's accommodation plans through Internet. If it was a few years ago, we should go to the branch in the travel agency, taking subway and time. However through Internet, I could book ideal plans directly. How convenient it is! Finally I booked the new Umeda's Westin Osaka and the Westin Miyako Hotel in Kyoto. They happened to belong to the same hotel group. But I found the strategy of this group. I thought they had a tendency of location at such a place, not at the station itself, but a little bit far from the real center of the station, and that there is a future possibility of convenience. Although at this moment, it seemed to be inconvenient. However sooner or later the place should become more convenient than now.

I stayed at the Westin Osaka Hotel, which is located at the same lot as the new Umeda city, which is operated by the Sekisui House. They built two big towers of buildings, which are connected at the top by the Open-Air View Deck, which is the 40th floor high. From this View Deck, we can see the panorama view of Osaka, such as buildings, highways, railroads, running tracks and cars, etc.. At first, I was scared to reach to this Deck, but soon I got used to stay there and enjoy looking around the city. I could even look at the landing airplanes at the Itami Airport.

After leaving the View Deck, I Went down to the underground level one of the buildings and found a street of old style, about a half century ago, that is the retro in 1955's. I loved the old style track, the red post box, the advertising of a dog, all of them brought me the old and good days.

It is mysterious indeed that such two strange worlds, one is the skyscraper's view of the modern Osaka and another is the old world are coexisting at the next door's building. There is a restaurant named Amadeus in my hotel, and we took breakfast. Some of guests were quite elderly men and couples, others were quite young married couple with children. Surprisingly there are some young husband and wife with small children, who get used to taking the Biking foods. My wife said, "Oh! Such small children can behave well and know how to enjoy foods here. They are frequent visitors to such a gorgeous hotel. It means that they belong to the rich. On the other hand, there are many poor who have to earn money for hands to mouth. Our society has been clearly divided into both sides." Well, I quite agree with her.

After the breakfast, we went to the Kaiyukan Kaiyukan aquarium. We took subway and easily arrived there. They exhibited the whale shark, swimming in the water tank of nine meters. The shark swam here and there, escorted by many small fishes. It was too big for taking picture, but I dared to took photograph of the diagonal angle. It seems to be a harmless shark, because it's main food is plankton and other small fishes. Therefore slightly bigger small fishes should think that they are safe to swim around this shark. If so, other hunting fishes would not approach to them. This is a kind of survival skill. Next to this water tank, I found that there was a big ocean sunfish. This fish is quite unique, having a funny style. I tried to focus it, however because its fast moving, I couldn't take good photographs.

I moved to the emperor penguin's room, baby penguins were born recently. They advertise that we could see penguin mother's treatment on baby. At first I couldn't find any babies in the room. I looked into the room and found that that's big bodies are babies! Sometimes babies are bigger than their mothers. Some couples near us murmured, "Is there such a big baby?" According to the explanation board, this baby is 90 days old.

Next day we went from Osaka to Kyoto and strolled in the west capital. We happened to visit the Ninna-ji temple. According to the Tsurezuregusa essay of the 15th century, there was an episode on this temple. One young priest let him head into the tripod kettle as jokingly. However his head could not slip through the kettle and caused a trouble. I remember that one of my university friends said to me with laughing that he found a young priest doing a shadow boxing against a garden lantern, which shows the tradition of this temple. According to the explanation, this temple has been closely related to the Imperial families and some of the main buildings are the gift from the Imperials. Once they were dismantled and reconstructed here again. Therefore this temple made the atmosphere of the Imperial Palace.

While we were looking around, we heard the professional explanation by a young priest. However as it was winter, we feel so cold and moved to the main streets of Kyoto. We arrived at the Ponto-cho and Hanami-Kouju area. Then we entered into the Gion corner, where we could see the traditional Kyoto arts, such as a tea ceremony, a flower arrangement, a Japanese herb and a Maiko dancing.

As it was a Sunday night of winter, there were not so many guests. We could see the performance at the second array. About one third is foreigners. The most funny and comical performance is the Kyougen. There were three players, that is, a master and his two attendants, Taro and Jiro. These two are so naughty men, because they drank sake, while their master went out. One day the master got angry and before going out, he binds their hands. After his leaving, these two naughty men managed to drink sake, with using their handicapped hands.

Finally, there was a Kyo-mai dancing by two Maikos, which was indeed wonderful. Especially the last dance of Gion-kouta was nice for us. Before we left, there was a special service to take photographs together with Maikos, which was really memorial for us.

On the next morning, we went to the Byodo-in Temple of Uji, where I had been almost every ten years. This temple was built in 1052, by the son Yorimichi Fujiwara of the most prosperous ruler of Japan at that time. The idea of that time was the end of the world. Most of people, including aristocrats and priests believed the end. So people worshipped the Amida Buddha, who was a relief of them. So this temple's Amida-dou of Byodo-in (Phoenix Hall) exhibited their ideal world of relief, displayed the Amida Buddha and flying Buddha of heaven. Although this temple was built about 1000 years ago, I still can imagine how wonderful when it was completed.

After leaving from the Byodo-in Temple, we went to the Obaku Manpuku-ji Temple nearby. It has a grand cathedral. It was built in 1654 by the highest priest of Ingen from China. Surprisingly this temple has kept the same way of the old Chinese style of Ming Dynasty. For example, the Brahman song is the same as the old China of 340 years ago. I am interested in this style, because even in China the Cultural Revolution would have stopped the old style. Therefore this temple is something like the canned food of 340 years ago.

(January 25, 2007)