Christmas in Japan

This is our first year in Japan for Christmas and we tried to learn a bit about the traditions the Japanese do in the holidays. Most of the population is not Christian so they use Christmas as just an excuse to get together and have a party.  They like to eat fried chicken and Christmas cake on Christmas night.  We bought ourselves a small Christmas cake and went out to the town looking for some Christmas light displays.  We found a few.  The Japanese have more traditions based around New Year's.  The Turner's favorite Christmas traditions are reading a Christmas book daily, advent calendars (this year we had eight), the 12 Days of Christmas in secret to a neighbor, and filling our manger with hay by doing secret acts of service during the season.

Christmas Display on the base

Our little Japanese Cake

We were excited to travel to Kyoto City after Christmas. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Misawa to Tokyo and then transfered to Kyoto.  Kyoto is the original home of the Japanese Emperor so it is filled with historical buildings.  The Japanese people think of it as old Japan and travel there to pay homage to the history of their country.  On our first day we took a bus to Iga City, about an hour and half away.  It is the birth place of the Ninja.  We saw the Ninja Museum (minja as Pants calls it) where clothing and weapons were on display.  We saw a home of the Ninja with lots of hidey holes for weapons and look outs.  The kids bought throwing stars, shuriken, and brandished them for the rest of the day.  We saw a Ninja show where they fought with real weapons.  The show used lots of silly sound effects and stunts.  The kids loved it.  We explored Ueno Castle and went to a museum where we learned about the Ueno Tenjinn Festival.  Lots of parade floats, costumes, and masks were on display.

We took a tour with JR Sunrise to see the temples and shrines around Kyoto.  There are so many, we could not possibly see them all in one day.  We first went to the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine.  It is famous for housing the God of scholarship.  We all rubbed the head of the Ox to get smarter.  We learned that there is a shrine dedicated to just about anything.  There is a God for all of our wishes in life.

We went to the Ryoanji Temple.  It had a beautiful zen feeling and was surrounded by beautiful green gardens and a serene rock garden.  I found it very peaceful and inviting.  

The third temple that we visited before lunch was the Kinkaku-ji Temple.  It is a world heritage site designed by the U.N. The wooden architecture is covered in thin layers of pure gold and is surrounded by a beautiful pond.  Bear could imagine herself taking a boat from the temple out to one of the little islands in the pond to read her favorite book.  The gold of the temple was beautiful and shone even on this overcast day.

Our fourth stop was the Heian Shrine.  They had a very big red Torii gate and we learned that Torii gates are only found at Shrine.  The shrine was built to celebrate the 1100 year anniversary of the founding of the city of Kyoto.  All of the architecture in the building was red. 

Pants and Josh washing their hands at the shrine

We went to the Sanjusangen-do temple.  We were not allowed to take pictures here due to its sacredness but how I wished to.  Our tour guide told us that there would be many statues inside the building.  When I saw them, I audibly gasped. There were row upon row of statues and they went on seemingly forever.  Supposedly, each statue was different in some way, and each one represents a Buddhist god.  It was very subtle.  There are 1, 001 life-size statues in this the longest wooden structure.  It was built in the 13^th Century.  I thought I was amazed and then we came upon the huge Buddha in the middle.  Again, gasp.  It was really amazing.

I took this picture of the brochure. It does not do the temple justice!

The last place we visited was Kiyomizu-dera Temple.  There was a really fun street leading up to the temple filled with shops and visitors.  It was really fun to see the ladies and some men dressed in Kimonos.  Since the people do not wear Kimonos anymore in everyday life, they save them for special or religious occasions and they often wear them when visiting Kyoto.  The Temple is on a hill so we could see the city below.  It is also a World Heritage Site and was a fun, energetic area of Kyoto to end our daily tour. 

Every day as we have been sight-seeing, we start and end our day taking the subway to Kyoto station from our hotel.  I was proud of us for being able to navigate the public transportation in a foreign city and foreign country.  The kids were really great about it too and never got sick of the train ride back and forth.

Chillin' on the subway with our luggage.  Our international travelers!

We went to Arashiyama, a 15 min train ride away.  This was a really busy little city full of great shops and restaurants.  I loved the look and feel of this tourist destination.  We went to the Togetsu-kyo Bridge (Moon Crossing Bridge.)  It is an iconic landmark built during the Heian Period (794-1185).  The forested mountain area behind the bridge sets it apart from the surroundings.  We explored the gardens of the Tenryu-ji Temple ranked among Kyoto’s five great Zen temples.  It is also a world heritage site and I am finding that the gardens of the temples are always worth exploring.  Just north of the temple were the bamboo groves.  They were really fun to watch swaying back and forth in the breeze.  Lastly, we hiked up the mountain to Monkey Park Iwatayama.  It was an open area where the monkeys just roam freely.  We were able to get quite close to them and feed them from our palms in the monkey house.  There were nice views to the city from the top of the mountain.

            This evening, back in Kyoto, we went to a place called Owl Café.  There was not any food there (Josh found this to be false advertising) but we had an hour to just hold and pet all sorts of owls.  We had them on our hands, shoulders, and even heads (in Bear and Bub’s case.)  The kids thought this was just fabulous and I was struck with the thought that after seeing so many world heritage sites, it is entirely possible that they will go home just talking about the Owl Café.  We have had a wonderful time and we used it well, even though we could have benefited from two more weeks!