Day 7: Pottery Class, Tea Ceremony

Breakfast at the hotel; much more westernised than we've encountered thus far.

After breakfast we meet our guide for the day, who asks us what we like about Japan. We mention a number of things, including Studio Ghibli, not realising that she will use this information later!

After getting our day passes for the Kyoto buses (there isn't much of a subway system in the city, so to get anywhere you really need to take either a bus or a taxi), our guide takes us to Kinkaku-ji (also known as the Golden Pavilion).

The temple (amongst many other things) was the setting for Mishima Yukio's notorious novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which was inspired by the burning of the temple by a young Buddhist in 1950 (an event which profoundly shocked Japan). Today it's a serene place oblivious to the many tourists gathering around it, and making use of the "borrowed scenery" style of Japanese landscaping.

We were pleased to see an ex-bonsai tree; its original owner having died a couple of centuries ago, it had been allowed to grow free ever since (although in its extreme old age it needs some support these days).

We catch a bus (actually 2 buses) back towards the centre of the city, busy, and not as punctual as we have grown to expect of public transport in Japan. After a quick (but delicious) noodle lunch (including further instruction as to how to properly eat noodles - dip them in the stock and slurp away, the slurpier the better), we make a dash for our Tea Ceremony appointment. Our hostess takes us through the steps of the ceremony (although at around 10 minutes, it's a highly condensed version of what can take more than an hour), and we're all surprised to learn that the tea is mixed with a bamboo whisk that renders it somewhat frothy in nature.

Suitably relaxed, we then walk through some of the delightful back streets of Kyoto.

Suddenly, we stumble upon a very familiar figure, and this is when we realise our guide has been taking careful note of what we told her earlier - the somewhat pensive (but friendly) Totoro below sits outside a shop that specialises in all things Ghibli; 20 minutes later I have completed my collection of all 3 Totoros and we have acquired several other delightful bits of memorabilia.

ありがとう!

It's ok Totoro!

Having been dragged away from the Ghibli shop, there's time for a brief visit to a sweet factory before we head for our pottery lesson. Our instructor gets us set up behind our pottery wheels and does a good job of explaining to five ingenues how to go about fashioning something out of clay.

All in all the results are perfectly respectable, and worth the effort of having them glazed and shipped to us.

For supper tonight we attempt to find Musashi Sushi; a highly regarded kaitenzushiya (conveyer belt sushi) restaurant located somewhere in Kyoto station. 45 minutes later we admit defeat and end up at fast food place instead (although it has to be said, such establishments are vastly superior to their UK counterparts). Still, we shall not be defeated - maybe tomorrow night we will manage to find it (with a bit of Googling back at the hotel this evening).

All 3 Totoros, chilling out