michael lambe

Today’s Recommended Location:
There’s a nasty little bar on Kiyamachi called “Ing” or sometimes “Rock Bar Ing” which is quite popular with a certain sector of the foreign community (mainly sexually frustrated drunken white males). Unbeknownst to the majority of people who go there, there is another bar in the very same building, right next door in fact which is actually quite cool. It’s called “Small Town Talk” (named after a Bobby Charles song - click here for Bobby Charles: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-10-26/cover_story.html) and it’s owned and run by Kageyama-san who has an impressively huge collection of soul music on vinyl. This is he:

Philippe and I went there last weekend and enjoyed a couple of drinks whilst listening to Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott Heron and Van Morrison. This kind of place (i.e. guy with specific musical taste; jazz or blues or whatever, has huge music collection and runs a bar dedicated to it) is quite common in Japan. I really like it.

Lucky

Now a few days ago I got an email that said I’d won a million on the English National Lottery as a “consolation prize”. This interested me as I’d never actually entered the competition and what was really spooky was I had another mail a few days before that, informing me I’d won the Netherlands’ National Lottery too. Why, I must be the luckiest guy in the whole wide world.

Yesterday I climbed Daimonji-yama (mountain) with Chie. I see this mountain every day as my house is pretty close by and I figured it was time I hoiked myself up it. The mountain is famous because every summer at the end of the Bon festival a bunch of firemen climb up there and burn a big 大 kanji that can be seen all over Kyoto. There are a bunch of burning kanji and symbols on other mountains too but Daimonji is the biggest. These “Bon” fires are lit to guide the souls of the dead on their way back to Deadsville. The dead come back during Obon see, it’s a bit like Halloween. Sort of. You can click here if you want to see how it looks: http://www.phototravels.net/japan/pcd2633/daimonji-3.html

Anyway, it’s a nice climb, takes about an hour to get to the top and though it’s pretty hot these days and yesterday was very sunny, most of the climb is through woods, so it’s nice and shady and cool. Just getting some exercise, seeing some trees and listening to birdsong is good for the soul I reckon, but then of course there’s the view from the top too. You can basically see all of Kyoto - pretty impressive. Here’s Chie with a towel on her head.

Here’s myself looking all poetic.
In the afternoon we went over to the Kamogamo river and sat on a rock mid-stream and dangled our legs in the water for a while. Where the Takano-gawa and Kamogawa rivers join there’s a bit of land in between (which looks like an island but isn’t) and this is Shimogamo, one of my favorite places in Kyoto. There’s an ancient forest there called Tadasu no mori, which has various wacky stories attached to it but apparently you cannot tell a lie there, and back in the Heian Period (about a thousand years ago) aristocrats would meet there to settle their disputes. We strolled through the forest and came up to Shimogamo Shrine. It’s a very pretty place and allegedly the oldest shrine in Kyoto (though no-one is quite sure when it was founded - maybe 6th century?). Here are some pictures for your delectation….
…and delight.

“Holy” water here apparently. A thousand years ago the nobility would often gather here for purification rites, to pray for the harvest, or just enjoy a game of footie. Click here for Heian Period Footie: http://www.kyoto-np.co.jp/kp/topics/eng/2006jan/01-04b.html

Now this next picture is of a very weird tree, or trees…. or tree. You see two trees, have somehow grown together and become one. This is called “en-no-musubi”. 縁 is a special kind of connection between people or things (sort of like karma or fate), so people pray here for good fortune in romance or for their families, that sort of thing. It’s officially one of the “seven weird things of Kyoto”. Can’t wait to see the other six!