Every gaijin living in Japan has a personal relationship with Kyoto, the beautiful city that served as Japan’s capital for most of its history. I’ve been to Kyoto many times, and it’s one of my favorite places in the world. Founded in 794 as Heian-Kyo, it was made in imitation of the great Chinese cities of the era, sporting a Manhattan-style grid pattern with wide, straight roads that are actually named, quite convenient as streets are generally not named in Japan. Whenever I’m in the city I make sure to pay a visit to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, a wonderful temple founded in 798 that overlooks the city, and drink water from the waterfall on the temple grounds, which is said to bring you long life. (I always wonder at the Japanese custom of using communal cups at temples, though, with hundreds of visitors drinking out of the same cup in the course of an hour.)
Incidentally, you may have noticed that I typed “Kiyomizu-dera Temple” above. This is a little odd since tera (which changes to dera when joined with another word) means “temple” yet I added the English word at the end. This is a strange convention used in Japan in which the Japanese word for a place is incorporated into its official English name. Tokyo’s beautiful Ueno Park is officially listed as “Ueno-koen Park” (koen is Japanese for “park”) on maps, while you might find a government-published guide to traditional inns on the Izu-hanto Peninsula (hanto is a peninsula, literally a “half island”). No doubt this policy was the bright idea of some Japanese bureaucrat, and no one ever thought that it was odd.
Kyoto is my favorite place in the world.
