February 28\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nagao-san had found a train schedule for me on his cell phone, which I followed even though I’d arrive in Kyoto over half an hour before the time Naomi and I had agreed on.\u00c2\u00a0 I purchased another bottle of sparkling water and waited on the sunny platform for the train out of Gifu.\u00c2\u00a0 It would have been faster to take a less direct route,\u00c2\u00a0using the Shinkansen bullet train, but Nagao-san’s route was cheaper, and I quite like the slow, methodical plod of the regular trains.\u00c2\u00a0 They look just like the train at the end of “Spirited Away.”\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I got off at Kyoto after exactly two hours and walked toward the wicket gate, already thinking about where to go to the bathroom and where to find a coin locker in that huge train station, when one of the people rushing past me whirled around and shouted “Stephan!”\u00c2\u00a0 If my heart hadn’t stopped, I would have dropped my bags.\u00c2\u00a0 It was Naomi, who had been on the same train, it turned out, and had thought we’d agreed to meet an hour earlier than I had remembered.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
A toilet and a coin locker later we were on a bus for the Ginkakuji<\/a>, a UNESCO World Heritage site.\u00c2\u00a0 It had started to drizzle and the drizzle intensified once we arrived.\u00c2\u00a0 Ginkakuji means silver-plated temple, but it isn’t silver-plated.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the thought that counts, apparently.\u00c2\u00a0 The most striking aspect of the temple site, aside from the Ginkakuji building, is the double sand sculpture consisting of a large truncated cone with a dimple in the top and an expansive free-form with diagonal stripes reminiscent of a soccer jersey.\u00c2\u00a0 The free-form stood about a foot above the ground, the outer walls rising at the same steep angle as the cone.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t begin to imagine how long it must have taken to make this sculpture, nor how much continual upkeep it requires.\u00c2\u00a0 Desite this admiration, I preferred the garden and its luscious green to the temple buildings, especially in the rainy weather with occasional slants of sun.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n As we left, the rain stopped.\u00c2\u00a0 We had lunch in the Cafe Bear; I had an omchiizukaree, a thin omelet wrapped around a lot of rice and a bit of cheese, with Japanese curry on the side.\u00c2\u00a0 In the corner stood a darts machine with a video playing J-pop; the machine would make a robotic coughing sound at random intervals.\u00c2\u00a0 We both had matcha ice cream for dessert – I ordered it without asking Naomi after she’d admitted to not having tried any yet.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n