A Reunion with Nami sensei

Thursday, 17 May 2018

A hot day in Kyoto.  We met Nami sensei (our Japanese language teacher from our long stay) for an outing together,  She is in her 6th year of getting a PhD in some aspect of educational philosophy and has 3 more years to go.  In the meantime she teaches classes in pedagogy etc at several universities.  Interesting to discuss with her the issues of conflict and learning independent thinking in the context of Japanese education which stresses teacher neutrality. Anyway, we had a wonderful day even if we were ashamed to have forgotten most of our Japanese lessons.

We started out for Uji (the tea producing area by the Uji River), admired the sculpture of Murakami Shikibu (author of Tale of Gengi), and walked up to the magnificent imperial house Byodiin, dating to the 11th century and gloriously restored.  Of course, unlike our first visit, we had to share the place with about a million school kids on their outing.  But it was as alway magnificently graceful and stately as it overlooked the pond.  The golden phoenixes on the roof keep and eye on all the goings on.  Inside the highlight are the wonderful, fluid, expressive statues of musicians and dancers, which we remembered from our first journey.  After we had a nice lunch with noodles, rice with tea and miso, etc,  Then on to see another shrine, and get some iced chai before riding back to Kyoto,  Win was exhausted and went home to nap, and Nami and I went to the National Museum to see an exhibit of Iko no Taiga, an Edo era artist of great acclaim.  His work filled all three floors, a bit overwhelming but wonderful to see.  Apparently he was a child prodigy in calligraphy before he became an artistt.
We continued walking to the ...shrine, and finally met up with Win, walked some more to an Okinawan restaurant in the vicinity of Kyoto University for a great meal, of which the crunchy, beady seaweed was particularly memorable.  With the very last strength my legs had to give, we made our way back home.  We had a wonderful time and agreed that Nami and Val should definitely meet up some day!

Ike no Taiga

Lady Murakami Shikibu

Byodoin

W&B by the Uji River