Kurama

Joules and I like visiting Kurama, up in the hills to the north of Kyoto. It's a bit cooler than in town and there is a good walk across the hills from Kibune to Kurama, which we did in 2003, ending up at a fab onsen, which has outdoor baths. Japan is a country of festivals and they come in all shapes and sizes. We went to 2 festivals slightly unusual ones in May and June this year at Kurama temple.


Each year on the night of the May full moon they hold the Uesaku festival. It is a Himalayan style festival, the only one like it in Japan and Joules, Yoko and I went along. It's a nighttime festival so the path up to the temple was lit with lanterns and at the top most people held small candles.

There were just a few clouds in the sky and the full moon was shining brightly down on the fir tree covered hills and valleys. The first part of the evening involved walking through the underground caverns at the back of the temple, which contained a small Buddha.


Along the way we were blessed by chanting priests. The second part was a 90 minute meditation session. Unfortunately sitting down on the gravely ground in complete silence in the now chilly night were not the ideal conditions to attempt meditation for the first time! After 30 minutes we made as quiet an exit as possible to catch the last train home. There was a third part that apparently ran into the small hours – I guess you’d need to go yourself to find out about that.


In late June Joules and I went to a rather more accessible daytime festival – the Takekirie bamboo cutting ritual. This is apparently performed to prevent disaster and to honour the sacred waters flowing around the mountains of Kurama, however we mainly went along to watch men in funny costumes hacking up big bamboo with shiny swords. There are two sections of bamboo cutting: in the first section one team at a time cut the bamboo, counting how many strikes are needed and in the second half all the teams complete against each other in a race. A lady dressed in a scary orange costume performed a dance in the interval. At the end of the rituals there was a mad scramble by the audience to collect shards of bamboo to take home for good luck. This looked fun so I joined in the clean up operation.