Festival and Castle?! =O
Due to the sudden, unexpected rain of yesterday, we had
pushed off seeing the Aoi Matsuri (Blue Festival) from yesterday to today. We
walked across the street after classes to the Shimogamo Shrine (Shinto), where
the Festival processions proceed from. We hunkered right down behind one of the
screens and waited for the actual procession to get going. After patiently
waiting for a few minutes, we were rewarded with some horse races. Meh. I’ve seen
horses before. But the cool thing to see was the authentic (or so they
speculate =P) Heian-period garb that the horse riders and other performers in
the festival don (Yup, I just used ‘don’. Deal wid’ it =P). 
After sitting in the dirt for a few minutes, we moved on to
our next destination: Nijyou Castle. After going through it all, I determined
that this is one site that both of my parents would find amazing for their own
different reasons. The castle itself was built by the Tokugawa family just 4 years
after the rise of the Tokugawa family to the Shogunate seat-of-power. The
Tokugawas were constantly afraid of the emperors assassination, and built many
such castles as this as strongholds to house him in for indeterminate periods
of time to confuse their enemies. One of the tricks they used to thwart
would-be assassins was to create what they called ‘nightingale floor boards’.
By using some type of carpentry I never heard of nor understood, all of the
original wooden floors in the castle proper would creak very loudly when
stepped on. It was literally impossible to make 2 steps without making a
jarring sound. The sounds, however, are also slightly musical in a sense. The
carpenters made them all make different pitches, giving the pitter-patter of
steps a lilting, melodic sense to them—thus the nightingale floorboards =).
The gardens outside of the castle proper were breath-taking. My mother could have (and
probably would have) spent the entire day just wandering around the half-dozen
or so gardens that dotted the complex. They had azalea gardens, sand gardens,
shrubbery gardens, tree gardens, among many others. After going to the
festival, it only gave us about 2 hours to take it all in…which made me wish
that this flirting with Kyoto was more than just a measly 2 weeks so that we
would have enough time to visit and do everything with enough time to enjoy it
sufficiently =(…
After the castle, a few friends and I walked a few blocks
down to ‘Shijou’ (the shopping district in Kyoto for lack of a better explination)
to do some window shopping. After spending a few hours there, we each made our
way to the public transit stop that we needed to get home.
Today was definitely a lot of fun, and a very cool cultural
experience to take in. And luckily I made a pretty embarrassing mistake today,
one of the ones that everyone makes when learning a new language, and one that
I know I will make again…
What I wanted to say: Yesterday we didn’t really do anything
much.
What I actually said: The day after tomorrow we didn’t
really do anything much.
Silly me =P
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