Visiting Uji, an Ancient Resort Area, on a Cold Spring Day

  We changed trains at Chujo-jima Station, and headed to Uji Station. Getting out of the station, we found an imitation ancient bridge across Uji River.  The bridge leads to an approach to Byodo-In Temple.   the stone-paved alley was filled with the fragrance of roasted tea leaves.  Uji is one of the two biggest tea brands in Japan.  The main pagoda of Byodo-In Temple, Ho-o-Do or Phoenix Hall, was unluckily under repairment, and we could not get in. We walked along a wistaria trellis and around a pond, and saw the hall from every direction.  At the front of the pagoda, my friend took out a 10 yen coin, and examined both the coin and the building.  Yes, we have a carving of the building on the coin.  As the exixtence of the front pond suggests, the temple had been a villa of one of the strongest clans in ancient Japan, Fujiwara clan.  Actually Uji area itself used to be a southern resort for aristocrats in the ancient capital, today's Kyoto.  The coldness of Kyoto was and still is very severe. Even today, the cold weather on the day, in one sense, persuaded us to visit Uji instead of Kyoto.  The annexed museum provided us a replica of the inside of Phoenix Hall.  Everything is richly-coloured, and looked rather Chinese than Japanese.  You can safely say that Japanese 'wabi' and 'sabi' is tatered Chinese gorgeousness.  In one of tea shops along the allay, we enjoyed Japanese poudered tea and tea dumplings to warm ourselves up.  It was rather windy and chilly that morning although the sky was farely clear.  Coming out to the bank of Uji River, we found an island in the river.  One side of the river is damed, and the water flow was so calm that the waves caused by the strong wind gave us an illusion that the water was running up there.  The other side of the river flowed very rapidly, which helped us understand the river used to be a southern stronghold of the ancient capital.  Genji Monogatari Museum gave us illuminative illusory images of nobles' romance, which impressed my friend a lot.  Me?  When I was a high school student, I tried to read Genji Monogatari, but was discouraged from going on, and stopped at the second book.  I found the story very unreasonable!
  The next and the last destination was Manpuku-Ji Temple, one of the biggest Zen temples in Japan.  Ingen opened the temple during Edo period, and the temple itself and the Zen school which the temple leads, Obaku-Shu School, is fairly new, and they keep a strong Chinese taste.  Some parts of the temple are richly-cloured, and monks read sacred books with the pronunciation much similar to today's Chinese language.  We got off the train at Obaku Station.  Across a street, we found a half-abandoned shopping street.  The street was coverd with an old arcade, and looked like a 'tunnel' as described by may friend.  There we found a tangle shop,a Japanese sweet shop, a flower shop, .... even a whale meat shop, which was closed either temporaly or permanently.  It is often the case that small shopping streets are giving in to large shopping malls.  Having gone through the 'tunnel', we soon found several Buddhism buildings.  Eventually we came upon the entrance of Manpuku-Ji Temple.  Its buildings and alleys are arranged so as to look like a dragon.  The center of the alleys are paved with angled square stones so that they look like parts of a scaly dragon.  Entering the templeseems to be being swallowed by the dragon, and we head toward its tail.  Some parts of the temple is more Chinese than Japanese.  Although the appearance of each building is rather Japanese, but if you look into inside, you can find it furnished with colourful fittings and offerings.  It is obvious that some followers of the temple or the school are Chinese.  When Ingen arrived at Japan, he stayed at Sufuku-ji Temple for a while.  The temple is located in Nagasaki, which had some Chinese residents even during the isolation period of Edo Era.  The question is why Tokugawa Shogunate needed to import new Zen ideas.