They have Chuppa Chups in Kyoto don’t they?

Ginger always expressed glee at the thought of boarding the shinkansen. It’s a super-fast railway system that relies on bullet shaped trains that power through obstacles like mountains by using tunnels. It’s also linked to major transport hubs like airports and suburban rail lines. Peta wasn’t so thrilled about the shinkansen. I’ll be frank: she hated any trains. It did not matter to her whether she we were catching the local subway system or the the little cantankorous train pulleys that made the rounds of the backyard urban fringes in Kyoto, or the bullet train, she hated it.

I handed over ticket duties to J—-. It was smile-inducing to watch him negotiate the intense ticketing and spidery rail maps. He got better and better at it, figuring out all sorts of crazy manoeuvres. This is J—-’ vignette about buying tickets in Osaka, having planned to go to Kyoto:

I’m down in the bowels of the earth, standing in front of an array of ticket machines and a subway map that is about 20 ft long.

Now the first time you use public transport in any new city is an exercise in logical deduction; you have to look at one map to figure out a color coding, then match that to another map to find the station name in your language/alphabet, then cross reference to some badly printed bit of paper sticky taped to a wall somewhere else to figure out the platform.

So I’m standing in front of one of the ten ticket machines and I’m doing pretty well – I’ve managed to tell it that I want a ticket (an obvious starting point but a bigger challenge than you might have thought), and I’ve told it there are two adults and that we want the subway. Christine, Ginger and Peta are off in the department store across the concourse handbag shopping because this is, of course, men’s work.

Then, as was bound to happen, I pressed some button that removed everything I’d done, changed the machine to some new mode and generally faffed things up. I stood there looking at the machine and tentatively pressed a few buttons. At this point the shiny steel plate to the right of the machine opens inwards and a man, slightly startled by my appearance, pops his head out and starts talking to me in Japanese. After a few rounds of broken Japanese, English and some charades he leans over and starts pressing the buttons on the machine for me. He even took the money out of my hands and feed it into machine from which he seemed to protrude. I thanked him as best I could, he nodded at me, pulled his head in and the flap closed.

Three tickets in hand and trying to suppress a giggle I wandered off to find the family.

The handbag window-shopping wasn’t all that enticing you know. I preferred scouting for bento boxes.
We slid into Kyoto one Friday morning in mid-October. The soft rain had already nudged its way into Osaka so we had a couple of umbrellas poised for action once we alighted form the bullet train. Ginger was given her own plastic red umbrella that she was determined to use at any opportunity. The Kyoto station building is big, black and bountiful; it’s full of department stores housed under one huge structural steel matrix-like canopy.

I refused to walk to our accomodation in the rain so we caught a taxi. I’m so glad we did as it’s not like catching a taxi anywhere else. The driver wore white gloves. One isn’t allowed to open and close the taxi passenger doors because it happens automatically. There are doilies spread on all the seats. Hello Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore! Ginger was also determined to ’scare’ anyone who she made eye contact with. As far as we could tell, that meant that meant laughing at people through the rear passenger window.

J—- had booked our accommodation months before. I had wanted to stay at a ryokan, a traditional inn, originally set up to accommodate travelling salesmen and merchants. The taxi took us to the old part of Kyoto and we were enchanted from the very beginning. Rikiya is a traditional wooden building right in the centre of the old imperial capital, and west of the Kodajii Temple with the large concrete Buddha that Peta and Ginger appropriated as their own for the following months. Peta repeated the word Buddha many times and Ginger claimed to see Buddha in cloud formations over and over.

When we entered the inn, the elderly proprietress was asleep under a pile of blankets in the reception area. She rose to greet us and immediately cooed over the children. All the rooms are Japanese style. In our case there was a large room laid with tatami mats and three futons, framed with post-and-beam construction; there were sliding timber framed screens that sectioned off a couple of small alcove spaces directly adjacent to the main space.

We sat on cushions at a low table and revelled in the cake and tea that was served at our arrival. Entry into the room was through a small ante-space that contained a washbasin, obviously separate to the sleeping room. Here, we were meant to leave our in-house slippers that replaced our shoes at the entry to the inn. One alcove space abutted the streetside fronatge. It was sunken at a lower level to the road so I could see people striding past. Here, was a shoji screen to a small garden space, carefully filtering the outside light, and a restful sofa where I made notes once the children fell asleep. Another unscreened alcove space, called a tokonoma, formed a raised platform that traditionally displayed art, scrolls and other precious objects.

At the ryokan we bathed together as a family in a fully white tiled bathroom. Instilling correct procedure into two excitable children wasn’t easy but we all felt a lot better after scrubbing and sluicing and rinsing ourselves after the day’s travel. On a walkabout earlier in the day, J—- discovered a basic organic restaurant. Here we met Fuko, the young son of the proprietors. He sat with us and his aunt told us that he thought Ginger was a doll. Ginger was turned away many times from the hot kitchen in her attempt to hug and chase him with excitement. The food was simple: brown rice, salmon with teriyaki sauce, organic wine cider in wine glasses, bread, pasta with vegetable gratin, spaghetti with vegetables.

After our meal we walk around cobbled alleys and underpasses and lanes with our mishmash of rainjackets and umbrellas, plastic, red and clear. The light rain and delicately detailed nightlights made a beautiful picture, far removed from the bright lights-big city pace of Osaka. The townhouses had beautiful stone bases with an array of bamboo screens, rattan, camphor and cedar timber walls, and soft planting. Small luminous fixtures poised directly on the stone lanes or fixed to entry areas carefully named houses and restaurants and shops, and gave some warm light to entrances. Sometimes it was difficult to tell apart a cosy bar from a private dwelling. We were hyper-aware of a more insular and precious inner life behind the gorgeous facades and made mental notes to come back and peek into these private gardens and entryways.

The next day, on his early morning walk, J—- bought some rolls for breakfast. We then walked through the Yasaka Temple and Maruyama Park. There is a weeping Cherry tree with majestic poise, a pond with carp and many ambling paths. We continued to walk uphill through crowded vendor streets, where Ginger rang a bell at a rice ball stand in order to make her purchase, and stared at geisha, real and fake. We continued up a tree lined pathway passing by small stone garden Buddhas to the hill-topped Kiyomizu Temple. The temple and its grounds are magnificent, full of terraced timber pavilions, sacred water streams and numerous wooden pillars. Brides in elaborate kimonos and tourists weave past one another. Ginger and Peta are photographed by men and women, mostly Chinese tourists. They are tired and it is difficult to keep them in check.

We lunch at a Chinese restaurant on a main busy street. Peta is unable to sit still at the low table we are seated at. She tries to lie in my arms. We return to the ryokan where Peta sleeps. Ginger declines but we know she wall fall in a crooked heap later when she sits int he tiny red stroller we have brought with us. J—- runs errands while I try to sleep with Ginger. Laundry needs to be washed. There are photos to be burnt onto a disc. The store owner eventually hand delivers the disc to our ryokan. Somehow he managed to find where we are staying.

I’m full of envy . J—- can exist as a separate entity for a couple of hours. Of course, I would panic a little at the prospect of negotiating all those tiny streets. I also want to be able to spend time alone with Ginger as I haven’t had many opportunities in the last 18 months. We do try to sneak moments throughout the trip. In Osaka, Ginger and I lunched at an uptight 1950s Salon du The at Daimaru. Crustless chicken sandwiches and iced lemon drinks are consumed with gusto. She milks it. Obviously her self imposed diet of plain white rice was not absolute according to her mood.

In the evening we take a taxi to commence the Philosopher’s walk in the north-east part of town, by a residential canal. It is a special contemplative walk going from Nanzenji, Honen-in, and Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) but the night cool air means we are the lone walkers. At the end we are confused at to where the train station is. A local resident walking his dog offers to take us. It is out of his way but he insists. He is a cardiologist who has visited Melbourne and offers some wonderfully obscure insight: Here is the temple where Scarlett Johanssen is filmed in Lost in Translation. It is the Nanzenjii temple which cannot be visited by us given we have walked during closing hours. I hand the kind man a Chuppa Chup for his daughter as we have nothing else to offer. I’m sure they have Chuppa Chups in Japan. Don’t they?