Day 6: I want to buy a little pot

Day 6: The Samurai, The Kiln, and the Castle.

I am sitting here in the lobby of the Kanazawa Niko waiting for my 2:00 train. I am watching a troop of samurai in full battle regalia marching back and forth. They are under the flower banner of the lord Kanazawa. They appear to be lost. They had best get their act together because the festival parade starts in just a short time and they aren't going to be happy if they miss it.

Banzai !!

We are going to miss it, however. Our train will be leaving just before the parade starts. We will have to enjoy the show as we hurry past it while they queue up to start.

We had a busy morning of it. We went to the city of Kazama Castle and Garden. Very old. The garden is judged as one of the 3 most beautiful gardens in Japan (which presumably means, third most beautiful gardens in the whole fraking universe). Let me give you an idea about how old and planned this garden is: There is one tree that was pointed out to us:

Results of the Mound Method (and like 300 years)

That has it's roots exposed. This is not by accident. This is called the “Mound” technique. The tree is planted in a mound of dirt. It is planted as a sapling. When it gets big, the mound is dug away to leave the root exposed . So imagine planting this. You have to go to your gardener and say, “Hey, make me a mound and plant a tree. In 200 years, go dig the dirt off. Jon will like it”. 

We also saw examples of the mound technique still in progress. Probably only 100 years on that one. Just another century or so to go. 

They also had the nations oldest fountain.

It is like 300 years old. It is powered by gravity as it is feed by (presumably air tight) pipes from the upper pond. I wonder how hard it is to make pressurized piping from …... bamboo?

Lots of other things to see. I will try and just put a couple of pictures in this for you.

A famous japanese poet (which if there is a god in the heavens, I will go look up his name and put it here instead of this parenthetical remark) who visited the gardens and wrote this Haiku. It was carved into stone and put in the garden.

The stone is there on the left.

 It reads:

Aka aka to


Hiwa tsure naku mo


Aki no kazu

which roughly translates as:

“How brightly the sun shines, turning its back to the autumn wind

I have translated this Haiku in to a more traditional English Form:

Here is the sunning shining so brightly

That I don't want to think of it lightly

While The wind is so cold

it makes me feel old,

But is ignored by the sun, and quite rightly.

I asked Daniel what he thought of this garden compared to the formal gardens we have visited in Charleston South Carolina. He said that the ones in Charleston were much more planned. Much more geometric. These here were more wild and random. Then we agreed that these were just as planned but had the appearance of being wild and random. Surely someone thought about that a lot.

 

 

 

One of the things that I find intriguing about Japan is their curious and insistent use of Uniform in pratically all working situations. We have already touched on the school girl (and boy) uniforms. You also see it in the police, safety officers, and fireman (like we do in the US, but the japanese are much more..... uniform.... about it. To some extent, however, these uniforms extend into everyday life. Here is a good example, these guys are the gardeners. This is typical gardener uniform. I remember seeing guys dressed like this in Sasebo when I lived there in 1970. This is a similar outfit that people (especially older people) wear to work in their gardens or the rice fields.

Look at the hose on that guy.

Next we crossed over the highway to visit the old Castle. I guess that after the Shogun period (called the Edo Period) they entered the reform period. During this time the Emperor had overthrown the Shogun but I take it that the peace was not easy. The order was given to tear down all of the traditional samurai lord castles. So there are only pieces remaining here and there. Pretty cool pieces. At this place, they have recently (1990?) done a complete re-creation of the traditional castle gate. So there is an old one and a new one. In a 1000 years, they will both be old ones. We could go inside and explore the new one.

 

 

 

Our next stop was one of medieval high tech and art. We went to a local potter shop. The master potter there (a young man) gave us a tour. It was a saturday so there were no workers there. Normally he would have 3 teams of workers. Potters (working the wheel), Painters, and Kiln workers. He explained each steps of the process to us. I found it fascinating as there were a number of physical and chemical issues that make complete sense to me in hindsight but I would not have predicted them a forehand. First they shape the clay on the wheel. This area of Japan is renowned for its clay material. That material is found as a hard rock, which is ground to a powder and made into clay. After the (say pot) is formed, they let it dry for a few days. If it doesn't dry completely it will explode when it is first put into the fire (“very dangerous” says the master (he spoke good english)). I am thinking of the poor girl on animal house that was killed in a tragic kiln accident. She was making me a pot.

Anyway, After it is fired once, it is covered in a special powder and fired again. Now it is smooth and shiny. It is also 18% smaller than it was. It shrinks in the fire process. Speaking of that, this place had two kilns. They were made of some kind of rock (kiln rock?) and were maybe 12x6x4 (feet). They are heated with electricity but also use wood logs (“The electricity for the heat, the wood for the color”, ays the master). After being fired they have to be allowed to cool. For 4-5 days. We had one kiln that was closed and hot, it had been fired yesterday. It had a digital readout that said 818 C. If they were to open the kiln before it had cooled, the pots would crack.

Temperature Shrinkage

Colors Change with fire

Last they are painted. You put on a layer of paint, and then you fire again. The fire process drastically changes the color of the ink (like from yellow to blue,etc). If you have a multi color bowl, you fire and paint for each color.

Then he sat down cross legged at a wheel and threw us a couple of pots. It was fascinating. He could easily have been making that movie “Ghost”. Where is the crew from “Community” when you need them?

So he spends like 5 minutes making a beautiful pot. He sets it aside. Then he says, “at this stage it is very soft” and he bends the lip over destroying the pot. A few people gasped in horror. He laughed a little. Then he made us a sake flask. Wow. Good thing I have pictures to explain all of this to us.

 

 

This guy is the 5^th generation master working at this shop. Behind him on the wall was a picture of his grandfather (Great?) throwing a pot for a bunch of school kids in uniform. One of those kids was the crown prince. The Japanese think much of their crown prince.

In the end, he said it takes around 2 weeks to make a single pot. (of course, they make then in large batches, handmade but essentially identical. They have little sticks they use to measure dimensions. He said, “if the if pot throwers make a pot a little too big the painters get Very mad”.

After seeing all of that, I just had to have something to take with me. Luckily he had a wide range of things you could by. I passed on the $32,000 vase and got a couple of tea cups for like around $70. This is what a call a first class souvenir. It comes with a story. I dated a girl like that once. (the other end joke I had was even worse, so don't complain).

Right now I am on a high speed computer train (not the shinkansen, but maybe 100mph) going from Kanazawa to Kyoto. I just want to say: I love my Macbook Air. Oooh, a shinto shrine !!

Back on the tour, our next stop was an old and partially perserved Saumarai neighborhood. This is where 3^rd and 4^th class samurai lords and soldiers lived when they weren't out making B movies. We saw some more lovely gardens and I was once again amazed at all of the water flowing through the city in well controlled little rivers. I don't know if this is the wet season or what. I guess it must be, but it certainly hasn't rained on us yet.

 

 

 

 

 

When we arrived from the tour back at our Hotel (to pick up our baggage prior to the train ride, which I now realize you know I am on, so I can't make that very suspenseful. Hmmm. Perhaps I was run over by a float or something.... Anyway, there was a major street parade and carnival gearing up to start. Daniel and I saw a LOT of samurai soldiers, traditional firemen (with their ladders and special ceiling pulling down tools)(Perhaps they were a Ninja assault team in special holiday colors). Anyway, hundreds of people in Kimono, Happy Coat, Armour, and other fun things. We didn't get to see much of them, but it was still amusing. The Samurai were especially friendly. They let the pretty girls touch their swords.

 We got to the station and and lined up on the platform under the sign that said "Car 8" and our train name. The train showed up 10 minutes before departure, but it ended before where we were saying (see below). Our guide (in the blue there) said, "don't worry, the other half of the train will get here in a couple of minutes". And it did. See the nice uniformed young japanese girl guiding in the oncoming train section.

More Women In Uniform !!

And now we are on the train. Perhaps I will watch the rice fields go by some more. Hopefully I can post this from our hotel in Kyoto.