To celebrate Tết, Vietnamese decorate the entrance ways to their homes and places of business with flowers, in some cases with two simple flower pots on either side of the entrance, in other cases with elaborate flower displays that can transform otherwise grey Hoi An streets lined with ramshackle buildings into rainbows of color.
Vietnamese pagodas, beautifully maintained year around, positively glow with flowers and color during the Tết holiday.
Today is the first day of Tết, the lunar new year’s holiday in Vietnam. Join me in Hoi An and welcome the Year of the Snake!
Before new rice is sown, the paddies are flooded and the soil is plowed and smoothed, in Hoi An these days, using tractors. The paddies are then drained and the farmers broad cast the rice by hand onto the muddy soil. A few days after the seeds begin sprouting, the fields are flooded again and the new rice grows quickly. For the first two or three weeks after planting, the farmers wade into the paddies every day to work the soil with spades on long poles. I presume this effort loosens and aerates the soil to facilitate growth of the new rice. In any event, when the rice reaches a certain height and density in the fields, this work stops and the rice is left to grow until harvest time in the summer.
Vietnamese women, like these market sellers, really are the heart and soul of this culture. Vietnamese men do their part for sure, but without the women keeping their eyes on things, this country would almost certainly go off the rails.
When I see the word “botanical,” my first thought is gin. Okay, but… A visit to Kyoto’s very beautiful botanical garden reminded me that the word has other uses as well. I spent a long, delightful morning wandering through this magnificent park. Enough said: The photos speak for themselves.
Located in the foothills around Mt. Otowa to the east of Kyoto, Kiyomizu-dera Temple overlooks modern Kyoto. The temple was established in 788 CE during Japan’s Nara period, and affiliated with the venerable Hosso sect of Japanese Buddhism. Today, the monks caring for Kiyomizu-dera belong to the Kita-Hosso sect. Taken from the balcony of one of the smaller halls, this image shows the temple’s Main Hall and the pagoda in the entrance area on the far right with the city of Kyoto in the distance.
The West Gate is in the foreground with the temple’s pagoda directly in back. I am facing due east at 9:00am on an overcast morning. Why I have no photo of the larger, more impressive main gate to Kiyomizu-dera just to the left of where I am standing to take this photo is absolutely beyond me. I do, however, have a photo showing part of the main gate taken from inside the entrance with Kyoto in the distance. To the west, some blue sky has broken through the clouds.
For awhile it appeared that the day would become bright and sunny as the photos of the pagoda above and, below, of the West Gate from inside the entrance to Kiyomizu-dera suggest.
Kiyomizu-dera’s Main Hall sits on a steep incline and is supported by a wooden trellis that sets the building’s platform some 13 meters above the base of the incline below. My photo of the Main Hall does not really do justice to the building itself because I am distracted by the size of the crowd on the platform. It is no surprise that crowds of people want to visit a site like Kiyomizu-dera with its magnificent examples of Japanese temple architecture in a beautiful setting offering breathtaking views of its surroundings. I am taking the photo below at 9:45 in the morning on any old Tuesday in October. The crowd is bound to be larger by midday, and one can only imagine what happens on weekends or holidays. It is no wonder that some locales are instituting reservation systems that allow access at a specific time on a given day for popular sites with high volumes of visitors. If they are not in Japan already I would not be at all surprised to see such reservations systems arriving soon in Kyoto and elsewhere in the country. With literally billions of people able to afford relatively low-cost flights and budget tours, the problem of unsustainable over-tourism is not likely to get better in the foreseeable future.
A short way up the hillside from the main temple area, this small pagoda overlooks the Main Hall. By this time the clouds had returned and there was not much sunshine left. I did not make it all the way to the pagoda, instead turning to head down to the Otowa Waterfall at the base of the incline with the Main Hall at the top. Water is indeed falling from three pipes into a small pool, though Otowa is not what we generally think of as a waterfall. Be that as it may, Wikipedia tells us that Kiyomizu-dera means “pure water temple.” Those who drink a cupful of water from the falls are purified. I decided a single cup was unlikely to meet my needs for purification and kept on walking.
Despite the crowds of people, there were quiet spots and moments of peace for contemplation throughout the temple area.
After weeks of endless cloudy days and rain, yesterday was dry, sunny and gorgeous, offering a perfect opportunity for a dinnertime stroll through the Hoi An Old Town. The recently refurbished Japanese Bridge – it was built in the 16th century by a community of Japanese traders living in the area – looks great, all clean and shiny and lit up in the evening.