Ryokan Revelations in Kyoto
Don George discovers treasures old and new at a traditional Japanese inn.
One of the quintessential pleasures of a visit to Japan is staying in a ryokan, a traditional inn. But on my original introduction to that daunting and delightful country, it took a crisis to teach me this lesson – and another important lesson too.
I had been living in Japan for a year and a half when the crisis struck. My two-year fellowship was about to end, and I had to decide if I wanted to extend my stay, teaching English at the university and exploring the intricacies of Japanese culture, or return to America and carry on along whatever path my life was meant to follow.
As the decision deadline approached, my stressometer soared. I had to get out of my everyday life to get a fresh perspective. But where to go?
A Japanese colleague provided the answer: a ryokan. Ryokans are the original Japanese inns, renowned for their gracious service, tranquil atmosphere, and timeless surroundings. I had been meaning to stay in one ever since I’d arrived, but somehow I had never made the time. I booked a room.
My ryokan immersion began even before I reached the inn itself. A discreet flagstone path, newly watered so that it glistened in the afternoon light, led from the quiet street to the long one-story wooden building. The entryway was framed with silvery-green bamboo.
As I approached, wooden doors slid open and a gray-haired woman in an elegant spring kimono stepped out. “Irasshaimase,” she said, bowing and welcoming me to the inn.
When I entered, another woman in a kimono greeted me and set a pair of slippers before me. I slipped off my city shoes, and she set them neatly on a wood shelf.
“Please follow me,” the first woman said, and padded down a long, sleek wood hallway that gleamed from decades of daily polishing. We shuffled by rice-paper windows, turning right and left and then right again into a stark maze of wood panels, lantern shadows, andshoji screens, until she stopped outside another sliding door.
Using both hands, the woman gracefully swept open the door and motioned for me to enter. I stepped out of my hallway slippers and crossed the threshold. The sweet, reedy scent oftatami mats filled my nostrils; a low wooden table, a rice-paper lamp, a bold brush-and-ink scroll, and a single cherry branch in a blue-and-red vase filled my eyes.
As a trio of women in kimonos bustled my bags into a small carpeted alcove, my attendant motioned for me to sit on a silk cushion, and then began to prepare green tea. She measured leaves into a tiny china pot, drew hot water from a flowered thermos, and poured the steaming liquid into a matching china cup. She set the cup before me, then placed a petal-shaped wooden platter with two traditional rice-and-red-bean sweets precisely beside it.
Kneeling on the tatami with her hands placed before her, she bowed deeply. “Welcome to our inn,” she said.
She told me that dinner would be served in my room at seven o'clock, then asked what time I would like to take my bath that afternoon and have breakfast in the morning.
I told her and she replied, “Very well; if you require anything else, please let us know,” and gestured toward the antique black telephone in one corner. “We hope you enjoy your stay.”
Then she backed out of the room, bowing, and slid the door shut.
I closed my eyes and let the silky softness of the cushion, the perfume of the tatami mats, and the sheer silence suffuse me. The throbbing in my head slowed; my breathing deepened; my shoulders seemed lighter.
When I opened my eyes again, I noticed a low wooden writing desk with a rice-paper lantern and an antique ceramic bowl, and behind them a golden wall painting of bent branches and just-opened buds. I thought: Either I'm spending the night in a museum or I've fallen into a shoji dream.
But it was better than a museum or a dream. I could turn the rough-fired bowl in my hands, trace the lacquered branch and buds, smell the sweet-musty rice-paper scent, study -- from a nose-length away – the inky swish where the calligrapher's brush had swirled off the scroll. How could a country produce such precious treasures, I wondered, and how could I leave such a place?
For a while -- a half-hour, an hour -- I studied the garden outside my window: pink puffy clouds of cherry blossoms, carefully clipped evergreens, and meticulously raked grounds; a weathered wood bridge arching over a black-green pool; a path of smooth stepping stones weaving through.
At 5:25 a light rap announced the attendant's return. “Would you like your bath now?”
Again we padded down polished hallways, turning this way and that, with soft lantern light stroking ancient shadows. She gestured to the door, bowed, and left. I hung myyukata robe in an outer room, picked up soap and a washcloth, and opened the door to the inner chamber. The air was thick with steam and redolent of cedar. Through the fragrant mist I could just make out a deep, five-foot-square sunken wood tub filled to the brim with steaming water.
After soaping and rinsing off outside the tub, I got in. The scalding water took my breath away, and for a while I lay as motionless as possible, wincing as each movement sent searing waves of heat across my skin. Gradually I adjusted to the temperature and relaxed. The scent of the cedar mingled with the loosening of my muscles; time slowed down, and before long, both my mind and body had turned to sap.
My dilemma evaporated and didn't return until I walked back into the hallway's suddenly cool, mind-snapping air. I slid open my door, immersed in indecision, and a glorious feast greeted me. There were blue-and-white-striped low-fluted platters and red fan-shaped platters, deep sky-blue bowls and shallow bowls the color of pinewood. I lifted a black lacquered lid off a red lacquered bowl and found a clear miso broth with tiny cubes of tofu and snips of green onion. A grilled fish curled its tail on one sunset-blush platter. An arrangement of spring mountain vegetables graced a green-and-brown plate. Red slices of sashimi glistened on a bed of green mint leaves and white radish slices; a bamboo basket cradled golden tempura shrimp and vegetables. And towering over all were three giant bottles of Kirin beer.
After an eternity of sipping and supping, my attendant arrived and smiled with satisfaction at the grand mess I’d made. She bustled to and fro, clearing plates and bowls and cups, then picked up the table itself and stored it in a corner of the room. Sliding open the wall panels, she hustled out my bedding, the thick mattress-likeshikibuton and the covering kakebuton , soft and warm as a stuffed quilt. Fussing over those until the corners lined up just so on the tatami, she bowed once again and said, retreating with a quick smile,“Oyasumi-nasai.”
I snuggled beerily under the covers while visions mingled in my head: white-robed Shinto priests and Zen rock gardens, splendidly spare tea ceremonies and maidens whose hair fell like black waterfalls over their brightly colored kimonos. I fell asleep with cherry-branch silhouettes bowing across the moonlit window-screen.
I savored the next morning slowly, taking my green tea into the garden and studying the serene moss-patched stone lantern, the orange and gold carp flicking lazily through the placid pool, the lullingthock! of a bamboo spout dropping water into a rock basin. Back in the room, I pressed my face to the tatami, hoping to hold on to that soft, soothing scent. For the first time in months, I was at peace.
Without my even realizing it, the decision had been made. I gazed one last time at the lamp and scroll, the painted doors, the 200-year-old bowl fashioned by a master's hand.
The trio of women carried my bags, and I shuffled again down the hand-polished hall. At the entranceway, the women all waited, my attendant at their head, ready to thank me and bow me back into the world of glare and blare.
I would leave, I knew, leave the inn and leave Japan to return to the land of my upbringing and an unknown future. I would leave because of something I’d realized at the ryokan, something I had to get beyond my Tokyo world to see: After two years in that elusive, soul-stirring land, I felt I belonged -- so even if I left Japan, Japan would never leave me.
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