The Kojian-ji temple has traditionally been called the treasury of ancient cultural objects in the area west of Tokyo. In 1994 it was inscribed on a World Cultural Heritage. The area surrounding the temple has a tremendous amount of energy in the spring. Lush greens and the sound of water running down the hill dominate the setting. Apparently this the best time of year to visit. In the fall, they are expecting about 5,000 visitors a day.
Visit at Kinkadu (the Golden Temple)
The gardens remained in its original state and you can enjoy it the same way they was created hundreds of years ago. The golden temple is one of the main buildings of Rokuon-Ji temple, which was added to the world cultural heritages in 1994. The site seems to be one of the very popular touristic locations in Kyoto. A lot of Japanese school kids came for their school excursions to visit the site. I can only imagine how busy they’ll be in the summer. Aside from the golden temple we saw the well that the shogun used for the Japanese tea ceremony, and a traditional tea house (3 katami mats in size).
After a 1 ½ hr bus ride, we arrived in Wazuka. The trip there was beautiful – leading us through the Japanese mountains. I felt sorry for our bus driver. The curves were so tight in some areas that he had a hard time making a turn.
Just before Wazuka, we saw a monkey running through a tea gaden. You get to see them if you are lucky. At the Obubu tea garden we had the opportunity to make our own tea. First, we picked ishin niyo (that’s 2 leaves and a bud). Next we went to the tea company were we manually processed the tea leaves. We didn’t have enough leaves picked for our three groups so one group ended up using the freshly picked leaves, the other 2 groups used leaves that were deep steamed and the frozen (last year’s harvest).
We heated up a metal pan and moved the leaves by hand around in the pan (to ensure the heat is distributed evenly). Then we removed the leaves from the pan into a bamboo basket for rolling. We moved a few times between pan and rolling back and forth. As the moisture was slowly removed from the tea leaves, you could tell that the sound of the tea leaves changed when they were falling into the pan. It was interesting to see the difference between the freshly picked leaves and the leaves that were deep steamed. It took us approx. 2 hours to make the tea by hand. We also had the opportunity to make matcha. Matcha is made out of Tencha leaves. We used a small matcha grinder to make this healthy powder.
Wazuka has approx. 5,000 people, out of which 2,000 are working in the tea industry. We are the first tourist group that this area received.
Our evening started out with a Ocarina concert by 4 local women. They played a few songs for us and I was quite interested in this instrument. One of the women came to our youth hostel after our dinner, to teach us how to play the Ocarina. The hostel itself was still under renovation but it was a lot of fun staying there.
