Upper Saga Toriimoto Historic Preservation District

 

Saga Toriimoto is a small district at the very edge of Kyoto, up a narrow road leading to the mountain Atago Shrine.

It is one of the historic architectural preservation districts in Kyoto, though I would wager probably the least visited.

In my last post, I looked at two of the 400-year-old thatched buildings still operating as eateries.

This time, some of the other thatched buildings around the same area.

The area was originally farmhouses, but developed into a "shrine town" serving the growing number of pilgrims heading up to Atago Shrine.

Toriimoto means "around the torii", the vermilion first torii on the path up the mountain.

I became quite fascinated by these preservation districts, of which there are more than 120 scattered around Japan.

Some are well-known and very touristy, but many are off the beaten track and, to my mind, a bit more authentic.

click on the "preservation district" tag at the bottom of this post for more of my posts on them.

I believe the tags don't show in the smartphone version of these pages..... 

The previous post in this series on Arashiyama was on the kaiseki restaurants in two of the thatched former farmhouses.

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Ayuchaya Hiranoya & Ayu no Yado Tsutaya

 

After visiting the delightful 1200 Rakan at Otagi Nembutsuji Temple I descended the narrow mountain road and came into the area known as Saga Toriimoto, an absolutely delightful area of old thatched buildings at the top end of Arashiyama.

The area is an historic preservation area, but in this post I will concentrate on just two buildings, both of them eateries with long traditions.

The top one, just above the vermillion torii, and therefore the first one I visited first is Ayuchaya Hiranoya.

It was still a couple of hours till opening time, but it was open, and I could peer inside....

Said to have been in business for 400 years, it was originally a teahouse and an ayu (sweetfish) wholesaler. The road is the route to Atago Shrine a very popular pilgrimage site and the torii is the first torii marking the route.

Ofuda left by pilgrims are plastered over the woodwork....

The ayu were caught up in the mountains, and "rested" in fresh water barrels overnight, and then carried into the restaurants of Kyoto the next morning. Nowadays the ayu are served directly to customers. I believe it is like a small trout.

The current proprietress is the 15th generation.

Nearby, just below the torii, is Ayu no Yado Tsutaya.

It is also about 400 years old.

Tsutaya has a similar history to Hironaya, starting out as a teahouse and then serving meals, especially ayu.

In 1989 the guest rooms were refurbished by leading designers and craftsmen.

I believe that advance bookings are necessary.

But even if you are not eating or drinking there, the walk up from Arashiyama rewards the visitor with  remarkable historical scenery.

The previous post in this series on Arashiyama was on portraits of the unique rakan statues at Otagi Nembutsuji Temple a little up the hill from here...

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Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave

 

If you ask a Japanese person if Japanese people eat pheasant, you will almost certainly get an emphatic "absolutely not". However, just outside Susa Shrine in the mountains of Izumo, there used to be a restaurant specializing in pheasant dishes. Modern Japanese have little knowledge of historical diets in Japan. If it walks, crawls, swims, or flies, then the Japanese people used to eat it. Quite like pheasant myself, but haven't eaten it in Japan, though I sometimes see and hear one in my garden and nearby rice paddies.

After leaving Susa Shrine, I head west further into the mountains towards the next pilgrimage temple on the Chugoku 33 Kannoin Pilgrimage.

I briefly visited Fukusenbo, a Jodo Shinshu temple.

I have no idea what the standing and horizontal carvings are about....

I do enjoy wooden statues that have weathered and eroded and reveal another aspect of their personality.....

Immediately adjacent to the temple was the reason for stopping, the title of todays blog post, the Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave.

In English, the term for such a geological feature is a blowing cave, and in essence it is a type of natural air-conditioning.

What happens is that in the winter cold air travels into the mountain through gaps in the rocks and this cools the rocks in the interior. In the summer air passing over the cold rocks escapes at places like here. If you descend two levels in the cave the temperature is 5 degrees celsius on the hottest summer day. Traditionally the spaces were used as cold storage for various crops, but now it is for tourists to cool off.

Even the exterior "caves" have a temperature noticeably cooler.

From here I headed deeper into the mountains.

Thatched houses and semi-abandoned shrines....the interior of Shimane....

The road keeps climbing and settlements disappear and only forest on either side of the road..

Eventually I cross a pass and start to descend.....

Isolated farmhouses start to appear and then settlements come into view...

This is the landscape of most of the land area of Japan...

It has been 4 days of walking since the last temple on this pilgrimage, Tada-ji in Hamada....

The previous post in this series on Day 40 of my Chugoku Pilgrimage walk was on the interesting Susa Shrine.

If you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published and made public. I post new content almost everyday, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the last ten posts.