11/8 - Uji - the city of the Tale of Genji

We wondered along the Uji River and came across the local tourist centre.  We had been collecting rubber stampings all this time and we found the Rekishi Kaido stamp for Uji. Rekishi Kaido is a society that promotes Japan's historical and cultural resources to the public.  So their rubber stamps is one way to promote Japan's history.  I think it's a great way for kids to get excited about history.  Here's the website sample of the ink stamp we got, except they don't provide such colourful ink for the rubber stamps.

We crossed the a small pedestrian bridge onto a small island in the middle of the river.  There were a lot of boats tied up to the shore.  They looked like pleasure boats used to entertain guests for drinks and possibly dinner.  The island itself had a small park on it.  There was even a temporary Sunday Market set up.  But we obviously missed it because most of the stalls were empty and people were packing their goods away into their tiny Japanese minivans.

On the other side of the river, we made our way up a tiny incline towards another shrine.  It was very quiet in the shrine and in fact, the shrine was almost dead except for a couple of other tourists.  The sun was starting to set, so the autumn leaves looked beautiful in the sunshine.  But otherwise, I didn't think it was actually worth walking up to this shrine.

A little ways up past the shrine was a museum dedicated to the Japanese classic, The Tale of Genji.  Now I never read this novel, so I had very little reason to go into this museum.  I remember hearing about it in an Asian Studies class and that it is sometimes considered the world's first novel.  But other than that, I know very little about the story.  However, Uji and it's surrounding area is apparently featured in the story.  There is also a statue of one of the characters from the novel closer to the middle of town.

So we completed a giant loop around Uji by walking back to the Keihan train station.  The sun was setting and we were going to have to find dinner soon.  We decided that we would head back into Kyoto to grab a bite to eat and probably have some of that yummy takoyaki again.