I’ve been to Kyoto many times, walking around its avenues, alleys and temples, but for some reason up until last Summer I had never visited the Arashiyama area and Sagano. It was an amazing walk, even under the rain of the typhoon that was passing through Japanese skies that day.

We crossed the bamboo forest hearing the wind opening its path through thousands of canes several meters tall, we drank tea in the house of a great Japanese actor of the beginnings of last century, we got lost in the endless stairs leading to temples, we looked for shelter in a souvenir shop when it started to rain heavily and we crossed Tenryu-ji temple where the most beautiful things are the garden and the pond that are hidden behind the honden (main building).

Matcha and some candy to recover energies in the middle of the day.

The best way to get to the area is using the JR Sagano line from Kyoto station until Saga Arashiyama station, it takes 15 minutes.

I had become quite attached to it but last month the moment arrived, I had to say goodbye to my beloved Nikon D90 that had been traveling the world with me for exactly 3 years. I felt comfortable with it from the beginning, it adapted to me before I had to worry about the details of its inner workings, it interceded the least possible between reality and what my eye and intuition wanted to capture. I learned a lot, I took pictures like these and I even published a book full of pictures of Japan taken with my Nikon D90 that you can get at Amazon.co.uk: Momentos (bilingual edition).

It will be soon replaced by my next digital camera, a Nikon D800, with which I will continue my adventure of learning how to photograph what happens around me. My D90 left, but left us these unforgettable moments:

One of the first things that caught my attention when I arrived for the first time to Japan was that many people drank bottled green tea:

Suntory and Coca-Cola are two of the largest bottled green tea producers in Japan.

Soon, my curiosity lead me to a drinks vending machine in Shibuya, and instead of buying the usual Coca-Cola or Aquarius I pressed one of the buttons that gave me one of the green teas offered. I was expecting a flavor similar to Nestea, but my surprise was that my first gulp tasted bitter, very bitter, it had no sugar at all…. “Yuck!!”

After a while, after having drunk a lot of green tea and having “learned” how to appreciate its flavor, I was on a trip to San Francisco and I decided to order some Nestea. I tried it and… “Yuck!! This is water with sugar!”. And that’s how I became a fan of unsweetened green tea.

Photo by Ippei Janine

Green Tea, Ocha お茶

In Chinese as well as in Japanese the character 茶 means “tea”. In Japanese it is pronounced “cha” and in Chinese I think it’s something similar. The word ocha お茶 is used to refer to green tea. The kind of green tea depends on the season the tea is harvested, how the leaves are dried and the time they are exposed to the sun:

• Sencha (煎茶): it is the most drunk kind of green tea in Japan. If the leaves are from the first harvest (April-May) it is shincha (a lighter kind of green), if the leaves are from the Summer harvest it is bancha. A very popular kind of bancha is hōjicha (ほうじ茶); which is differentiated from normal bancha by its roasting process, it’s one of the softest green teas and it is usually served at midday along meals. It is the tea usually served for free in Japanese restaurants, it has a light brownish color.
• Gyokuro (玉露): it is considered a kind of green tea of great quality and considerably more expensive than sencha. During the weeks before the harvest, tea plants are covered so that they are not exposed to sunlight, in this way the amount of theine and caffeine in the leaves increases. It has a darker color than sencha.

  

• Matcha: green tea in powder form that is soluble in hot water. It is the one used in the tea ceremony. It has a much stronger taste than sencha and gyokuro. Some people can’t stand such a strong flavor but I love it.

  

Ulongcha

It is a kind of tea originally from China which has much less caffeine than green tea. It is usually drunk as a refreshing drink in summer. Due to its low caffeine content it is one of the drinks chosen during nights for those that want to go to sleep soon.


The darkest bottle is ulongcha.

Cereal Teas

Mugicha (barley tea) is exclusively made out of barley, so it doesn’t contain caffeine. Genmaicha is made mixing roasted rice and green tea leaves. Both have a yellowish color.

Black Tea, Kocha (紅茶)

It is the kind of tea that we drink in Europe and it is the only one in Japan in which it is allowed to put sugar or sugar substitutes.

Other kinds of Tea

In coffee shops many different kinds of international teas are offered. Lately an African tea, ruibos, is becoming really popular. Chai, jasmine tea and camomile tea are also widely known; being chai one of the favorite teas of Japanese girls.

I found a Lego Digital Camera a while ago in some shop; I didn’t know it existed. It has 3Mpx.

Thousands of years ago…

The Universe was formed by silence, darkness and a huge mass of formless matter. Particles within that huge mass started to move and collide with each other creating the first sounds ever heard. The movement of the mass gave place to clouds and the sky, where suddenly the three gods of Japanese mythology appeared. Under the sky a big sphere was formed by still chaotic particles; the gods decided to call it “Earth”. Several thousand years and several generations of gods passed until Goddess Izanami and God Izanagi were born; they were the creators of Japan.

Izanami and Izanagi received orders to put order on Earth. They accepted the responsibility and obtained a holy spear called Amenonuhoko (天沼矛, heavenly jeweled spear) that would help them with their mission. They traveled together through the sky until they arrived to a floating bridge near the Earth. They leaned out and stirred the water of the sea with the tip of the spear Amenonuhoko, when they took out the spear from the water, the drops of salty water that were left on the tip condensed creating the first island of Japan: Awajishima (淡路島). Using the same spear they continued creating islands giving place to Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and the rest of Japanese islands. They also created forests, mountains and rivers. Izanami and Izanagi built their house in Awajishima and got married. To finish their duties they had many children that would have to follow with the creation of Japan and would be responsible to look after it: the God of Wind, the Goddess of the Moon, the Goddess of the Sea, the God of the Forests, the God of the Mountains and Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun, considered the “mother” of Japan.

Izanagi and Izanami creating the first island of Japan using the spear Amenonuhoko

2722 years ago

Jimmu was born, the first Emperor of Japan and the great-grandson of Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun. He was the first human with the blood of the Gods. Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan is a direct descendant of Jimmu.

2025 years ago

The tenth Emperor of Japan trusted his daughter Yamatohime the mission of finding a permanent place for the worship of Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun. Legend has it that Yamatohime was 20 years traveling around Japan without finding an appropriate location until she heard the voice of Amaterasu while she was strolling along the side of a river that cut through the forests of Ise. Amaterasu declared to Yamatohime her desire to live there forever: next to the flow of the river, feeling the protection of the trees and contemplating the immensity of the sea. Her desire was granted and the Shintoist Shrine of Ise was built in her honor, which is nowadays considered the most important Shintoist temple in Japan.

One of the originals drafts of the Ise Shrine.

The Ise Shrine is reconstructed every 20 years using the same kind of materials (a Japanese cypress species) following the original drafts. According to Shintoism, nature continuously dies and is born non-stop, nature is impermanent, this tradition helps to maintain the freshness and purity of the place. Cyclically reconstructing temples makes them have an old, original and new feel at the same time, forever.

70 years ago

In United States, hundreds of scientists of the Manhattan Project played God trying to control the will of particles and the fundamental forces that constitute the universe. The ultimate creation of this group of “scientist-Gods” were not islands, rivers, lakes, forests and mountains; they were Little Boy and Fat Man, two atomic bombs.

Two bombs whose energy ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, reduced two cities to ashes and ended the imperial yearning of Japan. Indirectly they also ended the God-status of the Emperor, supposed direct descendant of Goddess Amaterasu. The Emperor Hirohito renounced his divine status when he signed the humanity declaration in front of American General Douglas MacArthur. The God-scientists of Project Manhattan and the imperial ambitions of Hirohito and his government ended the lineage of Japanese gods, Hirohito was the last God of Japan. All Japanese gods up to Hirohito gather together every October in the temple of Goddess Amaterasu, in the Ise Shrine.

July 16th 2011

Pablo, Yuko, Sara, Carlos and I arrived in our bikes to the torii door that invited us to enter into the sacred territories of Goddess Amaterasu through the Uji bridge which leads to the Ise Shrine. We walked through the forest before the eyes of the God-trees, we cooled ourselves down next the God of the River, we strolled between the artificial wood structures with columns directly emerging from a ground covered with pebbles, rising up against us and merging with the nature of its environment. At the end of our walk we were finally able to make out Amaterasu’s home when the God of Wind allowed us to see it by blowing away the white clouds that protect the Kōtai Jingū, the holiest place in Japan.

Photons that traveled from the Sun until being captured 8 minutes after by the wood of a cypress part of the structure of the Goddess of the Sun home, and then they reached the chemical components of a 120mm film when my finger pressed the shutter of my Hasselblad, capturing the “reality” of that particular moment that will be lost in time like tears in the rain but whose image was transformed in bits and will be kept for the rest of eternity.

After coming back to Tokyo, Sara wrote:

“I just came back from the holiest place in Japan where I met several gods. The river delighted me with the reflection of the sun. The stones told me where to stop. The trees showed me the path to follow. The wind allowed me to see for a second a forbidden space for humans. I talked to them, I listened to them, all surrounded by the deepest silence.”

October 2011
As every year, thousands of gods met in the Ise Shrine to deal with Gods’ matters. Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan, was also there. Like every year he has to attend the meeting, as even though he is not a God anymore, according to Japanese mythology he is a descendant of them . When the day ended many of them went to the onsen of Spirited Away to relax and enjoy a bath in the hot springs.

Year 2013
The Ise Shrine will be reconstructed according to the original drafts following the tradition that Yamatohime started when he heard Amaterasu’s voice while strolling around Ise two thousand years ago.
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Albert Einstein, one of the scientist that played God in Project Manhattan said one time:

“I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are details.” – Albert Einstein

When we stopped for a rest next to the Ise river, I thought about Spirited Away when Haku, the God of the River, is able to remember his real name:

Haku: Thanks Chihiro. My real name is Nigihayami Kohaku Nushi.
Chihiro: ¿Nigihayami?
Haku: Nigihayami Kohaku Nushi.
Chihiro: What a beautiful name. It sounds like a God’s name.
Haku: I also remember when you fell in me when you were a child.

According to the last study of the OCDE Japan is the country with the highest life expectancy in the world (86.4 years) while Spain (my home country) ranks second (84.9 years). I am not an expert and most likely nobody knows for sure but I dare to say that probably two key elements in common between Spain and Japan are a healthy diet and a relatively good healthcare system (even though very different).

I think I heard about Hiroshi Sugimoto for the first time when I was in Naoshima. What caught my attention the most about him were his photographs of horizons. In them, the sky and the sea unite in harmony in the horizon in one line of space.

Bono liked this photo of Sugimoto so much that U2 used it for the front cover of their album “No Line on the Horizon”:

Sugimoto was quite demanding and he let them use his work of art but they were not even able to write U2 on it, they had to respect the original photo as it was.

One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells
Oh yeah
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

No, no line on the horizon, no line

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity is a great place to start
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

She said “Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

In September I went to Enoshima equipped with a lot of different cameras. When I arrived home I found myself with a lot of photos of blurred horizons, I didn’t take them thinking in Sugimoto in a conscious way, it was most likely my subconscious that was inspired by him. I was not able to “erase” the horizon line completely in any of them like Sugimoto, but I think some of them were pretty good.

In color with Hipstamatic:

In black and white with the iPhone and with my Canon S90:

And to end up, this photo series of a kite. I was marveled by how he was flying around the horizon line, under it and above it, advancing through the sky like trying to escape from my photos.