{"id":1834,"date":"2012-04-10T06:27:46","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T12:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/?p=1834"},"modified":"2012-04-10T06:27:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T12:27:46","slug":"uji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/10\/uji","title":{"rendered":"Uji"},"content":{"rendered":"

We visted Uji yesterday. Uji is a small city on the edge of Kyoto and the site of several things of significance particularly to the Japanese and one particularly to me. The last ten chapters of The Tale of Genji<\/em> take place in Uji, making it the setting for part of Japan’s most famous work of literature. Among many temples and shrines in Uji is the Byodoin temple, a World Heritage site and also the building which appears on the 10 yen coin.<\/p>\n

To me, however, the important thing about Uji is tea. Most(? all?) of the best tea producers in Japan are located in or near Uji. Uji is to tea as Congac is to brandy: it’s not the only place it’s made, but the best stuff is made there. It’s a short train ride from Kyoto Station, so we decided to visit it and look around a bit. It’s next to a river and the cherry blossoms were blooming gloriously.<\/p>\n

\"STF<\/p>\n

(I’m just sticking in a couple of pictures quickly here; I’ll post more\/better ones eventually, probably after we return.)<\/p>\n

It turned out to be pretty much as I pictured, based on what little I knew about it and what I’ve seen in other Japanese towns. There’s a narrow street lined with shops selling tea and tea sweets, and a few places selling tea cups and so forth. We also found a shop with the largest and best selection of tenugui<\/em> we’ve seen. We bought several of those, a tea bowl (for matcha<\/em>) and a couple of cups, and several packages of tea and tea-flavored cookies. I deliberately didn’t get carried away with the tea purchase because I’ve found that how one brews good Japanese tea has almost as much to do with the quality and character of the end result as the tea itself, and I knew that we were going to buy tea at the Fukujuen shop in Kyoto Station–products with which I am already familiar. Still, it seemed silly to go to Uji and not buy any tea, so buy tea we did.<\/p>\n

The Byodoin temple shares certain attributes with the other World Heritage site we’ve visited, the castle at Himeji. It’s a beautiful, unusual building which certainly merits preservation, and there are far too many tourists around it. It’s not surprising, I guess, but it’s still dismaying.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

We had a good time in Uji, and since it’s just a short train ride from Kyoto, we’ll visit it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We visted Uji yesterday. Uji is a small city on the edge of Kyoto and the site of several things of significance particularly to the Japanese and one particularly to me. The last ten chapters of The Tale of Genji take place in Uji, making it the setting for part of Japan’s most famous work… Continue reading Uji<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan2012","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}