Deep Kyoto

good places - good people

The Photographs of John Einarsen

By

This is the first in a new, occasional series of profiles of Kyoto-based photographers. Each photographer will choose five of their favorite pictures from around Kyoto and tell us a little about what those pictures mean to them. To start us off, Kyoto Journal‘s John Einarsen was kind enough to send me some wonderful black and white images of Shinnyodo; a temple complex on Mount Yoshida. John says…

All these images are from a place near my house where I take walks to find quiet, think, engage with a new visitor, or share intimate conversation with friends (alive or passed on). It contains two temple complexes, Kurodani and Shinnyodo, a cemetery, two pagodas, two bells, dirt lanes, Buddhas and beautiful maple trees. A very special corner of Kyoto!

John Einarsen

John Einarsen is originally from Colorado. He fell in love with Kyoto on his first trip here and settled down here in the early 1980s. His photographs have been published in Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate and in the new book Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto. He is also the founder editor of Kyoto Journal which he began with other poets and writers in 1986. From 2013-2015 he served as an advisor to the Japan Times and in 2013 received the Commissioner’s Award of the Japanese Cultural Affairs Agency. He lives near Kyoto’s Nanzenji temple.

Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto by John Dougill and John Einarsen was released by Tuttle Publishing on October 10th 2017. This is “the first comprehensive guide to Kyoto’s most important Zen garden and temple sites” and includes detailed introductions to over 50 Japanese temples and gardens with information on early morning meditation sessions, temple food offerings and special green tea sets along with other “insider” information. The book is available from amazon.com, amazon.co.jp, and amazon.co.uk.

“The exquisite photography of Einarsen evokes the beauty that is embodied within Zen’s philosophy, while Dougill describes the physical constructs that house the illusive yet enduring concepts.” —Judith Clancy, author of Kyoto Gardens and Kyoto City of Zen

Caffe dell’Orso

By

20090306000945A few weeks ago Ted Taylor introduced me to Cafe dell’Orso a nice new Italian restaurant on Higashi Ichijo Dori. They do a good ￥1000 set lunch there; one pasta of your choosing + salad + focaccia with a home made pate and a wee slice of quiche. I decided to go back for dinner, and try some more dishes. In my pictures below you can see various appetisers and desserts but not the main dishes, as I was so intent on eating them up I forgot to photograph them! Thankfully, this popular Kyoto blogger has some good pictures on his site too, so you can check his pictures out here. I actually had the asparagus and parmesan gratin (￥700) and the tomato and clam spaghetti (￥1100), and washed them down with a cold sharp Peroni beer (￥700). They were all very good. However, the desserts were especially delicious, or as my companion Mewby put it  “yabai!” (which is Japanese for dangerously awesome). There are more pictures below and if you go to flickr you can see the prices too.

This restaurant/cafe is run by two friends, Stefano Bandini and Sasha Ashburne. I asked Stefano why the name is “Orso” which means “bear”, and he told me that his father used to have a gallery on Via dell’Orso in Milan named Galleria dell’Orso. The Caffe shares more than just the name with his father’s gallery though, as the walls here too are used to exhibit local art. At the time I visited they were decorated with the photographic work of Fumio Inoue. And as for the “cucina naturale”? Stefano explains:
“Cucina naturale” means that we are making, as far as possible, everything home made. Salad dressing, sauce, ginger ale etc. are all home made. When possible we also use organic ingredients. So far the dry pasta we have been using is organic. We have now started using fresh pasta, that we buy from a non-organic supplier. In the near future, if economically convenient, we’d like to make our own pasta. In this case we’ll try to find organic semolina…

Caffe dell’Orso, is on the north side of Higashi Ichijo Dori. Go east from Kawabata and it is just a little further past the Sakyou-ku ward office. If you get as far as Higashioji Dori you have gone too far! Here is a useful map.
Tel: 075-761-7600
email: caffedellorso@yahoo.co.jp

Honyarado

By

ほんやら洞 (Honyarado) is a famous café on Imadegawa, that has been supplying coffee and cheap meals to nearby Doshisha University students for over thirty years. The owner, Kai Fusayoshi, is a very productive professional photographer and his prints and posters decorate the walls of the shop. Check out some of the books of his work littering the place. In black and white and with gentle humor he has documented the day-to-day life of ordinary people in Kyoto. His pictures have also documented the day-to-day life of ordinary Kyoto cats.

During the radical years of the peace movement, Honyarado became well-known as the “Folk Mecca” of Kyoto because of the musicians who gathered there and it is still occasionally a live music venue today. See the website for scheduled events and for the menu. Lunch and evening meals change daily and will set you back ￥600 and ￥700 respectively.

Honyarado is a delightfully, scruffy, cheerful place, piled up with books, flyers, postcards and all kinds of old, odd and interesting things that make wise people happy. To find it, go north on Teramachi, turn left onto Imadegawa, keep going and look out for it on your right. Here is a map.　Open every day 11:00 am ~ 10:00 pm. Tel: 075-222-1574.