Visiting Iga City

We left Kyoto today for the second part of the tour. First stop was Iga City which is the home of kumihimo braiding and home to the Ninjas. Our first stop was the museum of the Ueno Tenjin festival held on 24th October every year. There are 9 floats and 3 are shown at any one time in the museum.

We saw a video of the parade with the men carrying the flags for the gods at the front, then come 100 demons followed by the floats carrying people playing music. The exhibits are behind glass and tricky to photograph

From here we walked to the Ninja museum in the rain. Umbrellas were provided by our hosts and after seeing around the Ninja house and finding out the Ninja secrets, we had a display of the Ninja arts.

There was one demonstration of the use of a kumihimo rope with balls in the end and although most of the commentary was in Japanese, we all laughed when the guy holding the rope said – what are you thinking when the opponent catches the rope? ‘Oh shit’

This is the ‘Oh shit’ moment and then the finished article!

It was a bit kitchy but very well done and we all had a laugh. We then had a go at throwing the spikes before going off to visit the workshop of the kumihimo master and head of the Ninjas. This is a photo of him working at the takadai.

I spent a long time watching him braid because it is so beautiful and his braiding is so even – I guess he has been doing it a long time. I thought about buying one of his obijime braids. In the picture, it was the second on the right but it was 33,000 yen – about £250 pounds. It was beautiful but I will just have to keep braiding.

Once we had finished at his workshop, we went for lunch at a restaurant that serves Iga beef which is supposed to be the best in the world – better than Kobe beef. We had a great lunch although we did have to sit on the floor which was interesting because I don’t normally spend an hour sitting on the floor and I definitely could not do it cross legged or kneeling!

After lunch we went to the kumihimo museum and store which we visited in 2007 and I enjoyed but did not buy this time. And then it was on to Nara where we were staying for the night. After checking in, we went for a walk and saw the five storey pagoda all lit up

Tomorrow we have time to visit the big temple and a couple of gardens before taking the train to Hiroshima.