We spent a couple days in Kyoto for the first weekend of our trip. We got to see probably one of the oldest cities in Japan, and definately a major cultural setting. From old-style neighborhoods to lots of temples and shrines, Kyoto can't be seen in just a weekend. We tried and we didn't even get close before most of us were too exhausted to walk. Even though bus-travel and walking induced weariness stifled our enthusiasm, I'm pretty sure we were all glad to sweat for the reward of seeing such a cool place.
Kyoto isn't a huge city, but it is much bigger than Hikone. It's also a lot bigger than Grand Rapids... but for some reason it doesn't seem too big to me. Maybe I didn't appreciate the size of the city from on top eki (train station)... or maybe I think that since it's nowhere near the size of Tokyo it can't be that big. Well, it is a pretty nice place nonetheless.
The eki in Kyoto isn't so much a train station as it is a gigantic mall. Well... it's hard to say exactly what it is. I know it's a train station, and I know there are tons of stores underground around it. So I guess it's like a train station where you do your shopping... or a mall where you can catch a train back to your city. Train travel is pretty convenient, though. I don't want to know how long it would take to get to Kyoto from Hikone by car.... it might not be so bad but it seems to me that the train routes are the most direct paths to a destination. If you get on a fast express train, then you'll get there even faster. I really like the system they have for train travel in Japan, but I know that system is entirely too impractical for the States because of how spread out everything is. Only the largest American cities have efficient rail systems. And of course, probably not every little Japanese town is going to have a train station you can take right to the next metropolis, but I still really like how it works over there. I remember once we were waiting for a train and I decided to stand really close to the edge of the platform as a train passed through. It was probably the dumbest thing I did. Man, I had to take a step back, I was too close for comfort. I mean, I could have stayed where I was safely enough... but I guess I'm no daredevil after all.
Anyway, those photos are just a few of the sights around the eki. The very top photos is sensei and Steve videotaping the observation floor. The left photo is one of the Joshes (sometimes called Konichiwa Josh or Special-J) checking out some souvenir swords in a store under the station. The other two photos on the right is what we did when Special-J got lost in the mall under the station. One moment he was following us and then he just took off. We didn't walk too far down when I turned around and saw him walking the other way, away from where we were going. We didn't see him for a good hour or so, so we had to look for him. We did eventually find him where we originally split up. Anyway, it took a while to find him and after that we were all really hungry. Ah, and that last photo is Steve videotaping the city of Kyoto through the tinted windows they had at the top of the station. I didn't like that the windows were there, but if there weren't windows I suppose they'd have screens or fences, which are even worse for photographing and probably create a lot of wind.
We made frequent trips to the Kyoto eki, probably because it was the single largest source of a multitude of stores that served various purposes, and also because we stayed pretty close to it in a really cool place called J-Hoppers.
J-Hoppers is kind of like a dormitory, kind of like a flop-house place where people on a tight budget can get a great deal on a bed and a shower. All the guys were in one room (I think there were 7 of us) and all the girls were in the other (I think there were 4). There was a toilet on our floor and two showers and a toilet downstairs. It was really well kept and it looked quite new. The photo on the left I must have taken when we were going to head somewhere, and the photo on the right is the owner who's name I think is Aki. He was a really nice person. I felt bad for waking him up once so I could rent a towel from him. He knew a lot of English so communicating with him was no problem. I just kind of feel bad because I have this idea that I was rude to him once... but maybe it wasn't so bad. In any case, I guess Aki spent a lot of time traveling the world on his motorcycle, which he had parked on the sidewalk in front of the place. Man, that's the way to go. I want to travel a lot more ever since I've been back from Japan. The photo at the bottom is Steve and Amanda watching some TV. There were a few other guests staying at J-Hoppers. One or two were from Georgia or South Carolina or something, and I know one guy was from Canada. It was a pretty cool place.
There was a pretty neat bridge over a river we walked over on our way... somewhere.... We were probably headed to the Gion district, which is pretty neat although I had a difficult time figuring out where we were. One moment we'd be on a busy street at the next we'd be in a temple. It was confusing, but very cool.
These are some pictures of a market we went to somewhere in Kyoto. There was a whole lot of interesting stuff for sale, not all of it particularly appealing to me. I guess I just haven't lived around there long enough. On the left, Kaori (an exchange student at CMU who lives in Nara) tells Josh what something is, and on the right some interesting products for sale. Yeah, sorry, I'm not really sure what any of those things are. Anyway, it was pretty neat down that market, although I guess my nose isn't ued to some of the seafood you can buy in Japan.... and I'm not a big seafood fan anyway.
We ended up in a place with lots of temples and shrines and shops after a while. I thought we were in a shrine or something but we just kept walking uphill and there were lots of shops, so now I'm thinking it was more like a district than any one thing. I'm guessing we were in the Gion area, which is a pretty neat part of Kyoto. It's essentially a really old shopping and entertainment district. There are a lot of super-exclusive tea houses not just anybody can walk in to, and even though none of the buildings are originals (because it would be impossible to keep every single store or house in good condition with original materials) it's still a really old part of town. The top left photo illustrates just how busy the streets were, and actually they got even busier while we were there. The top right photo is of some lantern-looking things... our tour guide said they were advertisements, so I suppose they could be anything. There were lots of them hanging certain places around the area we were in. And the bottom one is a photo of Steve taken through a structure upon which all these red things were hanging. I forgot what all those things were, but it was pretty cool.
This is a photo of a garden in back of a restaurant, I think. There were tons of big koi or carp in the pond, and it just really looked neat because to see it you had to look through a kind of fence. The light falling on it made it look particularly inviting at the time.... and the fish are pretty cool.
Oh, right, and this is just silly. It's a T-shirt. It's for "Super Homo's." It's hilarious.
These are photos of a really old temple... I don't remember which one it was. It wasn't Zen Buddhist, I know that, because it had no garden to speak of. I get the idea that the different kinds of Buddhist temples have different styles, or different priorities when it comes to what's included in the grounds. It was a really nice place. I remember one of the artifacts it had was a rope made of the hairs of devoted followers, and it was no small rope. We did get to go inside where they were having a service, I guess, but I couldn't take any photos. I started to and one of the guys supervising saw me, approached me, politely raised his hand to ask me to stop, and I pleasantly complied. It was really nice in there, too.
...hmm, seems like I'm forgetting the name of every place I go to. Well, maybe somebody can fill me in and I can do a quick edit some time.
I remember the name of this place, at least. This is part of Kiyomizu temple... certainly not the most famous part. Apparently the most famous structure of the temple is this huge balcony that was built over the slope of the mountain it's on. Looking over it all you see are trees and a couple streets, and the rest is all mountains. It's a really nice view, and I guess the structure was built without the use of nails. So, all of the gigantic pieces of lumber used to build this structure were fitted in to joints and probably clamped down somehow. Really interesting. We spend a lot of time walking up to this place. In this photo people were catching water that fell from above and washing their hands and arms. Since I'm really not up on Buddhist customs I don't really know what it's supposed to represent. Looks like fun, though.
This picture was taken on a rainy day at Nijo castle. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures from Nijo... I would have gotten more if I hadn't been getting rained on all day. By the time I got to Nijo castle I was cold, wet, and hungry. Nijo was a big castle, with lots of rooms and wall paintings, and a sprawling garden. And since it's a big, old castle there were a lot of people there. Actually, there were a lot of people just about everywhere we went in Kyoto. I know Kyoto drawas a lot of tourists from just about anywhere, but when you have to compete with so many crowds of people it really diminishes the appreciation of a site. But I guess I should come to expect that, you know. I mean, you can't expect to have something really awesome all to yourself. The only way I'd ever be isolated from people at such a popular site would be to stay after it closes... which might be fun anyway.
These photos are of Ginkaku-ji, or the temple of the silver pavillion. Now, you're probably wondering why the thing isn't silver. Apparently they meant to add the silver at one time but something came up and nobody ever got around to it. Kind of a shame, because I think it would look really nice all decked-out in silver. Apparently Kinkaku-ji is the place to go to see impressive structures. That one is the temple of the gold pavillion and they actually put gold on it. Anyway, this place is pretty nice, although there were so many people there I couldn't appreciate it to its fullest. And, of course, it was raining, so I was getting really soggy, and when you're soggy it's pretty difficult to have your mind ready for relaxation.
That was, essentially, all I took pictures of and did in Kyoto. On the day it rained some of us got food at a Lawson's (a convenience store chain--they're everywhere!) and went to the stairs leading to a subway stop to dry off and eat. Also, I bought my first two manga of the four I was to acquire on this trip: a "Ranma 1/2" and a "Ranpo." I'd never heard of Ranpo before, but it looks pretty funny. Now all I have to do is get working on the translation....
So after we went to Kyoto we packed up and took a train to Osaka... or, if not Osaka, somewhere close.
We went to Osaka to check out the big anthropology musem there, and we stayed in a nice place just about right next to the museum called the Osaka Sun Palace. The night we got there we noticed something interesting: a Pizza Hut right outside of the station. We tried ordering some pizzas for delivery but they never came because nobody told us they didn't deliver to the area we were at. We did eventually eat at Pizza Hut, though. Man, pizza in Japan is not cheap... some of the specialty pizzas were like $30.
This above picture is of the Expo 70 park that was built for the World's Fair back when it was in Osaka. There's a gigantic sculpture called the "pillar of the sun" or something like that. It's really entertaining although I have no idea what it is exactly. There's also an amusement park right next to this place. A very neat place indeed, and we had to walk through it to get to the museum. Apparently there were a lot of school kids going to the museum that day, too. And I guess Americans are pretty entertaining to Japanese kids. One of them, as he was walking buy, was looking right at me when he said pretty loudly "amerikajin!" or American. Some of them said "hello" or "how are you" to try out their English. And some of us asked "o-genki desu ka?" to try out our Japanese. It was fun.
The reason we went to the museum is the exhibit of Ainu artifacts. They had a full-scale recreation of an Ainu chise ("house" in the Ainu language), lots of tools, ikupasuy, makiri, a canoe... lots of stuff. There were plenty of other exhibits, too, including...
...masks! Sorry, I don't remember where this mask comes from but I know it's not Japanese. I thought it was funny so I took a picture of it.
By the time we got to the museum, though, not too many of us had any energy left. We spent a lot of time walking around Kyoto, and I spent a whole day getting rained on. And normally I might like to spend a little more time looking at things in a museum, but my body was telling me that I wanted nothing to do with walking that day. We were released at 12:30, so we were free to go back to Hikone. That's when we ate lunch at Pizza Hut... it was all right. I don't like Pizza Hut very much in the States, anyway, so I guess it was nothing special. But it was the heaviest meal I ever ate in Japan. All my other meals were pretty light. It was pretty nice to eat until I wasn't hungry any more, not until I was full. I actually think that, for the amount of moving around we did, it was better than stuffing our faces all the time. Even if you get hungry 3 or 4 hours later, at least you won't be too full to move. So I think I'm going to try to eat more meals like that... it'll just take a bit of discipline on my part, I suppose. Kyoto was fun, and I think I'd go back there if I had more time to spend than just 2 or 3 days.
