kyoto, inari, miyajima, hiroshima, okayama
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Well it has been a while since my last entry so I guess this will be a long one.
On Thursday Lina and I embarked together again and went to Kyoto. We entered a tourist bus that was packed, once again, with pubescent children. These kidsreally rock the tourist destinations. Along with old people.
On the bus we met to scared dudes who were from England, originally from Pakistan and China, who were in Japan for some crazy engineering conference and had the day off. Since they were scared tourists they decided to tag along.
First we went to the castle in Kyoto, but really, once youve seen Himeji, you've seen them all, so we didn't stay for long. Then off to Kinkaju-ji, the "golden pavilion." Here was a gold-leafed temple. To be honest I thought it was totally tacky and not worth the 500 yen admission fee. But the gardens around it were nice, we took funny pictures of me lighting incense for the gods, and I got an ok fortune reading. You are supposed to tie your fortune onto this rack where everyone ties their fortunes, but since mine wasn't so great I just kept it for souvenir purposes.
After that we went to Ginkakau-ji, the silver pavilion. Actually the pavilion is not silver, but wooden and kind of falling apart. The real appeal of this place is its gardens, which are meticulously kept. we even saw an arbor trimming the trees perfectly and another dude courched uunderneath a bushes sweeping up the leaves. Whoa. But once again, this place was totally packed and it kind of took away some of the appeal--more gardens to follow.
Walked around Kyoto for awhile, got incredibly tired, blah blah blah. Finally the scared engineers starrted getting on my nerves because they wouldnt quick second guessing where we were going and staring at their map.
Okokok. Before geting to Kyoto, I had arranged to meet a woman Jun Satomi, so in the early evening I met her. We walked around Gion, the geisha district. We saw several maiko, which are geisha in training. Apparently they don't come out often, so it was pretty special. Honestly it felt a little wierd waiting to see these young women come out of hiding, I felt like I was at a zoo waiting for the snake to finally crawl out of its cave or something. I asked Jun if they people still highly respected the geisha, and she said that women are all sort of jealous of them, I guess everyone wants to be a geisha.
In Kyoto a whole bunch of women walk around wearing parasols. I think it might be a geisha influence; wouldn't want to get suntanned and looking all working class and stuff.
We went to dinner at a super hip ramen place in Shiyo-dori, the super hip downtown district. It looked like all of the cool kids who were getting ready to go out were eating there. I had a yummy kind of citrussy bowl of ramen, their house specialty potstickers, and some very very yummy hot sake, but I think it was more of a plum wine type of sake because it actually tasted good. Plum wine is very yummy. It is actually not grape leaf ine, but made from rice and therefore a type of sake.
FRIDAY
Mark and I were supposed to meet up on Friday but then he had to perform at the veterans bar on his base, and I was alone for another day. I sitll stayed in Nara with her! It was a very full house. I decided to take it a little bit easier for the day and went to Fushimi Inari, a Shinto shrine near Kyoto. It has miles of paved paths into the woods that are all lined with torii gates, these big orange pillars. It was soo magnificent. Also there was no English signage, so I guess it is mostly a pilgrimage for old Japanese people. It seeemed that way anyways, way more people were praying at the shrines and stuff. I got relaly pooped when I had been hiking up the mountain for about an hour, so I got some cold soba noodles. They had a bunch of little restaurants way up in the mountains; apparently it's like this at all of the natural tourist areas...so bizarre.
At night I went to the bathhouse again with Lina and this woman from Switzerland who was on a round-the-world honeyhmoon. A guy from England was finishing up a two-month bicycle trip of Japan, and he cooked a really yummy celebratory dinner for all of us.
SATURDAY
I met with Mark again! Yay! We met on a Shinkansen train in Kyoto. I am not supposed to ride the really fast Nozomi trains with my JR pass, so I pretended to be asleep on the entire ride so that the train conductor wouldn't check my ticket. Around noon we went to Miyajima, the most famous island on the inland sea off the coast of Hiroshima. This place is also completely overrun with annoying mangy looking deer. Stupid god messengers trying to eat my food. We hiked to the top of Mt. Nisen, where there is supposedly one of the top 3 views of Japan. It was really cool. You could see a whole bunch of the islands on the inland sea. There were also deer at the top and...a little food stand! We had a celebratory beer and some oden, which I guess is Japanese bar food. I thought it tasted kind of gross.
By the way, I dont know who it was that started that rumor about Japanese food being healthy. There is tons of meat and fried fish. and white rice and white bread. There is hardly any vegetables. so WHATEVER (mark and i were singing the United States of Whatever song all weekend. Actually we sing together quite a bit).
Ok so I was completely sweaty on the top of the hill, and we decided to take the ultra tourist cable thingy down the hill. It was cool. In the car we heard an American tourist guy complaining "I was really disappointed I didn't see the monkeys" I guess there are supposed to be monkeys on the island, but a sign said they had "gone to the forest to eat" (WHATEVER) and the view wasn't enough for this guy.
Back in town on Miyahima, there is a humongous torii gate that is in the water, but during low tide the water goes out like 300 meters, so you can walk out and dig for clams. There were a lot of Japanese people digging for their dinner. I had some conger eel for dinner and Mark had oyster, the regional specialty.
SUNDAY
Stayed in a ryokan, that was cool. The next morning we went to this slightly depressing 1970's style aquarium. I guess Mark really likes going to "ghetto aquariums." Everyone is in love with penguins these days, so the penguins were all over the place and had enormous tanks and the spotted seal had a depressingly small tank. awww.
Oh also while in Miyajima Mark educated me about early 1900s history of Asia, how Japan started conquering areas of Asia so European countries wouldn't conquer it, communist China, Kim Jun Yeel (sp?), other Korea shit, etc etc etc. I am glad to learn, and it was a good prep for Hiroshima.
Yea, so Hiroshima. The city of peace. What a name! At the Hiroshima train station, we had Okanomiyaki, Hiroshima style. Okanomiyaki was EVERYWHERE there. They fry up a pancake, then they fry up some cabbage and sprouts, tehn they fry up some noodles, then they fry up an egg, and then they pile it all on top of each other and douse it in this barbeque stuff.It's called "the pizza of Japan." Mine had oysters on top of it, surprise!
We did the basic atomic bomb Hiroshima tour. The peace park was really nice and the a-bomb dome/building was pretty stunning. It was supposedly at the epicenter of the bomb, and recently built and earthquake proof, so it sustained the blast. It's pretty bizarre looking when surrounded by all of the greeenery of the park. The museum was cool and gave a super detailed history of Japan in the early 1900s and atomic bombs and why theyre stupid and how we shouldnt have them. The mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter to the leader of a country whenever a country detinates an atomic bomb. George Bush has gotten 5. The most recent one reads, "Hey W, will you quit blowing up atomic bombs? You know North Korea is developing a bomb right now and we're trying to convince them that atomic bombs are a bad idea and it's a pretty stupid move for the diplomatic process for you to blow one up." The next letter is to Kim Jun Yeel. Go figure.
At ngiht Mark and I went downtown where we chanced upon a festival. I think it was a "start of summer" festival, because many many women were wearing yukata (informal kimono). Even the cute young girls with their hot boyfriends were wearing yukata. People were doing some sort of line dance in a circle and in the center of the circle, a guy was playing a drum. It was cool. There were all sorts of festival foods including squid on a stick, beef on a stick, chicken on a stick, shaved ice, and tayaki, which is a fish shaped chocolate filled pancake. I ate one of those. We stayed in a gross hostel in Hiroshima that was in the middle of a suburb on top of a huge hill and looked like a barracks. I guess Mark is done with high class ryokan life. That's ok Mark. I guess the honeymoon had to end.
MONDAY.
On Monday Mark and I headed north from Hiroshima. We stopped for a few hours at Okayama, a pretty cool town that would probably be worth spending more time at. We went to the Korakuen Garden, a really nice Zen garden that is supposedly one of the top 3 gardens of Japan. There were lots of women strolling around with parasols and...so did I. I thought it was the best way to fully experience the garden. And it's getting hot. We ate a bento lunch box at the garden with all of the old people. It was very pretty and not too packed; I think I liked this garden the most so far. Oh and we also drank yummy Okayama-brewed beer, the first dark beer that I have seen in Japan. Mostly it's those light lager beers that I think taste like piss. After that we went on a bus into the boonies to the Sogenji Temple, a Zen Buddhist temple. This place was mad cool. Since it was in the middle of nowhere, hardly any people were there. There was a pond that had many mosquitos and lots of cedar trees. It was chill. I saw some white guy with a shaved head and Buddhist monk clothing filling a gas can. I think you can stay at this place over night and get in touch with your zen.
We snuck onto a Nazomi train again, I sat next to some Japanese businessmen who were boozing up on their train ride, and Mark and I parted in Nagoya.
TUESDAY
Now I am staying with a family in Nagoya. They spent about 10 years in the US, so they speak English very well. There is a little girl named Hillary who is 5 years old, and she's almost completely bilingual. She can even read and write a little bit. Its pretty bizarre. she really likes Dora the Explorer, so she likes me a lot because I have a Dora watch that I bought at Mark's army base. The house in general is pretty bizarre. It's super American, and it's even in a recently deverloped suburb like Castaiic or something. WHOAAA. Am I in Japan anymore? I think so because last night they served me paella with clams that they had dug up at the beach the day before. The head lady of the house,Ayano, teaches English to young children. I am going to sit in on the English lesson that she gives today.
Tomorrow I go to Tokyo to meet Andrea and Jeff!
Well it has been a while since my last entry so I guess this will be a long one.
On Thursday Lina and I embarked together again and went to Kyoto. We entered a tourist bus that was packed, once again, with pubescent children. These kidsreally rock the tourist destinations. Along with old people.
On the bus we met to scared dudes who were from England, originally from Pakistan and China, who were in Japan for some crazy engineering conference and had the day off. Since they were scared tourists they decided to tag along.
First we went to the castle in Kyoto, but really, once youve seen Himeji, you've seen them all, so we didn't stay for long. Then off to Kinkaju-ji, the "golden pavilion." Here was a gold-leafed temple. To be honest I thought it was totally tacky and not worth the 500 yen admission fee. But the gardens around it were nice, we took funny pictures of me lighting incense for the gods, and I got an ok fortune reading. You are supposed to tie your fortune onto this rack where everyone ties their fortunes, but since mine wasn't so great I just kept it for souvenir purposes.
After that we went to Ginkakau-ji, the silver pavilion. Actually the pavilion is not silver, but wooden and kind of falling apart. The real appeal of this place is its gardens, which are meticulously kept. we even saw an arbor trimming the trees perfectly and another dude courched uunderneath a bushes sweeping up the leaves. Whoa. But once again, this place was totally packed and it kind of took away some of the appeal--more gardens to follow.
Walked around Kyoto for awhile, got incredibly tired, blah blah blah. Finally the scared engineers starrted getting on my nerves because they wouldnt quick second guessing where we were going and staring at their map.
Okokok. Before geting to Kyoto, I had arranged to meet a woman Jun Satomi, so in the early evening I met her. We walked around Gion, the geisha district. We saw several maiko, which are geisha in training. Apparently they don't come out often, so it was pretty special. Honestly it felt a little wierd waiting to see these young women come out of hiding, I felt like I was at a zoo waiting for the snake to finally crawl out of its cave or something. I asked Jun if they people still highly respected the geisha, and she said that women are all sort of jealous of them, I guess everyone wants to be a geisha.
In Kyoto a whole bunch of women walk around wearing parasols. I think it might be a geisha influence; wouldn't want to get suntanned and looking all working class and stuff.
We went to dinner at a super hip ramen place in Shiyo-dori, the super hip downtown district. It looked like all of the cool kids who were getting ready to go out were eating there. I had a yummy kind of citrussy bowl of ramen, their house specialty potstickers, and some very very yummy hot sake, but I think it was more of a plum wine type of sake because it actually tasted good. Plum wine is very yummy. It is actually not grape leaf ine, but made from rice and therefore a type of sake.
FRIDAY
Mark and I were supposed to meet up on Friday but then he had to perform at the veterans bar on his base, and I was alone for another day. I sitll stayed in Nara with her! It was a very full house. I decided to take it a little bit easier for the day and went to Fushimi Inari, a Shinto shrine near Kyoto. It has miles of paved paths into the woods that are all lined with torii gates, these big orange pillars. It was soo magnificent. Also there was no English signage, so I guess it is mostly a pilgrimage for old Japanese people. It seeemed that way anyways, way more people were praying at the shrines and stuff. I got relaly pooped when I had been hiking up the mountain for about an hour, so I got some cold soba noodles. They had a bunch of little restaurants way up in the mountains; apparently it's like this at all of the natural tourist areas...so bizarre.
At night I went to the bathhouse again with Lina and this woman from Switzerland who was on a round-the-world honeyhmoon. A guy from England was finishing up a two-month bicycle trip of Japan, and he cooked a really yummy celebratory dinner for all of us.
SATURDAY
I met with Mark again! Yay! We met on a Shinkansen train in Kyoto. I am not supposed to ride the really fast Nozomi trains with my JR pass, so I pretended to be asleep on the entire ride so that the train conductor wouldn't check my ticket. Around noon we went to Miyajima, the most famous island on the inland sea off the coast of Hiroshima. This place is also completely overrun with annoying mangy looking deer. Stupid god messengers trying to eat my food. We hiked to the top of Mt. Nisen, where there is supposedly one of the top 3 views of Japan. It was really cool. You could see a whole bunch of the islands on the inland sea. There were also deer at the top and...a little food stand! We had a celebratory beer and some oden, which I guess is Japanese bar food. I thought it tasted kind of gross.
By the way, I dont know who it was that started that rumor about Japanese food being healthy. There is tons of meat and fried fish. and white rice and white bread. There is hardly any vegetables. so WHATEVER (mark and i were singing the United States of Whatever song all weekend. Actually we sing together quite a bit).
Ok so I was completely sweaty on the top of the hill, and we decided to take the ultra tourist cable thingy down the hill. It was cool. In the car we heard an American tourist guy complaining "I was really disappointed I didn't see the monkeys" I guess there are supposed to be monkeys on the island, but a sign said they had "gone to the forest to eat" (WHATEVER) and the view wasn't enough for this guy.
Back in town on Miyahima, there is a humongous torii gate that is in the water, but during low tide the water goes out like 300 meters, so you can walk out and dig for clams. There were a lot of Japanese people digging for their dinner. I had some conger eel for dinner and Mark had oyster, the regional specialty.
SUNDAY
Stayed in a ryokan, that was cool. The next morning we went to this slightly depressing 1970's style aquarium. I guess Mark really likes going to "ghetto aquariums." Everyone is in love with penguins these days, so the penguins were all over the place and had enormous tanks and the spotted seal had a depressingly small tank. awww.
Oh also while in Miyajima Mark educated me about early 1900s history of Asia, how Japan started conquering areas of Asia so European countries wouldn't conquer it, communist China, Kim Jun Yeel (sp?), other Korea shit, etc etc etc. I am glad to learn, and it was a good prep for Hiroshima.
Yea, so Hiroshima. The city of peace. What a name! At the Hiroshima train station, we had Okanomiyaki, Hiroshima style. Okanomiyaki was EVERYWHERE there. They fry up a pancake, then they fry up some cabbage and sprouts, tehn they fry up some noodles, then they fry up an egg, and then they pile it all on top of each other and douse it in this barbeque stuff.It's called "the pizza of Japan." Mine had oysters on top of it, surprise!
We did the basic atomic bomb Hiroshima tour. The peace park was really nice and the a-bomb dome/building was pretty stunning. It was supposedly at the epicenter of the bomb, and recently built and earthquake proof, so it sustained the blast. It's pretty bizarre looking when surrounded by all of the greeenery of the park. The museum was cool and gave a super detailed history of Japan in the early 1900s and atomic bombs and why theyre stupid and how we shouldnt have them. The mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter to the leader of a country whenever a country detinates an atomic bomb. George Bush has gotten 5. The most recent one reads, "Hey W, will you quit blowing up atomic bombs? You know North Korea is developing a bomb right now and we're trying to convince them that atomic bombs are a bad idea and it's a pretty stupid move for the diplomatic process for you to blow one up." The next letter is to Kim Jun Yeel. Go figure.
At ngiht Mark and I went downtown where we chanced upon a festival. I think it was a "start of summer" festival, because many many women were wearing yukata (informal kimono). Even the cute young girls with their hot boyfriends were wearing yukata. People were doing some sort of line dance in a circle and in the center of the circle, a guy was playing a drum. It was cool. There were all sorts of festival foods including squid on a stick, beef on a stick, chicken on a stick, shaved ice, and tayaki, which is a fish shaped chocolate filled pancake. I ate one of those. We stayed in a gross hostel in Hiroshima that was in the middle of a suburb on top of a huge hill and looked like a barracks. I guess Mark is done with high class ryokan life. That's ok Mark. I guess the honeymoon had to end.
MONDAY.
On Monday Mark and I headed north from Hiroshima. We stopped for a few hours at Okayama, a pretty cool town that would probably be worth spending more time at. We went to the Korakuen Garden, a really nice Zen garden that is supposedly one of the top 3 gardens of Japan. There were lots of women strolling around with parasols and...so did I. I thought it was the best way to fully experience the garden. And it's getting hot. We ate a bento lunch box at the garden with all of the old people. It was very pretty and not too packed; I think I liked this garden the most so far. Oh and we also drank yummy Okayama-brewed beer, the first dark beer that I have seen in Japan. Mostly it's those light lager beers that I think taste like piss. After that we went on a bus into the boonies to the Sogenji Temple, a Zen Buddhist temple. This place was mad cool. Since it was in the middle of nowhere, hardly any people were there. There was a pond that had many mosquitos and lots of cedar trees. It was chill. I saw some white guy with a shaved head and Buddhist monk clothing filling a gas can. I think you can stay at this place over night and get in touch with your zen.
We snuck onto a Nazomi train again, I sat next to some Japanese businessmen who were boozing up on their train ride, and Mark and I parted in Nagoya.
TUESDAY
Now I am staying with a family in Nagoya. They spent about 10 years in the US, so they speak English very well. There is a little girl named Hillary who is 5 years old, and she's almost completely bilingual. She can even read and write a little bit. Its pretty bizarre. she really likes Dora the Explorer, so she likes me a lot because I have a Dora watch that I bought at Mark's army base. The house in general is pretty bizarre. It's super American, and it's even in a recently deverloped suburb like Castaiic or something. WHOAAA. Am I in Japan anymore? I think so because last night they served me paella with clams that they had dug up at the beach the day before. The head lady of the house,Ayano, teaches English to young children. I am going to sit in on the English lesson that she gives today.
Tomorrow I go to Tokyo to meet Andrea and Jeff!