Brian's Japan Adventure

December 27th, 2007

Some people climb more steps by noon than others do in a lifetime.

I’ll bet if I could add up all the miles I walked today, I could have been halfway to the States by now. I mentioned yesterday that I was going to do three or four of the pre-planned walks today. How many did I actually do? One. One was plenty. The walk yesterday was tiny compared to this one.

I left the hotel around 9:30 and hopped on the bus to take me to the Higashiyama area of town. I had intended to stop in and have McBreakfast before the bus stop, but I just plain forgot about it.  I didn’t even shave this morning; I forgot my electric razor. They have free disposable ones in the bathroom here, but I use electric; either these are really chintzy razors, or it’s been so long since I used that kind that I can’t anymore. I guess I won’t look too awful by skipping one or two mornings.

Anyway, let’s move on to the walk. According to my information, it should take about 50 minutes to walk the trail. Well, that may be true if you are just walking down the street, but if you actually go in to the various places, it can (and did) take all day. The bus trip only took about ten minutes to get to the start of the “trail.”

Just as the bus dropped me off, Y-san called me on the phone to remind me to pick up my pay for the month before the office closed for vacation. I told her I wasn’t likely to stop in today because I was in Kyoto. That was a big surprise for her. I guess probably I should have told her about my trip beforehand, but hey, vacation is vacation, and it just never came up. I thought it was pretty good that I could arrange everything on my own. She was surprised, not mad, so I don’t think it’s a problem. Still, since the office is going to be closed from this afternoon until the 6th, I won’t be getting paid until the 7th. That’s OK, I expected that and planned accordingly.

On The Temple Trail

And then the Buddhist Deathmarch began. Now I see thy Japanese people are so short; they walk their legs down to little nubs. I have never walked up (and down) so many steps in one day in my entire life, and hope to never beat today’s record. I said yesterday that Kyoto was built on a flat plain. I admit it, I was wrong. Most of today’s temples and monasteries were built on (you guessed it!) the side of mountains.

I started out with the Jisho Shrine. This beat out anything yesterday for sheer size and impressiveness. A giant temple built between two mountains, raised high in the air by a giant wooden scaffold. There were also pagodas and small shrines in the complex. It was all huge and wonderful. If I had stopped with that spot alone, the day would have been worth it.

Along the way to the next stop were the Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka slopes. These are shopping districts built up the side of the mountain. They were essentially tourist traps, all selling “Japanese” memorabilia and souvenirs. There were also many small Japanese restaurants. Both of these “slopes” were roads carved into the mountain and consisted of more steps than I could count. There was no driving up these streets!

The next two stops were the Ryozen Kwannon and the Kodaji Temple. The Ryozen had a giant statue of Avalokiteshivara Buddha inside, hich I have many pictures of in the gallery. One of them shows an entire flock of birds sitting on his head. The height of that statue is 80 feet high. His eyebrow alone is 3-1/2 feet long. Basically, the whole place is a tribute to the Unknown Soldier from World War II. There are thousands of little Buddha statues in glass cases, each one representing some unknown soldier.

The next stop was Maruyama Park, a large, carefully sculpted natural park with a waterfall, bridges, statutes, and so forth. It was nice, but it was basically a park. There wasn’t much to say, so I’ll et my photos speak for themselves.

After the park came Chion-in Temple. Oh boy, if you thought you’d climbed steps, you haven’t been to this place. The gateway into this place was just the beginning. It was the biggest wooden entryway I have ever seen. The posts holding up the door appear to be four feet wide and very tall. Going through the entryway led to more steps.  Not just regular steps, but widely space steps. Each step was about a foot high, so climbing up there was a challenge. I was surprised to see a whole gaggle of old folks up at the top, so they must really be used to it.

At the top of all those steps was Chion-in Temple. This appears to be a real working monastery, because monks were all over the place. Inside the BIG temple, there were a handful of bald monks chanting and ringing bells and hitting little drums. Buddhist chanting is always fun to listen to, so I sat there a while listening. This compound also had a pagoda and many smaller shrines. Wandering around, I found yet another bunch of stairs, far longer than the ones before, going way up the mountain. I had to know what was up there. It turned out to be more shrines and a very beautiful Buddhist cemetery. Then it was time to walk down all those stairs. About this time, I remember that I had not eaten breakfast, and that my feet felt like they were missing. I’d been walking up and down mountains for more than four hours by this time, and I really was about ready to call it quits.  But the walk wasn’t done yet.

The next stop was Shoren-in temple. They had some neat trees out front, and I have pictures of those as well as a few other shots of the temple, but I didn’t go into this one. It didn’t look much different on the outside than the others and the admission fee was a little higher than I wanted to pay for more of the same thing. That plus the fact that I was wanting to get through anything that wasn’t absolutely fascinating before I died from hunger or foot damage.

The final stop was the Heian Shrine. This was another huge compound, with about a half dozen giant orange buildings and pagodas. It was built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times in its history. There was a giant garden behind the temple, but I had had enough for the day and skipped the garden. What I could see of the garden through the entryway looked pretty brown anyway. It wasn’t especially cold today, but this really isn’t the season for gardens. On that subject, take a look at my photos. Almost all the “dead” looking trees are sakura (cherry blossom) trees that would be bright pink and white in April.

I checked my watch, and it was 3:45. Most all tourist stuff closes at 4:30, and it gets dark a little after 5:00, so the sightseeing day was done. I found a bus stop and got on the most crowded bus I have ever experienced and rode it 30 minutes back to the station. Hmm. The first bus trip took ten minutes to get me to the start of the trail, and the return bus took 30 minutes to get back. I did some serious walking today, and my ankles are going to pay for it this evening. 99% of the time, my feet are fine, but I have just enough arthritis or bone spurs or something, that when I walk for hours on end, I regret it the next day. It has to be something excessive to cause the problem, but today definitely counts as excessive.

On my way back to the hotel, I have to walk through the train station. My hotel is on the south side of the station, and all the good stuff in Kyoto is to the north, so I have to cross through. The basement of the station is a huge mall, just like the one in Okayama. I wandered around a little bit, looking for something to eat, knowing that McDonalds was getting closer and closer, but really wanting something good instead. I finally settled on a plastic food store. Many shops in Japan have displays of plastic food in their shop windows. Some it it is very realistic, some of it isn’t. The plastic food will have a name tag and a price, and it substitutes for a menu. For the most part, these places usually have displays so unappetizing that I’d almost prefer real plastic. But this one had Chinese food, and everything in the “set’ looked good, so I tried it. It was beef & green pepper stir-fry, with rice (naturally), chicken soup, fruit salad, regular salad, chili tofu, and hot tea. The chili tofu was halfway edible, so I ate about half of it. Everything else disappeared quickly. I left stuffed and the bill came to 1450Y, not a price I’d pay every day, but not bad for today. As far as money goes, most of the temples charged an admission fee of anywhere between 200 and 500 Yen, which was surprisingly cheap.

So it’s now 5:45 and fully dark outside. I just dumped my camera of today’s pictures, all 221 of them. Wow, that is a LOT of photos. And they are for the most part, all good stuff. I am never going to remember which photos went with which shrine, so I may never caption them all correctly.

I’m really not in the mood to go out and do anything else with my feet in the condition they are in. But I will, it’s just too early to call it quits for the night. The weather, both last night and this morning, has been excellent. It’s cold, but not windy at all. Today I was outside for over 6 hours, and have no complaints about the weather at all. You just can’t stay outside all day in late December in Dayton.

Tomorrow? I don’t know. I have two options: First, I can get up, check out of the hotel, and go home to Okayama. The other is to get up, check out of the hotel, put my backpack and computer into one of those train station lockers and then do one more “walk,” going home in the evening instead. I am not going to spend another night. I could spend a week doing these walks and visiting every temple in town, but enough is enough. I do have other places that I have in mind to see next week, and my budget is something to consider.  What I do tomorrow morning is quite seriously more or less dependant on how well I can walk in the morning. CAN I do another walk, or am I walked out for a few days?

Oy Mate, This is CNN!

With a little extra time this evening, I turned on the TV. They have the usual goofy Japanese TV shows, but they also have CNN. I had no idea that CNN had more than just the American version, but this version of CNN seems to be mostly populated by Australians. The commercials, however, are mostly in Japanese. They did a weather report, and all the cities are southwest Asia or Audtralia, so apparently, it’s a whole different broadcast. Interesting!

December 26th, 2007

Kyoto!

Set the alarm for 6:00 am, headed out the door at 7:00.  I decided to walk to the station because I didn’t want to leave my bicycle there for three days. I have seen police there ticketing bicycles in the past, and I don’t want them thinking mine is abandoned there. That means it’ll be a long walk home when I get back.

Check-in time at the hotel was 1:00, so I wanted to arrive around noon so I could explore the train station and figure out the lay of the land before the hotel. As I said yesterday, there was one train transfer on the way here that concerned me, since it only gave me a minute. I allotted extra time, assuming I would miss it. I didn’t miss it; it was right next to where my first train stopped. That’s good, in that it got me here earlier, but bad in that now I have to carry my bags around for 2 hours before I can check in.

I arrived in Kyoto at 11:00, after passing through Kobe, Osaka, and a whole mess of little mountain towns. Actually, I did not notice any break or “country” between Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto. From the train, they may as well all be one gigantic city.  I noticed about the time we hit Kobe that the mountains were getting farther and farther away. Kyoto is out the flatlands of Japan.

The Set-up

So I had two hours to kill. The first thing I did was look for the hotel. It was easy enough, I could see the sign from the 12th floor of the train station. Yes, the 12th floor; that station is insanely large. After that, I stopped for lunch at, well, you know. They have them here too. Id have eaten anywhere that let me sit down by that point. I’m carrying a big heavy backpack on back as well as my laptop bag. This backpack was the worst investment of the trip. It must weight 20 lbs. empty. It was wheels and makes a great carry-on bag, but it just sucks at carrying things otherwise. Still, it was better than a big suitcase for only two nights.

After that short break, I went back up to the 9th floor at talked to the people in the tourist information center. The old man inside spoke English, and gave me a map. Not just a map like I had, but one with pre-filled “walks” on it. It tells which bus to take to that part of town, where to get off, and where to walk. That was so simply, I decided that the rest of the trip would be based off this information. He also told me the cheapest way to get around was to buy a two-day tourist pass for 1000Y. This pass lets me ride the bus with no limits. I don’t know if Okayama has something like that, but I am going to look when I get back. That’d be just great for exploring!  He also informed me that the Imperial Palace is closed until January 4th for New Years. Argh!

After I finished with the tourist information place, I went down to the bus station and picked up two one-day passes as the old man said. No problem. I checked my watch and it was 12:30. I headed back to the hotel and checked in. The man at the counter said “Room 417, bed 1” as he handed me the key. “Bed ONE?” Huh? My eyes bugged out at that. Do NOT tell me I have signed up for some kind of double occupancy deal!  One of the big pluses of this trip was to get AWAY from my roommate for a little while.  Throughout the evening, I half expected some stranger to walk in the door, but none did (at least not yet).  I dropped of my bags and let my back recuperate for about 20 minutes.

Kinkakoji Walk

At 1:15, I picked out the old man’s paperwork and the bus pass, and headed downstairs. I walked across the street to the train station, through that building, and on the other side of the station is where the buses stop. I waited for bus 205, and at 1:30, I was on my way to Kinkakoji Temple, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Kyoto. It’s also the farthest away, so I figured I should get it done first and see how much time I had left.

It was quite a distance away. It took over 40 minutes to get there (and 40 more coming back, obviously). The “walk” That my map described, started with Kinkakuji Temple, also know as the Golden Pavilion.  It was pretty nifty. There were many other buldings and gardens there too. Then I walked down the street to Ryoanji Temple. Which has one of the most famous rock gardens in Japan. Lastly was Ninnaji Temple, which had not only one of the big five story pagodas, but a palace. I don’t think it was an Emperor’s palace, but it’s pretty darn nice.

The Night Eater

The last temple closed at 4:30, so then it was time to hop on the bus and return. By the time I got back to the station, it was after 5:15 and fully dark.  I wandered around town for about two hours, looking at places to shop (it’s expensive here) and finding somewhere to eat. I finally hit the hotel again around 8:15. There’s plenty more to see, but my feet and back say they are done for the evening whether I’m ready to quit or not.

So that’s Day One of Kyoto. Now I am here, settled in, and set up in my base and ready for a long day of adventuring tomorrow. I only had time today for one of the tourist “walks” due to the distance. Tomorrow, I expect I should be able to do three or four of them. I’m not sure how Friday will go yet. It’s supposed to rain.

December 25th, 2007

Christmas!

Got up around 9 or so, and started right in reading the latest book. I finished it around 3pm. Somewhere in-between, I did a load of laundry. A very small load, so that I could use the dryer instead of hanging it out.

I also rode to Happy Town.  Yes, folks, my Christmas dinner had a big “M” emblazoned on the top and suspiciously resembled a Big Mac value meal. Bicycle traffic was pretty heavy at the time, since it was lunchtime at the university and classes had just let out. Yes, classes were in session today. Just to drive the point home, Y-San called me around 2 to tell me when my pay would be available. Yes, she’s working today too. My pay will be available tomorrow after 3pm. Unfortunately, I will be long gone to Kyoto by then, and when I return, the school will be closed until the 7th. I hope they don’t lose my money in the meantime!

While at Happy Town, I picked up some groceries, but more importantly, some stuff to take along with me tomorrow. A couple of bottles of pop and a box of cookies for the ride might be nice, if not, they’ll wait until needed at the hotel.

I played a bit on the computer and then watched TV for about two hours. They had some kind of celebrity impersonation contest where after the impersonator finished their act, the real person would come on and perform with them. It was pretty funny. TV has to be pretty obvious and mindless for it to be funny enough for me to watch it for two hours when I don’t even know what they’re saying.  You’d think by now my Japanese should be good enough to at least understand what they are talking about, but I really don’t think I am any better at listening to most conversations than I was the day I arrived.

So what is the plan for tomorrow? That’s a good question, and I really don’t have much of an answer.  I’ll leave here a little after 7:00 am, and arrive there between 11:00 and 12:30, depending on how smoothly the train transfers go. Check-in time at the hotel is at 1:00, so I plan to be there then to drop off my stuff. I have a couple of travelers guidebooks that I will read on the train on the way there, and once I get there, I will wander around a little bit to see how the town works. They have buses, sure, but they also have subways. I have bus and subway maps, but they’ll still need a little bit of deciphering in order to get where I want to go. Some of the more important landmarks are pretty far from the hotel, so I’m going to have to take some kind of transportation to get around. But other than packing well, I really haven’t done much planning of what I will do after arriving there.

I jut checked over the dates and schedules for everything, and I see the library will be closed this Saturday. I thought they would be open, but they aren’t.

December 24th, 2007

Monday, Christmas Eve, also known as just another day in Japan.

I went to McBreakfast and the Library as usual. I worked out a few alternate train schedules and routes for various places that I may decide to use later in the week. I also downloaded a Mac version of Shogi, or “Japanese Chess.”  There’s a good explanation of the rules on Wikipedia as well. Shogi was one of the games included on the Nintendo DS cartridge I bought the other night, and I figured I probably ought to learn it while I’m here.

On the way back, I stopped in at Softbank and bought another phone card. The one I bought on my first day here is going to expire on the 27th, so rather than have a dead phone, I h dot buy another card. I guess there must have been time on the phone already when I bought the first card in September, because it’s been nearly four months since then and the minutes are just now expiring. Today’s 3000Y card will expire toward the end of February, either making me buy another card then or doing without a phone for my last two weeks here. I’ll worry about that later.

I stopped at Co Co Ichi, as is my usual habit and had the same cheese-curry-tonkatsu as the last time. I wasn’t much in the mood to ride the bus home, so I walked from there. It’s about a 40-minute walk home from downtown; it’s cold outside today but it wasn’t windy, so it was nice.

I played a little bit of Civilization when I got home, but the game kept giving me awful starting positions, so after a couple of bad starts, I gave it up for today. I read a bit more of “The Awakened Mage,” part two of the series my brother and sister-in-law sent. I’m about halfway through that one now. I am hoping to finish it before I leave for Kyoto Wednesday morning, since I hate to stop a book in the middle, but I have enough stuff to carry along on that trip already.

Another Japanese Mystery

At 9:00, I heard a racket outside. There were about a dozen guys with wooden blocks walking up and down the stop chanting. “Ya Ya Cha.”  <crack> “Ya Ya Cha” <crack>. They cracked the blocks together after the “Ya Ya Cha” chant. They were all dressed in normal street clothes and were moving slowly in a line from house to house.  I am a little hard-pressed to describe it; they were going from door to door, much like Christmas carolers would do at home. Yet there was nothing about this that seemed at all even remotely Christmas-like. I suspect it probably has something to do with being 7 days before New Years or a few days after the solstice.  I would bet that today being Christmas Eve is just a coincidence.  You really just never know what to expect around here.

Other than the strange chanting procession, nothing much here is different from any other day.  I walked past Happy Town today looking for a sign posting their hours tomorrow. I didn’t see anything special, so I am assuming they’ll be open. That doesn’t surprise me. I do know that I really need to stock up on food next weekend. Most Japanese have a special box (an elaborate obento) that holds three days’ worth of food for January 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. They don’t leave the house, and they don’t cook. They just sit at home with their families for the New Year holiday. Many places are closed for all three days, including restaurants and groceries (hence the 3 day obentos). I’m not big into preparing food or cooking, but I won’t have much choice on those days if everything closes. I also suspect that it would not be a good time to travel.

Marc has changed his mind about going to Miyajima. He wants to save his money for partying in Tokyo. That’s OK; I can go without him at my convenience. He did ask if I was going to go tomorrow. I told him no, because I really don’t know how many things will or won’t be open. I’d hate to get all the way there and find that the ferries to the island weren’t running or something. All right, I realize the ferries would still be running, but many of the tourist attractions on the island could still be closed.

Tomorrow is, of course, Christmas. I’ve gotten all my gifts, and have been playing them, using them, or eating them for the past few weeks. I don’t plan on going anywhere tomorrow except maybe to Happy Town if I can’t find anything here worth eating. I do have a couple of noodle bowls, and we all know about the noodle-bowl-on-Christmas tradition, don’t we? No?  Basically, the plan for tomorrow is to finish reading that book, play some video games if there is time left over, and then in the evening to pack for Kyoto. Then, very early Wednesday morning, I’ll head to the train station to begin that adventure. I’ll be back probably Friday evening, or if I want to stay an extra day, Saturday night. I couldn’t find anything on the hotel’s website about them having Internet access. If they do, then I’ll be posting blog reports through my time there. If not, then I’ll post it all when I get back.

December 23rd, 2007

I slept till around 10 this morning. It was still too wet to go anywhere exciting, and since I just did the library yesterday, I decided to skip that today.  It was time to pull out my growing “To-Do” list. Not of exciting adventurous stuff, but of basic chores.

My Book Report

One of the things I have been meaning to do for weeks now is to gather together all my blog posts into one big file.  I’ve said all along I was gong to turn this trip into a book, and I mean it. It may or may not be interesting or saleable, but I’m going to do it anyway. Prior to coming to Japan, I entered all my stories and reports directly into the blog, since my computer was always online back in the States. That means I didn’t have “text” copies of that stuff on the computer itself. Yesterday I downloaded copies of all the blog entries I had made prior to coming to Japan; the TEFL and Exchange Student stuff mostly. Once I came to Japan, I had to start typing everything in Word and then posting them into the blog whenever the opportunity came up.

So I spent a good deal of time this morning getting everything merged into one big file. Essentially, it was a lot of cut and paste work, although the stuff that came from the web required significant reformatting.  I was shocked at how much material I had. My time in Japan is a little over halfway finished, and including all the stuff from the summer, I have 281 pages. Wow.

Granted, a lot of that stuff needs to be edited out for a book. Every day seems to start with “I woke up…” which is something a reader can usually assume. Also, most posts end with “Tomorrow I will…” which isn’t necessary either, since “tomorrow” is just a few lines later on the page. I think I will keep the “Daily Diary” format, at least for now, but there is a huge amount of repetition and daily junk that won’t make it into a book. What can I say? Overall this trip is fun and exciting, but there is a lot of boring daily routine mixed into it as well. I figure between the rest of December, January, February, and half of March, that’s around 90 more days here.  If I continue to write at my usual daily volume, that will give me another 180 pages for a total of 460 “raw” pages. Yes that’s single-spaced and not including any pictures. I think I’ll have quite a lot of cutting to do.

And The Rest of The Day

After getting all that organized, I figured it was a good time to head to Happy Town. I’m getting low on supplies, and want to get stocked up so I don’t have to go out on Christmas. My understanding is that most stores will be open, but I probably won’t want to go out anyway.  After returning, I did a load of laundry. See? This is one of those exciting days that I’ll be editing out. Ha!

After returning to the apartment, I started up a game of Civilization and played it all the way through. These games seem to take about 4 hours each, much less than the games from the previous version. Maybe I just need to play it on a higher level, but I have also never lost yet. Time to kick it up a notch, eh?

By the time the game was over, it was 7:00 and I watched TV for a bit. They are having some kind of stand-up comedian competition the last couple of days called “M-1”  I have no idea what they’re saying but quite a bit of it is funny away, just watching their expressions and the audience reaction.